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Identifying the Racial 'Unknowns'

January 5, 2006

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Over the past decade and a half, the number and proportion of college students opting not to reveal their race when asked have shot up, to 5.9 percent of all students in 2001 from 3.2 percent a decade earlier. The increases have raised two major questions: Who are these students, and why are they declining to identify themselves? The answers have implications for college officials and policy makers on a wide range of issues, including affirmative action and student life.

A new study by the James Irvine Foundation's Campus Diversity Initiative takes a first step at answering the "who they are" question. The report, " 'Unknown' Students on College Campuses: An Exploratory Analysis," examines undergraduates at three private colleges in California and finds that a "sizable" number of those who declined to identify their race were white. That means that on the three campuses, the study found, the proportion of enrolled students who were white rose by anywhere from 10 to nearly 30 percent.

"As many campuses report progress toward compositional diversity by touting the presence of either underrepresented minority students or students of color generally, our findings suggest that the racial/ethnic composition can be distorted when there is a large unknown population," the authors write. "Even if a relatively small portion of this group is white, it will change the demographic diversity of a campus and have repercussions in terms of the handling of this category in data reporting."

The study, which was a collaboration between the Irvine Foundation, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Claremont Graduate University, compared information gathered from student applications during the admissions process at the three institutions to data collected during the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey done annually by the University of California at Los Angeles's Higher Education Research Institute. (The authors emphasize that the two sets of numbers did not match up perfectly, which explains in part why they use the word "exploratory" in the report's subtitle.)

Many more students tended to identify themselves by race (often more than one) in the UCLA survey than they did during the admissions process. The authors speculate that that may be because the information is collected after students have enrolled, so any perceived impact of students' racial classification on their admissions chances -- which is one commonly held theory for why students may withhold their racial identities -- may be mitigated.

The comparison worked this way on one of the colleges -- "Campus A" -- in the study. Of students who entered in 2000, 32 percent were "unknown" because they did not choose a racial category. Of admitted students who did identify themselves, 42 percent were white, 12 percent Asian American/Pacific Islander, 11 percent underrepresented minority (presumably black and Hispanic), 3 percent other.

Seventy percent of respondents to the UCLA survey on that campus said they were white, but since the students were permitted to choose more than one category, some of them may be multiracial. So the Irvine Foundation study estimates that between 57 and 70 percent of Campus A's students are white.

The authors are careful to say that the results may not be broadly applicable to other institutions, since private institutions like those that the Irvine Foundation studied represent about 10 percent of all American colleges and universities, and educated a relatively small proportion of all students. Still, they say that their findings "may have dramatic implications for higher education institutions."

"Over the course of several decades of working with campuses to establish diversity initiatives," the authors write, "we have encountered many people who assume that most, if not all, students in the unknown category are multiracial. This study directly challenges that assumption."

The report calls for better and more accurate data collection about the racial makeup of students, both to "eliminate our reliance on assumptions about unknown students and establish a way of collecting more accurate official enrollment data on all students. With this more accurate data, we will have not only a better sense of the true racial/ethnic composition of our colleges and universities, but also a better gauge of the access various students have to, and the success they have through, higher education."

— Doug Lederman

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Comments on Identifying the Racial 'Unknowns'

Posted by Mommy on January 5, 2006 at 8:45am EST
That anyone in academe could have thought that admission applicants who do not self-identify their race are multi-racial is a symptom of how out-of-touch the academy is with the effects of their own admissions practices. If anyone bothered to talk to the "unknown" applicants, they'd know in a minute who these kids are and why they do not self-identify. Especially at selective colleges, applicants will not put anything in their "admissions package" that is not to their advantage. Being white is not widely perceived to be an advantage, so why make it easy to be identified as "just another white kid." There are certainly proxies for racial identity such as school, geography, surname, sometimes even parents' background information on the application, but no one in the current admissions environment wants to highlight being part of the majority racial group. Even some members of the private "college counselor" industry advise white applicants not to self-identify their race and some go further in advising on ways to minimize any family economic and educational advantages.

