| Author |
Message |
    
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1228
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 - 09:44 pm: | 
|
From Inside Higher Ed. Full story and reader comments: http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/08/race.
More than 6.8 million people in the 2000 Census of the United States picked more than one racial or ethnic category in which to place themselves. And 40 percent of them were under the age of 18, suggesting that millions will be arriving on campuses where the standard “pick one box” approach to race and ethnicity may no longer work.
On Monday, the U.S. Education Department — following nearly nine years of study and planning — released draft guidance for colleges on how to change the way they collect and report information about students’ race and ethnicity. The system proposed by the department would for the first time allow students to pick multiple boxes, with colleges reporting all of those who checked multiple boxes in a new “two or more races” category. In addition, the new system changes the way data will be gathered about Latino students and divides the “Asian and Pacific Islander” category into two distinct groups.
...
The proposed change that has been most sought in the new guidance concerns those who identify themselves as being from more than one racial or ethnic group. Previously, colleges had to report single identities. Some colleges have changed their admissions and other forms to allow people to check multiple boxes for some college purposes, but such institutions still had to use a traditional system for reporting data to the government. As a result, many colleges have held off on making a general change until the Education Department released its guidance. The department’s policies are based on directives from the White House Office of Management and Budget in 1997, so the long waiting period has been frustrating to many college officials and advocates for students of multiple races.
“We’ve been waiting for this to happen. No student should be forced to pick a single identity,” said Amanda Erekson of the Mavin Foundation, which pushes for the rights of multi-ethnic people. (The name comes from a Yiddish word for one who is an expert on something, and was selected by Matt Kelley, who founded the group in 1998 as a freshman at Wesleyan University.)
Erekson said that people like herself — she has Japanese-American and white ancestors — must navigate issues that don’t fit neatly into racial politics. When she was a student at Colgate University a few years ago, she was involved with minority groups, but startled some because she looks white.
Only 27 percent of colleges have policies that allow students like Erekson to avoid picking a single box, according to a report, “One Box Isn’t Enough,” released last year by the foundation. Erekson said that many college officials said that they would change once the Education Department announced its plans for adopting the 1997 OMB approach.
Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said it was “high time” for the Education Department to offer guidance, and predicted that most colleges would end up changing their systems to make them consistent.
...
Eugene Anderson, associate director of national initiatives at the American Council on Education, where he formerly was the lead researcher for reports on student demographics, predicted that several minority groups would see apparent slides in enrollment that might not reflect a real shift. While many students have complained about being forced to pick a single race, he said that many have done so anyway.
“The challenge is how this relates to historical data,” Anderson said. “The majority of people who are multiracial have connected to a primary ethnicity and in the past they were counted in that one ethnicity and now they would not.”
He predicted that there would be apparent drops in black, American Indian, and Asian enrollment, the latter drop accentuated by a splitting off of Pacific Islander from the Asian category. So a student with a Japanese-American father and a Pacific Islander mother would have shown up previously as Asian, but would now appear just in the “two or more” category. That category will not have breakouts so nationally, there will not be data indicating how many students there come from which combination of groups.
The data are important, Anderson said, because colleges examine such figures to look for gaps in their recruiting strategies or the success of their retention programs. Some government and foundation programs also are restricted to colleges with certain demographics.
Experts on Latino enrollment patterns predicted that changes proposed by the department would increase the participation of Latino students in surveys on race and ethnicity. The department has suggested that colleges use an approach similar to that used by the Census Bureau, but that differs from the past practice of many colleges, which have just included Latino or Hispanic as a racial category, or which have asked about Latino status after a racial category listing that did not include Latinos.
The system proposed by the department would have colleges ask students first if they are Latino or Hispanic, with just a yes/no answer. Then the second question would provide a choice of races: American Indian, Asian, African American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or white. Because Latino students identify with multiple racial groups (or none), their total numbers would be clear by the first question, but they would not be restricted in how they want to identify themselves.
Deborah A. Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, a group that focuses on Hispanic higher education issues, said that many Latino students have been discouraged by past configurations of these questions and so have not answered at all. By asking about Latino or Hispanic identity first, colleges should get more participation “and more clarity,” she said.
“By asking up front, and using the two-question approach, you are going to get the numbers,” she added....
— Scott Jaschik
|
Kola_boof
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 2789
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 - 10:14 pm: |
|
These boxes will continue to expand, and it will become more IN VOGUE for "blacks" to breed new MODELS to fill those expansions.
There's roughly 300 million Americans and 200 million of them are WHITE.
The White Man continues to be the most brilliant strategist in human history.
|
Renata
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1129
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 - 10:36 pm: |
|
"He predicted that there would be apparent drops in black, American Indian, and Asian enrollment..."
And perhaps a drop in minority scholarships as well, considering there won't be enough "black" people to warrant a need for such scholarships. |
Nels
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 490
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 - 03:41 am: |
|
"And perhaps a drop in minority scholarships as well, considering there won't be enough "black" people to warrant a need for such scholarships."
Considering that some factions of "Black America" had been desperately trying to hang on to the last vestiges of an illogical (American Made) racial classification system, should anyone be surprised at this stage in the game? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5783
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 - 04:54 am: |
|
Kola.
Yep. This can be summed up in a single phrase: "Divide & Conquer".
Created by the British. PERFECT by America. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5784
Registered: 04-2004
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 - 05:11 am: |
|
Kola,
Foks here complain about your frequent commentary about the existence and effects of colorism. They declare your views do more to tear Black foks apart than bring them together.
MEANWHILE there are GROWING numbers of people who have African ancestry who do NOT want to be considered Black.
Have you ever read the Greek legend of the prophetess Cassandra? It and 'she' reminds me of you. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1234
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 - 10:51 am: |
|
And perhaps a drop in minority scholarships as well, considering there won't be enough "black" people to warrant a need for such scholarships.
I agree. However, the chipping and hammering away at minority scholarships began way before these efforts. In my more pessimistic moments I really feel as if this country's "committment" (such that it ever was) to educational access is long over: The affirmative action train has definitely left the station. Few colleges and universities demonstrate the will or have the resources to fight anti-affirmative action efforts. (U of MI being one wonderful exception.) Republicans, of course, are against it. Few Democrats want to tackle it. Many (WHite) feminists have benefited from it and have moved on to abortion access and family balance issues in the workplace. Many Blacks won't support it, for all sorts of reasons... On and on.
Yet none of these groups has put forward a viable alternative to replace it. The word of the day is "diversity"--actually, maybe that was the word of yesterday. Maybe the word of the day is "globlization." At any rate, the word does not appear to come with increased resources to accomodate all these new goals and groups that are included.
Like I said, though: That's my view in my pessimistic moments. Most of the time I am wildly--perhaps foolishly--optimistic!
That's my sermon for the week! |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5802
Registered: 04-2004
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 - 11:05 am: |
|
Yvettep,
Black foks have their OWNselves to Black with thise current "diversity" mumbo jumbo.
We bought into it early WITHOUT thinking that it would morph into something that has virtually NOTHING to do with the result of slavery, racism, separate-but-equal, Jim Crow, etc.
And NOW the "diversity" training is steamrolling along with everyone BUT our Black a$$e$. |
|
Email This Page