Grandfather is from Chile, (Hispanic) : my DC 25% Hispanic?

[Anonymous]

As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

+1. I can't believe you are considering checking "Hispanic." DW's parents are from South America and they speak Spanish fluently but they're European one generation before that and are all educated professionals with a long family history of such. She would never check Hispanic because it's not what the box is there for. I work in academia and also agree that an application with a German last name checking Hispanic is likely to seriously get my derision, legal or not. And even if your last name is "Garcia" and you show up looking Giselle Bunschen or Albert Einstein (many physicists or their parents were refugees to South America who, like Einstein, fled the Nazis in Europe), I will not be impressed either.
Don't make yourself or your children into an Elizabeth Warren style joke. There are real students who are the first in their family to go to college or that suffered as a result of the political upheavals in Latin America. Admissions are looking for them to create diversity. Are they looking for you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No joke.... my DH's friend's DD is going to Duke (in a medical graduate program) on a full scholarship b/c her grandmother is from Paraguay. She (student) has a German last name and has lived in the US or Canada her whole life. The only reason she got the scholarship is b/c she claimed "hispanic."

DH's nephews both attended a large, well-known state university for FREE b/c their father is of mexican heritage (although he lived in the US his whole life). Their mother (my SIL) is blonde and blue eyed northern european/midwestern decent. The only reason they "speak Spanish" is b/c they took Spanish in college and did the semester in Spain. F-R-E-E four years tuition. Their father (the one of mexican descent) has a PhD in physical therapy and drives a Lexus. They have never wanted for anything.

So, I guess you can claim it. If the universities are too stupid to check it out or define it better, then you might as well take it.

I've seen scholarships that take into account the highest education level of parents and family income if they are trying to target the money towards minority and first generation to go to college.

I'm not clear why you think DH's nephews are gaming the system unless by mexican heritage you mean 2-3 generations ago someone was from Mexico AND every generation married someone white. Having a PhD or money doesn't make anyone less black or Hispanic. Having a spouse of a different ethnicity also doesn't make you not black or not hispanic when you are black or hispanic. The kids not speaking Spanish could be due to many things. Especially if only one parent speaks the language it is hard to raise a bi-lingual child unless you are sending him/her to language school every weekend. Also sometimes people are focused on their kids learning English/fitting in rather than keeping the other languages going and there could be a back story as to why the parents feel that way.

My children are bi-racial and we live in an affluent area. I do worry that it will be like that article from a pp, "We aren't friends, we just grew up together". As you watch everything unfolding with the BLM movement, my children are impacted. You look at the craziness in 2016 from the Old Navy ad featuring a family that frankly looks like ours and I worry about my kids being on social media where outsiders can post. When we look at schools, yes we take diversity into account. I would not want my children to apply for a scholarship intended to help an economically disadvantaged family ....similar to the types of scholarships that allowed me to attend private school and later attend a top college. But, my children aren't white and will have to deal with issues that white children may not have to deal with ...why would I say they are white on a college application? People that have money to pay full cost aren't turning down full-tuition scholarships for their kids no matter what race and they aren't lamenting about all the advantages their kid may have gotten over the child in a terrible school system so why would you hold your BIL to a different standard?

[Anonymous]

I am half-white, half-Latino (Puerto Rican). Grew up steeped in Puerto Rican culture, which I'm now passing down to my daughter who's only a quarter Latino. Also flummoxed whether to check that box. She'll speak Spanish and be culturally Puerto Rican - to an extent - but is fair and has green eyes and a British surname and surely will benefit from white privilege.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am half-white, half-Latino (Puerto Rican). Grew up steeped in Puerto Rican culture, which I'm now passing down to my daughter who's only a quarter Latino. Also flummoxed whether to check that box. She'll speak Spanish and be culturally Puerto Rican - to an extent - but is fair and has green eyes and a British surname and surely will benefit from white privilege.

I am Latina and my husband is white...we are having the same conversation. I do look Latina but so far the kids are super white. They are still babies, so we are trying to figure out which box to check now so avoid confusion.

[Anonymous]

White.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am Latina and my husband is white...we are having the same conversation. I do look Latina but so far the kids are super white. They are still babies, so we are trying to figure out which box to check now so avoid confusion.