Identifying Students by Race
Posted by Riall Nolan , Dean of International Programs at Purdue University on January 5, 2006 at 9:41am EST
While I can understand, to some extent at least, the historical and political factors responsible for our current obsession with race and ethnicity in the college population, these categorizations are both arbitrary and outmoded. No-one would deny that "race" (however you want to define it) is at some level a concept that has consequences for groups and individuals, but any anthropologist will tell you that it's not really a good way to divide human beings up. Furthermore, it's becoming more irrelevant with each passing year, as we mix and mingle. The really important category, to my mind, is class, and no-one much wants to talk about this. But class, rather than a Federally-assigned racial or ethnic category, is the true indicator of what's happening with our college population, and what consequences that profile will have for the future of our nation as a whole.

A phony diversity
Posted by JMG on January 5, 2006 at 9:53am EST
The story writes: "The increases have raised two major questions: Who are these students, and why are they declining to identify themselves?"
Couldn't the question equally have been "Who are these students who refuse to reduce themselves to a label attached to the entirely artificial construct we call 'race'?"
Obviously students identify themselves--it's hard to be admitted as "anonymous."
As Lani Guinier notes, most of the students who benefit from race-based affirmative action for African Americans are children of more recent immigrants not decended from slaves.
There are no races; there are many cultures. What liberal elites seem to like best about affirmative action is that it allows affluent and well-prepared kids of all colors to provide the phony "diversity" that elite colleges and universities pretend to offer while not actually broadening the admit pool in any meaningful way (such as by class).
These schools strive to defend "diversity" because that's what keeps people from noticing that the whole standardized-test driven admissions process is a crock that systematically weeds out real diversity. [Thus, Wisconsin had to resort to Photoshop to get a black male into a group picture on the front of its view book, trying to present a color diversity that was and is noticeably absent in Madison.]
In practice, the one group most committed to maintaining so-called affirmative action programs are the white elites. This is because they know that the "meritocracy" (i.e., standardized testing based) system is nicely set up to reward their kids, and that if the whole thing gets too overwhelmingly white, people will question its entire basis.
So I'm encouraged by kids who refuse to play the race game, and hope it will someday lead to the end of the whole phony "meritocratic" admit system that in the main, functionally, does little more than equate the socioeconomic advantages that a child enjoyed at birth with that child's "merit" at 18. Anything that interferes with the operation of such a system is to be applauded.

Favorite race classification story
Posted by Business prof in the midwest on January 5, 2006 at 10:07am EST
Here is a story a student related to me that shows what a crock race classification schemes are. I had this student in two classes over the past year. This student is as white as white can be. However, if you were to hear this student's first and middle names, and your job required you to think of people in terms of race (e.g., the admissions department), you might assume this student was African-American. Viola! This student received a scholarship for minorities during their first two years.

Posted by Roger Clegg , President at Center for Equal Opportunity on January 5, 2006 at 10:11am EST
I love this line: "The report calls for better and more accurate data collection about the racial makeup of students ...." Using, say, birth certificates, DNA, that sort of thing? Maybe there are some old Third Reich- and South Africa-types around who can provide some useful pointers.

Posted by Susan Mckevitt , Ed. Equity Consultant on January 5, 2006 at 10:43am EST
I agree with the comment above which I have copied here:
“The really important category, to my mind, is class, and no-one much wants to talk about this. But class, rather than a Federally-assigned racial or ethnic category, is the true indicator of what’s happening with our college population, and what consequences that profile will have for the future of our nation as a whole.”
There is no denying that we are saddled with multiple levels oppressions in this country and that our educational system is the method to ensure the preservation of the status quo. People of Color take double and more hits in the scheme of things. But I believe that until we address the elephant in the room, that is, issues of class in this country and education's role in perpetuating who stays poor (welfare/blue collar workers), who might become middle class (managers/white collar workers) and who remains as the elite, we will never get off the dime in changing very much.

