Monday, November 15, 2004
LOL Ward Connerly and Race
Ward wants a MultiRacial category on college applications. The usual people are protesting. I don't quite get why, though.
“Multiracial people are very diverse and lumping us in a box would really cut down on the accuracy of the data,” said Ai-Ling Malone, president of the [Multi-Cultural Student Union].
I assume that's the argument. But I don't quite get it, because even if they do mark all the boxes they like, Cal only reports one to the feds.
“(The proposal) denies students and the population at large the right to hold UC accountable to ensuring that we have an actual representative student body that reflects our state’s population,” said BAMN member and ASUC Senator Yvette Felarca. “To me it’s sort of like a softer version of Prop. 54 because it’s hiding information—it doesn’t clarify anything.”
Well, I suppose, but then, picking just one race when you're multiracial also hides things.
In a break from tradition, I'm going to offer solutions:
a) Let people mark all the boxes they want AND mark multiracial. Cal gets data about all the nationalities the applicant claims, and the feds can get a more accurate, if imprecise, measure. (but then, most racial categories are horrendously imprecise, anyway)
b) Let the application ask the question of race seperately from the question of "race for federal reporting purposes."
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