Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.
"I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process."
For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges.
Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.
The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.
Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'
Via Tom Stedham
If I were in a position of reviewing applications I wouldn't discriminate against someone marking "Asian". But I sure as hell would discriminate against someone being deliberately misleading on their application.
ReplyDeleteThe schools are doing this, so I see their point. Just like they discriminates against whites.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how a person who is half Norwegian (white) and half Taiwanese (Asian) can say "I'm white" on an admission form and not be committing a crime. If you are half/quarter/eighth/whatever percentage of anything then by very definition, you are not white! Period.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who insists she is "French and Irish"... I just laugh. "No, you're WHITE!", I say. Just because your great-grandparents came from France doesn't make you "French"... You are white. Countries are not "ethnicities", but we tend to use them as short-hand sometimes.
John McCain was born in Panama, but that certainly doesn't make him "Panamanian" by ethnicity... I have met some people who are from Puerto Rico, but they don't consider themselves "Puerto Rican" ethnicity, probably because of the stigma attached in higher-income circles, or something.
But if you check math and science classes at our Ivy League schools, it certainly doesn't "look like America"...
Considering the schools/gov are often misleading on what is white/asian/hispanic, I don't care if someone lies on an application about their race.
ReplyDelete