Racial Unknowns
Posted by John Bonnell , professor of English at Macomb Community College on January 5, 2006 at 11:52am EST
White males who have reason to fear being black-balled are advised to identify themselves as "CaulkedAsian." It is best to thus orient oneself whenever ethnic considerations are brought to bear in higher education.

Posted by Irene on January 5, 2006 at 11:52am EST
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who refuses to play the race game. For one new job at a university, the HR person said she'd have to identify my race if I didn't do so myself. She wrote down that I am "White." It was fitting for the HR person to be the one to decide my race, because racial categories are non-scientific, and so was her choice, lacking any basis other than her own preconceptions. Like the concept of race itself, her choice was culturally determined. Why does our nation avoid the concept of "class" in favor of racial distinctions? My local school system wants to close the "race gap" in academic performance. Wouldn't it be better to close the "class gap" so everyone, regardless of skin color, might get a chance to succeed?

Diversity Zealots & Mediocrity Defenders
Posted by Chuck on January 5, 2006 at 12:03pm EST
The cogent and apt comments by Roger Clegg offer a poignant antidote to the endless race-baiting, box-checking, double standards defending obsessions of folks like Susan McKevitt.
Where is any mention of why black Americans remain so poorly represented among the ranks of students who actually complete doctoral work in scientific and technical fields as opposed to light-as-air non-fields like education management or curriculum development?
Can it be that cherry picking students based on race, ethnicity, or gender and then self-righteously denouncing or discarding standardized tests contributes to the diversity obsessions of university managers and their "consultants" but is a root cause of academic erosion, decline of intellectual skills and the debasement of higher learning in America?
For a superb (but depressing) analysis of this whole snake oil show of bean-counters and oppression-whiners, see Peter Wood *Diversity: The Invention of a Concept* (Encounter Books, 2003).

The Importance of Collecting (Inaccurate) Data on Race
Posted by ML , Sociologist on January 5, 2006 at 2:09pm EST
Despite the many valid objections that this article (and these posters) have raised, I still beleive it is important to collect data on race, particularly for educational institutions. I am not going to rehash all of the arguments supporting this position here--a good summary can be found in the 2002 American Sociological Association statement on the subject (http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?section=Issue+Statements&name=Collecting+Data+on+Race), or in books such as "Whitewashing Race."
What I do want to address here, though, is some of the futility of trying to "fix" the problem of people who do not self-identify or who choose "other." Admittedly, some do so because they have (accurate or misguided) feelings that identifying their whiteness will disadvantage them in some way. Similarly, some do it because they are multiracial--and for them, allowing multiple checkboxes will result in a better picture of the racial compisition of your student body (people with largely white but small amount of Native American ancestry, for instance, are often highly resistance to identifying as white only).
But there are other categories of people important here too. Definitions of race change and are changed both from below and above. Many white Hispanic immigrants come from countries where race works quite differently than in the U.S. and may seem white but identify in some other way. People of Middle Eastern ancestry are currently classified as white on most surveys, but may no longer feel that such a classification accurately describes their experience as raced bodies in the contemporary western world. And many Jewish students, particularly those with ancestry in former Soviet republics or with deep familial experiences with the Holocaust, do not feel white because their families have never been treated as white before.
Beyond those who could potentially identify as white, there are similar problems: Carribean immigrants who can not choose "African-American," people ideologically committed to "one human race" who will not identify in racial terms, etc.
These are authentic identities that can not be captured by the current system of racial checkboxes. The problem is not significant enough to be worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But it is worth it to recongnize that not everyone fits, not everyone will choose a box, and a few percentage points of the population will choose that all-important "other" category for reasons that may not always be immediately apparent to us.