I read somewhere not long ago that a rising number of "hispanics" are now considering themselves "white." There's probably truth to it as time goes on more and more offspring of Hispanics, particularly those who intermarried, will be considered white. Just like how the Irish and Italians transformed from a separate ethnic group a hundred years ago to part of the general white population today.

[Anonymous]

In doing some research, I found an article that looked at descendants of immigrants, particularly products of intermarriage. In that study, the higher-educated descendants of Hispanic immigrants were less likely to continue labeling themselves as Hispanic. The opposite happened among descendants of Asian-Americans--the lower-educated descendants were less likely to continue labeling themselves as Asian.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/17/mixed-marriages-are-changing-the-way-we-think-about-our-race/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

+1. I can't believe you are considering checking "Hispanic." DW's parents are from South America and they speak Spanish fluently but they're European one generation before that and are all educated professionals with a long family history of such. She would never check Hispanic because it's not what the box is there for. I work in academia and also agree that an application with a German last name checking Hispanic is likely to seriously get my derision, legal or not. And even if your last name is "Garcia" and you show up looking Giselle Bunschen or Albert Einstein (many physicists or their parents were refugees to South America who, like Einstein, fled the Nazis in Europe), I will not be impressed either.
Don't make yourself or your children into an Elizabeth Warren style joke. There are real students who are the first in their family to go to college or that suffered as a result of the political upheavals in Latin America. Admissions are looking for them to create diversity. Are they looking for you?

Exactly, and that's why all this racial/ ethnic obsession makes little sense. Offer affirmative action based on SES, based on one individual's personal characteristics, not on whether his or her group identity is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

But. we are descended from Nazis. Don't we get a redemption story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't they just go away with race on college applications and switch to SES brackets?

has been hashed out on dcum many times, but urms are actively against this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't they just go away with race on college applications and switch to SES brackets?

has been hashed out on dcum many times, but urms are actively against this.

They can use both criteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

I don't think you're being fair yourself. DH's father is Hispanic -- he immigrated here when he was a teen. DH grew up feeling culturally connected to his father's family and heritage, speaks Spanish and considers himself multi-ethnic. He also grew up comfortably middle-class with college-educated parents. His last name would not raise eyebrows among your colleagues, but that's just coincidence -- if he had his mother's last name his ethnicity wouldn't be obvious.

So, is it somehow "unfair" or "crap" for him to check the "Hispanic" box on forms? I personally think that college preferences/aid should be mainly based on SES rather than race. But the system we have is the system we have. Does it mean that he has to deny half his heritage in order to meet some self-imposed standard of fairness?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Latina I find this whole thread offensive. If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. I have worked admissions, and we noted when people pulled crap like this. Also, you check the box with a German last name, you know every says "oh, Nazi.". I wish I were kidding!

I don't think you're being fair yourself. DH's father is Hispanic -- he immigrated here when he was a teen. DH grew up feeling culturally connected to his father's family and heritage, speaks Spanish and considers himself multi-ethnic. He also grew up comfortably middle-class with college-educated parents. His last name would not raise eyebrows among your colleagues, but that's just coincidence -- if he had his mother's last name his ethnicity wouldn't be obvious.

So, is it somehow "unfair" or "crap" for him to check the "Hispanic" box on forms? I personally think that college preferences/aid should be mainly based on SES rather than race. But the system we have is the system we have. Does it mean that he has to deny half his heritage in order to meet some self-imposed standard of fairness?

+1.

Latino here, and don't find any offense in this thread or in OP's question.

Where I do find offense is in this obsession with categorizing people as if we were dogs.

[Anonymous]

I would wait to see how the presidential debate goes tonight before checking hispanic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:White.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am Latina and my husband is white...we are having the same conversation. I do look Latina but so far the kids are super white. They are still babies, so we are trying to figure out which box to check now so avoid confusion.

I read somewhere not long ago that a rising number of "hispanics" are now considering themselves "white." There's probably truth to it as time goes on more and more offspring of Hispanics, particularly those who intermarried, will be considered white. Just like how the Irish and Italians transformed from a separate ethnic group a hundred years ago to part of the general white population today.

Italians that assimilated into the predominant northwest european 'white' culture, are in the general white population.

Italians that haven't like the guidos in the north east aren't white to me - they're orange clowns.

Irish are a bit different as they've more fully assimilated and have put one of their own in the white house.