Sorry - this is long:
My son is starting to fill out college applications, and he is stumped when he reaches the part where they ask about race / ethnicity because he doesn’t know what he ‘should’ put. He is an American citizen from birth through me. I am Caucasian (Northern European). His father is an African Muslim - a Kenyan national to be exact, BUT his father is a member of a class or ethnic group - if you will - of mixed race people that was formed when Asian men (from the Indian subcontinent) were brought by the British to build the railroad from Mombasa to Lake Victoria more than a century ago. Those first men, who arrived without their wives, married or cohabited with African women and had children. Once Asian women also came to the colonies, the mixing between Asians and Africans died down, and the the mixed-race people from earlier unions tended to mostly marry other people from the mixed community, or occasionally people from other ethnicities entirely like Arabs and Europeans, and sometimes so-called “pure” Asians and Africans. So my husband, a product of several generations of marriage in this mixed community is of Ugandan (unknown tribe) and Kenyan (Wakamba tribe) as well as Northern Indian/ Pakistani (Punjabi) and Afghani ancestry. His family’s culture has many decidedly Asian elements to it and some African ones as well. His father identified more with Africans but spoke Urdu and several other Indian languages in addition to English, Swahili and some tribal tongues. His mother tried to associate more with the Asian community, but was most comfortable and seemed to be most fluent speaking in Swahili. Neither of his parents could read and write any of the Asian tongues they spoke. By nationality they are solely African, and their community is a unique product of Imperial British Colonialism in East Africa. Based on appearances alone, most of members of his family would - in the United States - be assumed to be ‘black’/ African American or possibly Caribbean.
If that alone isn’t confusing enough for my son. He was born in Kenya, and lived in Zanzibar as a small child, but has lived almost exclusively in the Middle East since then - except for two years spent with my very caucasian American family. He hasn’t seen his father in 11 years, but has had contact with some members of his father’s family until a few years ago. Some of these family members were mixed like his dad and some were Asian.
My son doesn’t look Caucasian or Asian or African, and most forms don’t allow him to just select mixed race. He certainly doesn’t feel white, or identify as white, but he is half white. The forms usually ask ‘what do you identify as’ and then instruct to tick all that apply. He doesn’t want to be dishonest, by leaving off white or Asian, but he doesn’t think one can identify as white and black/African and Asian at the same time, since those are all (in his mind) whole unique identities. He feels like all of those things are a part of him, and as a result, he is something different from all of them.
Additionally, where we live he is told he is Muslim, and is placed in Islamic studies class in school, even though he is agnostic and I am Christian, simply because his father is Muslim and they consider him to be whatever his father is religiously as well as ethnically. A lot of people here assume he is Middle Eastern of some sort and try to speak to him in Arabic (which he doesn’t speak).
Should he just put “African or African American” on the forms? He has also been advised by some well meaning individuals that this would make his application more interesting or appealing, especially to the Ivy League schools and pretty much all of the ones that offer good aid packages - which we need since I am a single mother without a low enough income to get any real Federal Financial Aid, but without a high enough one to be able to pay for any decent school. He has decent grades, though he isn’t the class valedictorian and his SAT scores are good too (his English score is very good), but could be better. Would his ethnic background - all of it or part of it - help him stand out and be considered by these schools?
Any opinions from anyone in a similarly mixed and confusing situation - or even from those not in this situation but who have some thoughts about it? Also, if mentioning his African heritage would allegedly ‘help’ him as some seem to think it will, would also mentioning white or Asian heritage undo that - or ‘hurt’ him?