Intersections
Posted by Paul on January 5, 2006 at 2:09pm EST
I agree with many people's comments that we have a giant elephant in our society called class, and we generally refuse to talk about it. However, what is disconcerting to me about much of the commentary to this story is the failure to see the distinct connections between race and class in our society. If we forego discussions of race to talk about class, we simply shift our focus to a different topic of conversation, rather than seeing how the two are intricately connected. I would think that the recent tragedies in New Orleans/Biloxi would have highlighted for our citizenry the very real ways that race and class are connected.
The point here is that we cannot talk about class issues without also examining race issues, gender issues, etc. We need to stop thinking so simplistically and start examining these issues from a multi-level analysis if we are ever going to get anywhere.
I'm disconcerted by Michele's commentary about high school students. If you are aware of the research base, you should know that male enrollment across the country continues to fall, and attrition of males out of higher education institutions is high. Our male population is simply not being educated. There is a severe problem if men of any color don't enroll or apply to college! Further, and I'm making an assumption here, but I do not believe that the youth of this country don't see a difference between the races; they do, we just live in a society that has taught them not to discuss their views on issues of difference, and thus they refuse to talk about it.

Lets be Truthful
Posted by Vince , EEO/AA Coordinator on January 5, 2006 at 2:14pm EST
So… Let’s see. Whites may not be identifying themselves because they fear they may face difficulty in the admissions process? The reasons for taking count by race are many one being, a requirement, by Executive Order 11246, Affirmative Action. AA was coincidently conceived by Whites, passed through legislation by Whites, and is maintained by Whites to counter personal, systemic social and economic racism let me guess, created by Whites in a country headed by Whites. White students serve no purpose by not identifying themselves because they are, in most instances, counted as, you guessed it, White. It seems they are trying to bastardize a system by playing their own race card backed by the privilege that accompanies whiteness. Must be nice.
How would Whites identify if the “others” were only eligible for admission as a “quota” under AA?
If there is something to be gained by racially identifying oneself as something other, than, say, White, why not just identify as Black, Native American, Asian, Hispanic or disabled? Oh wait, that would be dishonest. Whites, who know themselves to be White, and yet self-identify as “other” are intending to deceive.
The reality is there is no advantage to not identifying truthfully. Chris Rock once said something to the effect of, “As a Black man in America there isn’t a White in America who would trade places with me, and I’m rich!” So let’s construct a colorblind process. I once heard Lani Guinier conceptualize turning the college admissions process into a lottery. The names of all qualified applicants are gathered and the names are chosen at random. Of course, this would not be acceptable because it would remove race altogether and eliminate the possibility of getting into college because one is White, or an offspring of an alum, or relative of a large donor.
On a side note, AA was designed to help overcome discriminatory practices. It was not designed to cure the ills of class divisions and poverty. Class and poverty have little to do with personal bias based on race and the discriminatory effects of prejudice.

Posted by Tomkette at Stony Brook University on January 5, 2006 at 2:15pm EST
While it seems the pressure to identify is leaving its mark on an already battered academic environment, I am remiss to see the end to all this conflict if no other reason but to expose the consequences of racial classification. The line between the advantaged and the disadvantaged is getting blurred, but that hardly qualifies as a reason to scrap the profile question. Assuming we all want the same thing, "equality," we still have to contend with a culture that is more image driven than ever before. Though the "white" student is disadvataged because he/she must compete with a much larger pool of applicants that fall within the same race, and the "person of color" has advatages because, despite the growing numbers in adacemia, he/she competes with fewer numbers, the assumptiom that this yields an imbalance is a reductionist's perspective on the issue of race in academia.
We will need a great deal more than demographics and the testimony of a few embittered students from both sides before we can make the move to assert: racial classification is no longer an issue in academia. Yes, class is a better and more appropriate force that can be measured, and substantiated in identifying inequality in the workplace, but that is precisely why the race issue is such a pressure cooker. It's ridiculous - always has been, but its not going away just because we've shifted focus away from it. That's a little too optimistic for a 400 year old problem.

