<p>Plainsman, you say you were “disappointed but not shocked to discover more than half are really not African Americans but blacks from elsewhere.” That is quite different from “Colleges are playing fast and loose” with their reported statistics which you claim or imply are falsified. Those of us active in LAC minority recruitment sympathize with your disappointment, but when you accuse the LACs of falsifying their reported numbers (without backing the accusation with a reference) you may lose us, FWIW.</p>
<p>Again, the Common Data Set instruction for section B2 says Include international students only in the category “Nonresident aliens.” Violating this rule seems to be the premise of your claim. This is quite different from a campus survey asking students to identify their race, and then presenting the results as contradicting reported admittance statistics.</p>
<p>I have no reason to doubt the common data set info, but most applicants have never heard of CDS. </p>
<p>The problem of which Plainsman complains arises when an applicant poses a question regarding black enrollment and the adcom quotes the total “minority” enrollment. Or when pressed, the adcom offers a number that includes int’l students - - even though the adcom knows or suspects that the applicant is asking about African-American (which certainly includes offspring of immigrants) enrollment. The same is true in reporting such info in viewbooks - - and I agree w/ Plainsman, it playing fast and loose with the facts.</p>
<p>cbreeze: She’s African American because I am and because she was born and raised here. She’s not the D of Nigerian/West Indian doctors who don’t even live in the U.S. but sent their kid to British boarding schools or elite American academies. What is their connection to the historically excluded community of African Americans in this country? None. They just happen to have a similar skin color. </p>
<p>Again, I’m not saying don’t admit those kids. That would be ridiculous. I’m saying be honest and stop counting them as “Black/African American” when they really aren’t. Do they count Danish students who come here as Freshmen “white” or “internationals?” I’m sure they count them as “internationals.” Do the same with foreign blacks, that’s all, but they don’t.</p>
<p>The same is true in reporting such info in viewbooks - - and I agree w/ Plainsman, it playing fast and loose with the facts.</p>
<p>I agree, if it’s true, but we still don’t have any references. Is it not/would it not be a problem that a school’s viewbook is at odds with the USNWR stats in this regard? Do schools get away with this deception? References? If you point out such a case, I’ll lodge a protest with the offender.</p>
<p>You keep lobbing this charge without offering one single example. Again, a student who is not a US citizen or green card holder is an “international” student whether he is red, green, blue, purple, black, or chartreuse.</p>
<p>On this distiction between “blacks” and “BLACKS”, I’m not in the best position to really judge, but this seems to be slicing the whole politics of victimhood thing with a pretty fine knife. These blacks are victims; those aren’t. How is a college supposed to parse all that? Are you arguing against affirmative action for “non-victim” blacks? Just sort it all out for us because it’s awfully hard to keep up with it all. Seems like the more the colleges try, the more the target is moved.</p>
<p>My guess is that the colleges are just trying to be pragmatic and recruit from the 42% of “black” and “BLACK” males who graduate from high school. If they get some students from the non-victimhood cohort, so be it.</p>
<p>“Is it not/would it not be a problem that a school’s viewbook is at odds with the USNWR stats in this regard? Do schools get away with this deception? References? If you point out such a case, I’ll lodge a protest with the offender.”</p>
<p>Vossron, what you describe would be an out-and-out lie, as opposed to playing fast/loose w/ the facts. As I said, often when prospects ask about black enrollment, the adcoms respond stating, “minority enrollment is x%.” They have qualified by using the term “minority,” so the response is truthful/accurate, but b/c the question asked about black enrollment, the answer is also non-responsive and misleading.</p>
<p>I know that this may be provocative, but many of us are interested in diversity and increasing the enrollment of all ethnicities at elite colleges – Asian American, Latino/a, and African American (both victims and recent immigrant non-victims). IMO, the best thing that ever happened to diversity outreach at elite colleges was broadening the horizons to include Latino/a and Asian American students, seemingly at some point in the 1980s.</p>
<p>It is very confusing, though. First generation Asian American and Latino/a immigrants are given extra preference in admissions. Apparently recent black immigrants should be specifically excluded from preference in favor of immigrants from many generations back.</p>
<p>No wonder the big endowment schools lead in diversity. It must take a huge staff just to sort through all the “rules”.</p>
