Race/Ethnicity!!! Can someone explain, PLEASE

entomom
Sat, 30 Oct 2010 23:26:50 +0000

First, don’t feel dumb, it’s a pretty complex question. Mexico and other countries that have a large proportion of the population of mixed Original Peoples and other races pose a problem for the race question in college admissions. Because in these countries tribal registration like in the US and Canada doesn’t exist. See the stats on the racial mix in Mexico (don’t be confused by the fact that the title says ‘ethnicity’, what they are describing is race):

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2075.html

This question has been asked before in different variations, please do a Search on this forum for ‘mestizo’ and you will find a few threads that describe how the CA defines racial groups and discussions about how to describe people of likely mixed but undocumented race.

My advice is that with your best knowledge of your family background, mark whichever race(s) that you believe you belong to. I don’t think there’s any need to leave the race question blank.