Racial Unknowns
Posted by Doris Cox Meshack on January 5, 2006 at 3:09pm EST
I know for a fact that race still play a large part in whether or not an applicant will be called in for an interview or not. I have placed resumes and applications on line several times using the same exact resume refusing to identify my ethnicity on one, claiming white on another and black on still another. The resumes with white or a refusal to identify received twice the calls.
I am over 55 years old, so I have been around long enough to know about real racism.

LIfe is a gamble?
Posted by Bart J. on January 5, 2006 at 3:09pm EST
" .. I once heard Lani Guinier conceptualize turning the college admissions process into a lottery .."
Hey, pal -- it can be a lottery. Assume you are an admissions officer at Harvard Medical School. Fifteen people have applied for one open spot; 50% qualify. Now have to find something "special" like five years working in the Third World; now down to four.
Assume three of the last four are female, good MCATs and grades, etc. Now -- which one gets admitted, O Great Wise One?
My ex-financee was one who was chosen. To this day, I'm not sure how she was selected over the other three. Child of early divorce? Working-class? Hands-on with the poor? Letter of recommendation personally signed by Mother Teresa? Attractive?
I could say, having been her admissions coach, it was my coaching. But I'm not some tenured BS-ing meglomaniac, in need of phony, jejune praise. As David Letterman's pal Dr. Phil likes to say, "it is, what it is." Luck, skill, whatever. Life goes on.
BTW: we didn't play the race card; she self-reported as white. She didn't feel it was necessary to "play games." Whatever ..

BTW: Lani Guinier
Posted by Bart J. on January 5, 2006 at 3:53pm EST
Isn't Prof. Guinier self-reported as half-black/half-white?
Also: my niece is half-Chinese, half-Dutch. Should she self-report as Asian?
My white lesbian friend adopted a female Chinese baby. Is the baby white, white/Asian, or Asian?
With a tip of the hat to Jon Stewart -- "In another generation, this situation could become mathmatically unworkable .."

Posted by RK on January 5, 2006 at 3:53pm EST
Here's some data that complicates this discussion. My university is a state university that accepts all applicants who meet minimum standards, i.e., race and sex play no role in admissions. Among our baccalaureate graduates last year, 12.2% either did not respond or chose "decline to state" for race. The proportions are almost identical for men and women (12.1% for women, 12.2% for men). If, in fact, the refusal to chose a racial category has to do with the fears of white males regarding admission, how does one understand these data? Since there is nothing at stake in filling out the racial category on a graduation petition, there seem a significant number of people who are consistent in refusing to place themselves in a racial category. Only some serious research will determine the reason for this choice.

Paul
Posted by Bad English on January 5, 2006 at 4:45pm EST
"I would think that the recent tragedies in New Orleans/Biloxi would have highlighted for our citizenry the very real ways that race and class are connected."
All that rot about the victims of Katrina being poor and black has long since been disproved as yet more false media hype. Victims were as likely white and middle-class as poor and black. See, for example:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bodies18dec18,0,7754290.story?coll=la-home-headlines.
It's high time we set race-baiting aside to deal with problems affecting all races in society.

Affirmative (Or Negative?) Action
Posted by John Rosenberg on January 5, 2006 at 5:16pm EST
Interesting article, but fascinating comments. I was especially taken with the comments by "Vince," who identified himself without reservation or timidity as an "EEO/AA Co-ordinator."
Vince asserts, incorrectly, that one reason for "taking count by race" is "a requirement, by Executive Order 11246, Affirmative Action." First, there is no such requirement in Executive Order 11246 (nor was it "passed through legislation by Whites," or anyone else, as Vince claims, but never mind. It was an executive order, not a law.). But much, much more important is what actually is in that executive order -- a requirement to be colorblind. Here's what it says:
"The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
Let me repeat: The original meaning and intent of affirmative action was to ensure that everyone be treated "without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
It affirmative action had stayed true to its orgins, and not turned into negative action, most of its current critics would be firm supporters.
The text of Executive Order 11246 can be found here:
http://www.eeoc.gov/35th/thelaw/eo-11246.html
I have discussed it, and related matters, on my blog, DISCRIMINATIONS:
http://www.discriminations.us

