Oh gee, I was wondering why Asians were so underrepresented at my college. I guess this explains it.

Either that or they all make up adjectives like “meritocritous.”

The person who currently goes by “Yellow Peril” is probably this blog’s single most active poster. His other usernames include David Horowitz, Louis Farrakhan, Hong Kong Phooey, etc, etc.

Well, she was right in my case, as I did consistently test over the top 99th percentile in all standardized testing. So, were I an underachieving minority, I would have easily scored a full ride to the brand-name university of my choice (as some of my lower-scoring part-minority colleagues did).

However, it has been well-documented that Asians like me thus did suffer double-discrimination in undergrad college admissions - being excluded by other minority-friendly affirmative action and White-friendly alumni status. Moreso, there’s even been evidence of intentional discrimination against “overqualified” Asian applicants by admission boards attempting to fulfill racial quotas.
http://www.asianamerican.net/bios/Joe-Don.html

The system ain’t racist? Says WHO?

I guess the ultimate loser is the US as a whole though - as other more meritocritous countries surpass us in science and technology. They’ll take all our manufacturing and tech base - that we’ll then have to outsource to. Oh wait, that’s already happening now! Doh! Congrats guilty liberals - your work is done now!

On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the frustration people with multiracial, biracial, middle Eastern, or international categories have with the data. On the other hand, Univerisities are required by federal law to collect race and gender data, and they cannot sit down and interview every student to understand the complexity of racial identities. There could be some sort of compromise. I wrote about my views on this study a while back….here is the link for anybody interested. http://www.rachelstavern.com/blog_comment.asp?bi=232&m=1&y=2006&d=1&s=search

my principal called me into the hallway from class one morning and said “ben, you’ve been chosen as a national achievement scholar. but are you aware that that scholarship is for… black students?” i stared back in mild disbelief before breaking the news to him. (man, when multiracial people talk about “coming out,” we’re not kidding!) he got very flustered and awkwardly apologized. kudos to him for not pressing the issue, i guess. (turns out there had been no national achievement scholars at my school since he’d been there.)

Funny - in HS I chose “other” for the PSATs (this was the 90s, before the new census, etc. - have no idea what the SAT and PSAT categores are like now). The PSATs get scored and lead to National Merit competitions - academically based, worth a $1000 scholarship for the first year of college - not the biggest deal, but a nice chunk.

So about 15 students in my HS class get nominated, as do I… but someone I got listed as a Negro Scholar - NEGRO? #1 question: how was it the 1990s and noone had updated the term? #2 question: who in the school notified the program that I was part black? I REALLY wanted this to be based on academics alone, since my scores were from what I could gather the same or better as the academic Merit Scholars. My family called the Princeton Review about whether “Negro” scholars had the exact same requirements (score-wise) as the plain Merit scholars. All we were told was that it was score based, but noone could tell me whether it was the SAME score.

Honestly, I think that since I happened to be the only part-black student in my grade (small school, and the lower classes were more diverse ethnically), the school wanted to show “DIVERSITY” by making sure they had a “NEGRO” scholar.

No, I’m not being paranoid… my school would have done it. When a senior in my class didn’t want to go to college, the high school applied FOR HER to a community college (no essay, no fee, the school had all her info) … just to keep their “100% College Acceptance” cred.

Race data is collected to monitor compliance with civil rights legislation, not to validate people’s identity choices. Multiracially-identifying people might feel they have to choose “other” because their true heritage is not represented, but the “true heritage” of monoracial individuals can also be far more complex than these forms permit. (For instance, there is no separation of Scandinavian from Middle Eastern within the “White/Caucasian” category, or of Indian from Chinese in the “Asian American” category.) The government doesn’t care if you’re from Cape Verde or Cape Cod - if you have “origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa” (however you choose to determine that), you fit with their definition of “Black.” And if you receive their money (Title IV funds: Pell grants, Perkins loans, Federal Work-Study), you have to play by their rules.

However, people don’t generally like being told to take their identity less seriously. So my solution for colleges is to ask the students to write a short paragraph describing their racial/ethnic background. Then students can be as accurate as they want to be, and the college can slice the data any way they want.

The problem, aside from the logistical nightmare of committees having to read yet another section of prose, is that this might overstate the importance colleges place on race/ethnicity in the admissions process… can’t wait to see how the anti-affirmative-action community would react to that.