"he proceeded to tell me about a “plan” he had come up with to ensure he would be accepted by a good graduate school. He told me that two of his four grandparents were descended from Sephardic Jews who’d fled Spain in the 1500s. This, he said, made him “technically, part Hispanic”—and thus eligible for preferential admission to graduate-school programs.
I tried to discourage Daniel from putting this plan into action. I told him I thought it was deceptive and dishonest."
But how do they determine ethnicity when it comes to affirmative action?
Just subjective self-identity?
Visually? I.e "measuring skulls and skin colors"?
Ask your peers what they think you are and base it on that?
Need at least N generations of ancestry to some specific place?
N % DNA match common to some specific group of genes?
Setting value judgments about this stuff aside, I'm laughing just thinking about the logistical & administrative nightmare that would result from an admissions department actually trying to verify student-provided race & ethnicity with any degree of rigor. Hiring genealogists to investigate and verify family ancestors. Upgrading department policies, procedures, and facilities to process DNA samples. Providing an appeals process for and handling student protests of the committee's assessment of their race. Schools are already so bad at IT, admin, etc, can you even imagine how much effort they would have to put in to make something like this work.
Well this is a story as old as racism itself. There's never been a clear-cut way to unambiguously decide which "race" everybody is, and segregationist regimes have always struggled with edge cases. E.g. back in the days of Jim Crow it was sometimes possible for a particular "black" person to become legally "white" just by crossing state lines.
Old and never solved. I guess anyone, if they squint enough, is able to find (or plausibly invent) a sixteenth of minority blood in their veins, if it becomes advantageous to do so. Who's going to dna-test employees? The moment affirmative action starts really moving the needle is the instant everyone magically discovers a multiracial heritage in their family. Percentages of diversity go up, everyone is happy and the problem is worse than before.
The one-drop rule wasn't universal; some states had a less stringent definition of who counted as black.
E.g. according to Wikipedia, Florida passed a law in 1865 stipulating that you were black if you had at least one black great-grandparent. So if you were only one-sixteenth black, you'd have been considered black under the one-drop rule, but you weren't black in Florida.
> But how do they determine ethnicity when it comes to affirmative action?
Another question: how do they determine if a candidate is a trans person? Given that only self-identification counts, and it's "wrong" to only suggest that a trans person should be identified by looks, registered gender, sexual preferences or even self-chosen pronouns, anybody could declare themselves a trans person without changing how they live their life in any way, save checking the "trans" checkbox on their forms. When it comes to positive discrimination or affirmative action in favour of trans people (or probably any LGBT+ person), it's not only impossible, but potentially a PR nightmare, to check who is "eligible", so to speak, and who is not.
I guess many people will do it in the future. Unfortunately, because "minority" will morph into an abstract concept. But introducing further disparities to fight disparity was never going to work anyway, imho.
Tons of professionals ride that train to embarrassing prizes for best Hispanic Lawyer in state X or what have you with no shame whatsoever, down to providing a ridiculous backstory despite having never lived in the region and not speaking Portuguese or Spanish. There are no tests besides the chutzpah of the applicant.
I am wondering about that as well since forever, being French.
We do not have such measures and I was wondering what would happen if I, a white man, "self-idetified" myself as black for the sake of receiving formal positive discrimination, grants, etc.
But how do they determine ethnicity when it comes to affirmative action?
Just subjective self-identity?
Visually? I.e "measuring skulls and skin colors"?
Ask your peers what they think you are and base it on that?
Need at least N generations of ancestry to some specific place?
N % DNA match common to some specific group of genes?