New Orleans Dead
Posted by Teed on January 5, 2006 at 9:51pm EST
It's always good to take a look at so-called "proofs" offered as evidence. Here's something from the article cited by "Bad English"
Because New Orleans was one of the nation's poorest cities, where more than one in four residents lives below the poverty level, many of the victims were still found in neighborhoods that were impoverished by national standards. But by the standards of New Orleans, those neighborhoods were economically stable, and deaths citywide were distributed with only a slight bias for economic status.
In other words, the poor in New Orleans are really middle class because everybody in New Orleans is poor. Starting from that assumption, these statistics "prove" that the poor didn't suffer from Katrina, but that assumption is ridiculous. There's also a statement in this article that these facts are too unreliable to make any conclusions one way or the other, although that does not stop the author of the article from drawing conclusions

Posted by Dan on January 6, 2006 at 4:37am EST
The older the commenter is, the less likely they are to understand why folks don't want to answer. First, kids today have never experienced systemic racism - its alien to them. Second, many kids feel that strong self-identification as "white" is, in itself, racist and supremicist.
Finally, there is the realization that race is a biologically bankrupt concept, designed by (shocking!) racists as a means of oppression and categorization. I find the concept of school admissions staff or HR folks "classifying" someone by race to be chilling and reminiscent of Wannsee.
It is anethma to some entrenched political constituencies and those in the EEO racket, but the system must change. If we need to level the playing field, it must be done based on class, not "race", which is (thankfully) becoming even tougher to pin down as inter-racial marriage increases.

‘Identifying the Racial ‘Unknowns’’
Posted by A.D. Powell on January 6, 2006 at 9:09am EST
I find it disturbing that too many people in academia assume that "whites" are by definition racially "pure" (with small amounts of recessive American Indian genes here and there). It is assumed that "multiracial" students are not "white" but of "of color." "Whites" are also "multiracial" since "race" is a continuum. There are no hard and fast borders where one "race" ends and another begins.
White Racial Identity, Racial Mixture, and the "One Drop Rule"
http://multiracial.com/content/view/417/27/

CRA and EO 11246
Posted by Tim Fay at Adversity.Net, Inc. on January 6, 2006 at 12:28pm EST
John Rosenberg, thanks for your reply to Vince re: EO 11246. You saved me a lot of typing.
Like the original, unamended Civil Rights Act of 1964, EO 11246 has been amended so many times that it bears little resemblance to the original intent. Diversiphiles (and EEO/AA coordinators) like to cite the CRA and EO 11246 as legal authority for their race-based decision making but they universally fail to disclose their 'authority' comes from something else altogether: the mangled, mulitply amended versions of those documents AND the latitude the originals granted to the enforcement agencies, both in determining penalties and solutions as well as in deciding the very definition of "discrimination".
This was the tragic truck-sized loophole in both the original CRA and EO 11246. The EEOC, DOJ, Dept. of Ed and what was then known as the Civil Service Commission were given the keys to the candy store and wasted little time enshrining dubious principles such as "underrepresentation" and "disparate impact" as evidence of actionable "discrimination". Thus, real, intentional "we don't accept people of your color" discrimination no longer needed to be proven at all. This saved the pro-quota crowd a lot of detective work (and legal expenses) and has resulted in the "discovery" of many orders of magnitude MORE discrimination than they otherwise could ever have proven.
But none of it works if they can't determine what color the population under scrutiny is! So I say lets all follow these kids' examples and refuse to disclose our "racial identity"!