<p>Plainsman: If the Nigerian doctor is married to an American woman, then his children are American citizens. Just because they were educated abroad in a privileged environment, does not make them less African or less American. By definition, they are African-American–you know, someone of African descent and American nationality.</p>
<p>If this same foreign student with American citizenship were white, he or she would be classified as a “white/Caucasian” student rather than an international.</p>
<p>Definitions of all the federal ethic reporting categories appear on official United States government webpages linked to from [post</a> #2](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012008-post2.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012008-post2.html) of this FAQ & Discussion thread. It’s always a good idea to check the definitions of the terms and the regulations that mandate how colleges are to report on applicants and admittees and enrolled students.</p>
<p>“If the Nigerian doctor is married to an American woman, then his children are American citizens. Just because they were educated abroad in a privileged environment, does not make them less African or less American. By definition, they are African-American–you know, someone of African descent and American nationality.” -keilexandra</p>
<p>I never said anything about foreign blacks who are married to Americans. I’m talking about foreign blacks married to foreign blacks and sending their boarding school baby through affirmative action channels here in the U.S. when it wasn’t meant for them.</p>
<p>Interesteddad: The examples you give of first gen Asians and Latinos is exactly why I hope President Obama pushes to change affirmative action to be based on family income rather than race/ethnicity. This rich blacks from outside the U.S. have no business benefitting from affirmative action, but they do. Again, it defeats the spirit if not the boilerplate of what affirmative action in school admissions was intended to accomplish. Done the right way my own kids would be disqualified, but I’m willing to accept that. Poor white kids are more deserving of affirmative action than rich blacks from outside. Or rich Asians, regardless of generation, or wealthy Latinos or wealthy whites. Period.</p>
<p>Hi, Plainsman, thanks for your comments. I have an informational question: what is your source for the idea that affirmative action channels in the United States are not meant for college applicants who didn’t grow up entirely in the United States?</p>
<p>Plainsman, did we establish that you’d prefer half the number of blacks at these schools, since there aren’t enough domestic black applicants to fill the demand?</p>
<p>As much as I disagree with Plainsman’s rhetoric, I am wholeheartedly in support of socioeconomic affirmative action. If URMs are underrepresented due to economic disadvantage, as is often argued, then socioeconomic AA will still help them–without benefiting others unfairly. A rich African-American, regardless of foreign or domestic origin, is not particularly more oppressed than any other minority group (caveat because any minority experiences a degree of oppression just from existing as a minority).</p>
<p>^^^u’re wrong…discrimination is an underlying aspect of society and even though it may not be as obvious and overt, there’s still oppression…and this is coming from an actual URM…sounds like u’re not…</p>
<p>I will assume that BigWeight is addressing my post, although in standard abbreviation his “^^^” would reference post #348.</p>
<p>I am Asian, which is either an ORM or a URM depending on the geographic region of the country. Instances of racism abound. The Chinese Exclusion Act during the industrial era, the Japanese internment camps during WWII. A minority group is oppressed simply by virtue of being a minority, not a majority; however, that’s life. It’s not something that makes you–or me–a more deserving college applicant. You haven’t overcome poverty for academic achievements; you were simply born into a certain race or culture, often into an equal level of privilege. (If you are an economically disadvantaged URM, then socioeconomic AA will do exactly the same thing that racial AA currently does while directing “catch-up” only toward those who truly need it.)</p>
<p>completely agree…but the fact u don’t understand is that in order to become “privileged” the URM’s had to overcome more than the ORM or just majority…</p>
<p>Earlier in this thread it was cited that the wealthiest urms score lower than the poorest white an asian students. The gap is even more pronounced among the lower class. </p>
<p>So how, then, would initiating economic-only affirmative action help urms at all, when the groups with highest test scores in that income bracket, by a huge margin, are whites and asians? </p>
<p>The fact that the SAT score disparities transcend economic lines demonstrates that you need to address more than economics in the solution. I’m interested to hear how colleges should deal with this without affirmative action. To me it sounds like the best solution we have.</p>
<p>URM and ORM are terms made up by the admissions industry. Please do not insult my heritage and my parents’ heritage–my father grew up in a rural village with no indoor plumbing and little electricity, and studied his way into the middle class–by claiming that ANY URM had to overcome more than ANY ORM or ANY majority (white).</p>