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There’s nothing wrong with that. If something on your application can work for you, why wouldn’t you use it?</p>
<p>My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that the gripe is this:</p>
<p>Some basically white kid is say 1/32nd or 1/64th some URM race or another and wants to to claim it for college admissions purposes. But when he posts it on CC people say “give me a break, you can’t be considered a minority with such a slim slice of minority ancestry.” And the response is “Yeah, I may be only 1/64th Black, but back in Jim Crow days that was plenty to have me branded with the N-word and oppressed because of it. Now that it is to my advantage to have this heritage you want to deny it to me.” I think the OP is tired of hearing this line of reasoning.</p>
<p>But how would…</p>
<p>“Yeah, I may be only 1/64th Black, but back in Jim Crow days that was plenty to have me branded with the N-word and oppressed because of it. Now that it is to my advantage to have this heritage you want to deny it to me.”</p>
<p>sound like</p>
<p>“ha, ha, ha, you’re black too, you can’t get away from me/us/it no matter how much you wish you could. You have to suffer being black with the rest of us.”</p>
<p>I could see a black person saying…</p>
<p>“give me a break, you can’t be considered a minority with such a slim slice of minority ancestry.”</p>
<p>but why would said person say…</p>
<p>“you know what they say, just one drop makes you black.”</p>
<p>“Someone on another thread said it again: “Where does the “one-drop” rule fit in?” They said it in the context of a discussion about who is black and who isn’t. ]”</p>
<p>You do understand the rule that a person with any black ancestry, even just a smidge, was considered black was made by whites, not blacks. Now lots of people with black ancestry who look like white and gladly would have passed for white during the days of legal discrimination now are looking for any straw in which to qualify for affirmative action.</p>
<p>Anyone who wants to complain about this, however, should start blaming whites since it was their fear of miscegenation that caused the one drop rule to exist.</p>
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<p>And anyone who points that out, is told to just “get over it.”</p>
<p>Oh poor enslaved Sally Hemmings is spinning in her grave. Why? Because even as Thomas Jefferson’s friends and neighbors remarked, “she was damn near white!” LOL.</p>
<p>I do wonder how African Americans feel about students who can trace back to one drop checking the AA box on a college application. As a school college counselor I was taken aback by how many students tried this. Students who had never spent a moment of their lives living any culture other than white and priveleged.</p>
<p>I would get calls from colleges asking why the high scoring student was not an Achievement Scholar. The only real answer was they hadn’t discovered their blackness until they took a hard look at what it took to get into a top college.</p>
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<p>Would you be willing to expound upon that statement? I would be interested in hearing of your personal experiences and observations that led you to say that.</p>
<p>^^ for starters look at the voting patterns in the Democratic primaries and look at how blacks voted between Obama/Clinton/Edwards etc and compare that with white and other voters.</p>
<p>"“black people keep holding up a so-called “rule” as if it were gospel truth… even sound proud of the “rule,” they embrace it, they LIKE it. It is almost as if t… You have to suffer being black with the rest of us.” "</p>
<p>I’d like to hear more about this perception about black people holding up this rule in the way the OP described.</p>
<p>While I know black people who look white (including one with blond hair, blue eyes, pink skin who headed Detroit’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists), the people like this whom I know have always considered themselves to be black, and were raised in families who looked like white yet had always proudly considered themselves to be black (and were classified that way by society decades ago).</p>
<p>I don’t personally know – and have never met – black people who discovered their blackness when it was time to apply for college.</p>
<p>I do know lots of black people who may look white or some kind of nonblack race to many people, but who have black ancestry and have always identified as being African American. Their race identification is due to how race traditionally was designated in this country – by white people including slave owners who had no problems selling their white-appearing children whose mothers were black slaves.</p>
<p>Would you be willing to expound upon that statement? I would be interested in hearing of your personal experiences and observations that led you to say that.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say * more* racist, but in my city, it is much more accepted to assume that whites are automatically racist, just by virtue of being white, and that by definition whites are the only group that can even be * considered* racist, our school district even put that in writing.</p>
<p>It isn’t uncommon to hear African- Americans expound on recent immigrants from Africa taking away " their economic & educational opportunities" and how that needs to be stopped, or to hear both whites and blacks lump all white individuals into the same category when they would never in public do the same thing with an African American.</p>
<p>It gets kinda old.</p>
<p>NSM, I agree with you. I too know AfAm whom many would consider Caucasian-looking, but consider themselves Black. Most bi-racial people I know have always considered themselves Black. Not because they are denying their White parentage, its just because they look Black. We come in all shades a non bi-racial Black person can easily be more Caucasian looking than a bi-racial person, so I fail to see the OPs rage.
LOL, I agree .but I do know several White kids whose parents have found their Hispanic roots when it came time for college admissions.</p>
<p>IIRC, you CAN be white and hispanic, though. I definitely remember that from filling out the census.</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3, how would that make blacks more racist than whites?</p>
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<p>It might be something that you have to get if you read a bunch of CC threads or something. Personally, I try to stay out of affirmative action and race threads, because they’re all pretty silly and reductive, so I don’t get it myself either.</p>
<p>“I do wonder how African Americans feel about students who can trace back to one drop checking the AA box on a college application.”</p>
<p>I would bet good money that most ( I’m talking 99+ percent) African Americans have at least thirty things to have feelings about before they start having feelings about “unfair” advantages in college admission.</p>
<p>Also, I would agree blacks and maybe ANY minority group, is going to be quite “race aware”, but I don’t believe “racist”. At least not by THIS definition.</p>
<p>“1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”</p>
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<p>That’s generally how it works. The minority group (either in numbers and political status) generally has to be the one who bands together based on racial/ethnic ties in order to effect political change on their behalf. The majority group already has the support of a government and media that is comprised of themselves and is sympathetic to their interests so they see racial ties as less important.</p>
<p>This isn’t just something that happens to blacks in America. If you look at places like Zimbabwe, where white citizens face intense discrimination (tacitly and sometimes overtly sponsored by President Mugabe’s government, and even by the white British authorities before that who saw them as being “inferior” to other white Africans) and endemic poverty so they have to form their equivalents of our NAACP to lobby to protect their interests. They have to be more sensitive to racial issues because if they’re not, they’re the ones who are most at risk to having their civil liberties encroached upon and their interests disregarded in times of political tension. That doesn’t make these white Zimbabweans “racist”; it just means that they know that the people in charge aren’t like them and can’t see things as easily from their point of view.</p>
<p>It’s the same thing in any state that has more than one ethnic or religious group.</p>
<p>All that is true, but also, I notice each and every black person on a campus when there are less than maybe 7 percent. I also notice people who look hispanic, people who look Vietnamese, Filipino, anything that seems “different.” Always feels like a good thing, that there are other “different” people wound.</p>
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<p>Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson,… had positions which were not dramatically different. Whites scattered their votes amongst these candidates far less monolithically than blacks. </p>
<p>The case of Alvin Greene in the current SC primaries also points to support because of race to an extent far more than is seen when whites voters have a choice been black and white candidates with similar (or unknown) positions.</p>
<p>If you define racism purely in terms of people preferring, or making judgments based on a person’s race, based on my experience on the way people behaved in places that I have lived in across the world, racism is the norm, and in most societies it is not just tolerated, but is a source of pride. In the West, there is a huge movement to become race blind, which has resulted in many becoming so, some acting as such, and some feeling they are even if they are not.</p>
<p>How is that racism? You must know every black person in America then.</p>