Whadd'ya mean "conceptualize" a lottery?
Posted by JMG on January 6, 2006 at 3:39pm EST
Vince wrote:
=========
I once heard Lani Guinier conceptualize turning the college admissions process into a lottery. The names of all qualified applicants are gathered and the names are chosen at random. Of course, this would not be acceptable because it would remove race altogether and eliminate the possibility of getting into college because one is White, or an offspring of an alum, or relative of a large donor.
============
Misses the point. To an overwhelming degree, college admissions in America IS a lottery; it occurs whenever a white child is born to college educated parents -- all those children win the lottery on the date of birth and their admit date might just as well be stamped on their birth certificate.
A vanishingly small percentage of other people win the lottery later in life, but that doesn't change the essential structure of the system. Elite whites tend to favor affirmative action because it buys a degree of racial peace and keeps people from questioning the whole premise of a "merit" system that justifies putting inner city kids from crappy schools into competition with suburban kids for seats in college on the basis of merit as measured by standardized test scores that precisely map parental income.
The real deal is that minorities need overt affirmative action programs to snare a few of the crumbs that fall from the white middle and upper class tables, which are loaded with advantages. Alas, poor whites get nothing from either program -- but hey, someone's got to go fight for our oil cause God mistakenly put it under their soil.
[Now that black enlistments are falling off, you can expect more people to argue that college admission should, in essence, only be for veterans (as a Washington Monthly article did a while ago).]

PS
Posted by JMG on January 6, 2006 at 4:16pm EST
I should have mentioned also that it was Lani G. whom I first heard point out that most of the affirmative action spots in colleges filled by children of color were going to those who came to this country well after the end of slavery -- so in other words, poor descendants of slaves aren't much benefitting from AA either, but black children of privilege are.

I was a "decline to identify"
Posted by Ben Brumfield on January 7, 2006 at 2:40pm EST
In December of 1991, I went through the college application process. On any form that allowed me to avoid identifying my race without lying or fudging, I did so (so I checked "prefer not to answer" or left the question blank, but did not mark "other". My assumptions at the time were that 1) no possible benefit could come to me from identifying as a white male on an application, 2) "prefer not to answer" would probably be lumped in with "white" for AA purposes anyway, and that 3) in some tiny way, not answering acted as a protest against the whole system of racial classification.
What I find amazing me about this study is that my second assuption might have been incorrect.

Qualifications
Posted by Kevin , Undergraduate on January 8, 2006 at 3:35pm EST
I find it odd that standardized test scores and better education are somehow something to be scorned. It is "unfair" that some are qualified and others are not and that the ratios are different from good and bad schools. Then the difference is declared some sort of scandal. Why is it suprising that better schools turn out better students? (Better schools also are generally suburban rather than rural or urban.) Why should those who are, in fact, better educated be put at a disadvantage? Isn't better educated high school kids exactly what we are looking for in admissions?
The ACT and SAT are the most impartial evaluations of how competent a student someone is. We should utilize race and class blind admissions based heavily on these tests, then give student aid to admitted students where necessary.

