Race, race, race. Will there ever come a time when we won’t talk about it anymore? Or not as often? Call me jaded, but it’s not likely. We cover race on this blog, because we’re opposed to preferential treatment based on race. It can’t be avoided in this context, so off we go!
Ideally, applications and other government forms would not include racial/ethnic self-identification boxes. They exist more or less for bean counting purposes. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a study presented recently at the annual American Educational Research Association conference about racial categories. After analyzing the self-identifying racial categorization of over 22,000 undergrad students at 49 colleges, the researchers found that the three approaches in which they (researchers) classified the students produced different results and skewed the findings. The approaches are:
- Classifying subjects of two or more racial groups as biracial or multiracial;
- Classifying subjects belonging to the least prevalent group as members of that group (black-white biracial students classified as black, for instance);
- Classifying subjects according to race and background, such as “white-black” or “white-hispanic.”
The researchers found each approach produced different results. For instance, when they classified students who identified as white and American Indian as American Indian, they “drastically overestimated the percentage” of American Indians receiving merit-based financial aid. From the Chronicle:
How researchers classify a biracial population, says the paper summarizing the authors’ findings, “can have profound implications” for both the descriptions of students that arise from those researchers’ work and the conclusions that result from their analyses. “Unfortunately,” it says, “there is no single solution to this empirical dilemma. Indeed, each approach has its strengths and its limitations.”
So, what’s the rationale for classifying students racially at all? It’s necessary for racial preference purposes, for one thing. The article concludes:
“Unfortunately,” it says, “there is no single solution to this empirical dilemma. Indeed, each approach has its strengths and its limitations.”
By, for example, classifying all students who identify with two or more groups as being simply “biracial” or “multiracial,” researchers avoid erroneously lumping student together with single-race peers but run the risk of glossing over significant differences between biracial populations.
Although they do not recommend a way around the problem, the authors suggest that it may be worthwhile to conduct studies determining how biracial or multiracial students would themselves prefer to be classified. “After all,” they say, “the constituency affected most significantly by the various classification schemes, one could argue, should have a stake in how they are ultimately treated.”
How many racial category choices are there now? With increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States, there’s no end to such categories. And given that racial categorization was once used to oppress and even to kill, I believe the government should not be involved in collecting such information anyway. Except to pat itself on the back for having a “critical mass” of brown faces on campus and employed in government agencies, what’s the point?
No, we can’t get away from race. We may criticize ghosts of the past for using it to divide us, but what the government is doing today is hardly different.
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