Students at local high schools are now refusing to check an ethnic background box on school forms, which is giving govt wig/wogs the willies.
Will this destroy the govts efforts at discriminating positively or negatively to a specific ethnic group? Will that force the end to us looking at ourselves as specific ethnic groups? Will some govt employee who manages the database have his head explode over this?
in some cases there is no obvious box to check, for example student who is italian and nigerian. or student who is african american plus cherokee. another student looks ‘white’ but identifies with his 1/4 heritage of other origin.
They actually ask for ‘3rd party observers’ to check the students ethnic background for them at times. That seems particularly bizarre and creeps me out, having someone else decide my ethnic background by looking at my face for 30 seconds or looking at one of my last name which comes from only one parent:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/nation/story/82548.html
If you are not ‘white’ are you willing to give out your ethnic makeup? Should it really matter?
for that matter, if you ARE
‘white’, do you check the box for your 1/64th black or asian or american indian ancestor?
I don’t have a problem with proclaiming my (not large percent) american indian ancestry. ‘Scalp you all’ if you get me PO’d by questioning it.
I was called on it once as I applied to Stanford long ago and on reply form they asked for my Bureau of Indian Affairs office # 🙂
I think this scares the govt as if everyone did this they pretty much couldn’t do anything about it (except mandatory genetic testing?)