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| (#191) Unfortunately, it is more likely 17 and 18 year old caucasians and Asians thinking they'll have a better shot at getting in if they don't self-identify. A purely selfish, rather than altruistic motive.
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If you look closesly at your assertion, you're saying that
"17 and 18 year old caucasians and Asians" (your characterization) are fearful of being discriminated against. If one accepts your argument, it's all the more reason to tear-down a system that engenders such fears.
As to selfish/altruistic motives, an applicant can have a selfish desire to be evaluated solely on merit and also be simultaneously conscious of the societal benefits of such a policy. So motives aren't necessarily dichotomous.
Additional
Food for thought :
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...Why are so many more students declining to check a box? Theories abound, but the ACE researchers said that they really didn’t know. However, the data do cast doubt on some of the theories.
For example, some admissions officers who have noticed this trend in recent years have blamed the debate over affirmative action. Some white students, they speculate, may think that they stand a better chance of admission by not checking white. Or minority students, fearful that stereotypes may hurt their chances of admission, want to be vague about their status.
But Eugene L. Anderson of ACE’s Center for Policy Analysis, a co-author of the report, said that a third of the “no race” students are at community colleges, where open admissions means that there is no edge to be gained by being a minority or white student. And well over 500,000 “no race” students are enrolled at colleges that admit at least 75 percent of applicants — so there isn’t much of an admissions gain to be had...
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And in some
students' own words:
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...Vivek A. Rudrapatna [Harvard] ’06 said that the belief that race is used as an admissions factor influenced his decision not to provide ethnic information on the medical school applications that he has been submitting this year.
“I’m of Indian ethnicity and we’re over-represented in the medical profession,” he said. “I wanted them to judge me on meritocratic grounds alone.”
On the other end of the scale, Charles J. Swanson [Harvard] ’08, who is “equal parts” white and African American, said he did not want to be the victim of positive discrimination.
“I didn’t want to get in just because I’m African American,” he said, “so I thought checking ‘other’ might be more appropriate in that respect as well.”...
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If you're a student self-indentifying as 'unknown', please share your motive(s) here.