This was such a fun discussion. John, I support you killing bugs for your collection, or really for any reason. (I hate bugs.)
I agree with Harper that it's unhealthy to teach kids that the ticket to success is sharing your traumatic history of racial oppression. It's also unlikely to get them a class of people who have truly struggled, b…
This was such a fun discussion. John, I support you killing bugs for your collection, or really for any reason. (I hate bugs.)
I agree with Harper that it's unhealthy to teach kids that the ticket to success is sharing your traumatic history of racial oppression. It's also unlikely to get them a class of people who have truly struggled, because the students who are most savvy about admissions will be the economically privileged -- although that probably suits the universities fine because they don't want too many students who can't pay full tuition.
I also wonder if white and Asian students will start writing about "Black" interests to fool committees. I've got a half white, half Asian kid, and I admit I've wondered if we could pass him off as Latino. He's got a Spanish last name (due to Spain colonizing the Philippines). What if he wrote an essay about Latin American art or food or something... ?
I wouldn't really advise him to do this, because I don't want to teach him to be dishonest, but in dark moments it has crossed my mind. Especially because I hate the discrimination against Asian kids. I can understand helping underrepresented groups at the expense of rich white kids, but a lot of Asian applicants are from poor families. My son's Asian parent was certainly less privileged than me -- it's bonkers that he'd be better off identifying as white.
The whole race/ethnicity thing is just silly. We are going to see more melding of races and ethnicities as people from different groups intermarry and have kids. How do we define all these people?
This was such a fun discussion. John, I support you killing bugs for your collection, or really for any reason. (I hate bugs.)
I agree with Harper that it's unhealthy to teach kids that the ticket to success is sharing your traumatic history of racial oppression. It's also unlikely to get them a class of people who have truly struggled, because the students who are most savvy about admissions will be the economically privileged -- although that probably suits the universities fine because they don't want too many students who can't pay full tuition.
I also wonder if white and Asian students will start writing about "Black" interests to fool committees. I've got a half white, half Asian kid, and I admit I've wondered if we could pass him off as Latino. He's got a Spanish last name (due to Spain colonizing the Philippines). What if he wrote an essay about Latin American art or food or something... ?
I wouldn't really advise him to do this, because I don't want to teach him to be dishonest, but in dark moments it has crossed my mind. Especially because I hate the discrimination against Asian kids. I can understand helping underrepresented groups at the expense of rich white kids, but a lot of Asian applicants are from poor families. My son's Asian parent was certainly less privileged than me -- it's bonkers that he'd be better off identifying as white.
The whole race/ethnicity thing is just silly. We are going to see more melding of races and ethnicities as people from different groups intermarry and have kids. How do we define all these people?