The Importance of Collecting (Inaccurate) Data on Race
Posted by George Winkel at OneDropRule on January 9, 2006 at 6:48pm EST
I am sure the poster ML, Sociologist (at 2:09 pm EST on January 5), spoke for many emphasizing the importance of collecting data on "races" for use by educational institutions. But ML observed revealingly: "... [S]ome do it [withhold 'their race'] because they are multiracial -- and for them, allowing multiple checkboxes will result in a better picture of the racial compisition [sic] of your student body."
This notion obviously requires belief the "different races" indeed exist capable of "mixing" -- of hybridizing (also "half"-or-"cross-breeding," "mongrelizing," "abominable mixture and spurious issue," "crime against nature," etc.) -- each from originally "pure stock"! Clearly, all of this "races" identity-collecting needs belief in existence of the "differences" (biological? taxons?) which "the races" (pure stock?!) purport to classify. ML Sociologist acknowledged that individuals have legitimate reasons for not identifying "white," as there "... are authentic identities that can not be captured by the current system of racial checkboxes." But, ML Sociologist concluded (doubtless speaking for many educators), these "problem" individuals are "not significant enough to be worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater." These "bathwater" worthless, disposable include "... people ideologically committed to 'one human race' who will not identify in racial terms, etc."
ML Sociologist spoke the U.S. American official reasoning. It is the reasoning position of our educational, scientific & medical, also civil rights communities, and federal & state government institutions -- of not throwing "races-data 'baby'" out with the "disposable 'bathwater'" personified by multiracial or "other" non-classifiable individuals advocating one human race.
Believing we see "differences" classified in "races" is an hypnotic swamp of mass hysteria that our Western society, and especially Americans are mired in. Years of experience, since abolition of slavery and the growth of the Nazi eugenic visions evolving in our Jim Crow delusion, have shown that the education community is not capable of leading the way out of the "races"-seeing hypnotic swamp.

I can't blame Caucasians who don't identify
Posted by Say I'm Asian on January 13, 2006 at 2:54pm EST
As an Asian-American who went to a very big college-prep high school, I saw the entire panorama of controvery regarding race and college admissions laid out in crystalline clarity when letters of admissions were received. There was my friend, the Haitian-American who bombed the SAT because he made a series of clerical mistakes (1200's...BEFORE SAT scores were inflated in 1996). There were many friends of mine who had stellar academics and extracurriculars, but were clearly discriminated against (or perhaps "not affirmed") in the admissions process. But there were other types of discrimation as well: the sons and daughters of alumni, who were accepted to their parents' schools with obviously lower criteria (though not criminally lower). There were the captains of the sports teams and presidents of the debating and scientific clubs that got into the Ivies. In short, there are many areas of "discrimination," some seem "unfair" because they are more difficult to change (gender and race), while others seem more "fair" because they appear more meritocratic (awards and achievements). However, there is never a clear line between the "fair" and "unfair". So, fairness is college admissions is as slippery a topic as I can imagine. That is why I cannot fault those who refrain from declaring their race. It is their right to be unknown. Especially since it surely favors their chances to remain racially anonymous, who am I to demand that they give out information that may incriminate them. In fact, I sometimes wish I had not specified my race on all the documents and forms I have filled out all my life. Asians are perhaps even more victims of discrimination in college admissions than any other group. It's an irony that two other racial groups that resemble Asians, Native Americans and Alaskans are especially favored among admissions departments. If I were half Caucasian and half Alaskan, what would I specify in my college application? Alaskan, of course! If I didn't have to disclose information that could be used against me (disciplinary actions that were off-the-record, being a generally obnoxious and mean person, etc.), then why should I? I want to clarify that I'm not an embittered reject of the college admissions process who ended up going to her 9th choice school. I went to the college of my choice. But my race certainly didn't help me. So, if I have a choice, why should I specify my race? [Actually, this is an ironic question...because there is a very clear reason why everyone should identify their race: at most competitive colleges, you won't be able to hide your race! Only at places like public universities are the admissions done mechanically enough to hide one's race]. In conclusion, I reiterate that I can't blame anyone for not revealing their race...but it doesn't matter, because they find out anyway and may use it against you.

Not an "Advantage" you say?
Posted by ats , Faculty on February 28, 2006 at 3:50pm EST
Wow! I am not even surprised.
This just shows me once again that white privilege will always continue to prevail and dominate.
This has nothing to do with a white person "not having the advantage." It has everything to do with the fact that non-whites have NO advnatage. The fact that you feel that whites don't really have an advantage when it comes to admissions is sad.
Whites always have an advantage. It is called "Privilege."
If you do not understand this, then how will we move towards equality?

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