It seems unethical, sure. But a "bad idea"? Consider that all of the following must be true for it to affect how you are perceived by a non-trivial number of people:
1) someone on the admissions committee must come to know you (that is, match your face to your name)
2) they must then remember that you were one of the people who identified as black on an application
3) they must then assume that you aren't actually black based on appearance alone (knowing that there are indeed many half-black people who don't look obviously black)
4) they must then decide to tell other important people about this
This just seems really unlikely in any reasonably sized school. If you really want to be careful, find out who is on the admissions committee and avoid them.
Do state schools really look at names? It's hard for me to imagine a state school looking at peoples names or pictures and reclassifying the races of applicants. It would be fairly disturbing if they did, in fact.
(Again, I'm not suggesting that you should have to misrepresent your race to be treated fairly. I'm just suggesting that, from a practical standpoint, you could probably avoid discrimination in state school college applications by ticking a box that would be more favorable to you.)
I wonder if they still allow the names of admissions candidates to be revealed to the people who review the applications? It seems that hiding this would be a really basic step.
And no I'm not saying that a name tells you the race. But sometimes it is an indication.
Not saying it's bulletproof; it's not. But it would help. And I can't think of a valid excuse for not doing it.
Not to mention how politically incorrect it would be to try to call someone out on it: "Hey, aren't you Louis Smith? You said you were black on the application, but you don't look black at all!"
I can't imagine it happening.
I saw it happen, back at my law school in the 1980s. (I have no comment about how generally this might happen today.) The classmate of mine who was called out about his "race" self-identification had a dad who almost anyone in the United States would identify as "black" (who definitely had African ancestry, along with European ancestry) and a mom whose historically traceable ancestry was all European. He (the student) himself looked "white," so much so that he could pass as my brother. According to a report in our university's daily newspaper, after his presence in the Black Student Association (to which new students who had indicated that they were black were automatically invited by the law school) became noted, when he filled out his application forms, he checked the boxes for both "white" and "black." (This was before "choose one or more" was the standard language next to race categories on admission forms.) He stayed in law school, and he graduated, and he still practices law. But the other members of the Black Student Association ostracized him, even though he shared many aspects of the black experience in his daily life, and would have legally been classified as black in any southern state during segregation. (Our state, Minnesota, has never had de jure "race" segregation nor has it ever had a law against "interracial" marriage.)
Not to mention how politically incorrect it would be to try to call someone out on it: "Hey, aren't you Louis Smith? You said you were black on the application, but you don't look black at all!"
While this is true, I don't see why this can used as justification to keep name and ethnicity showing. There will always be ways to guess an applicant's ethnicity but since it (supposedly) has no bearing on admissions, why keep it in the application?
Serious question: Is there any reason not to just lie about your ethnicity? Why not put "black" or "native american" on your app to really up your chances?
I mean, I'm sure the school would reject you if they knew you were lying about it, but there really isn't any way for them to tell, is there?
I've never thought about it that way, but as a mixed-race white/asian, I wonder if including that information rather than just letting them assume "white" from my name actually hurt me rather than helped me when I applied to (and did not get accepted to) the ivy league 20 years ago.
You are using a very extreme interpretation of the law.
It's illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of race and other protected classes. So by extension, it's best practice to avoid asking applicants for their race or asking them for a photo, lest you give the appearance that it's a factor in the hiring decision.
But I've never heard of rejecting someone outright for sending an unsolicited photo. That's just crazy. Would you also reject an applicant who had "President of African-American Student Union" on their resume because it belies their race?
I've tried a strategy like that in various contexts. e.g. not uploading a photo of myself on a Slack workspace. How differently might people read what I'm saying if they assume that I'm white versus knowing that I'm black?
I thought it wise to try this strategy when looking for employment, but I think it actually works against me in that case. If the employer knows I'm black then they can filter me out from the get-go and save both of us time rather than be dragged through a pointless interview process. It's hard to really quantify the exact degree to which my race is a detriment to how I'm perceived, but I sense it often enough to know that it's there in some capacity.
An asian high school senior here. I'm currently in the process of applying to colleges. In most college applications, demographics are listed under the section where they say the information you provide won't hurt your change of getting in. I have not and will not lie about my race on any of the applications. I understand that, statistically, it will hurt my chance of getting into a top-tier college, considering I don't have perfect SAT score and GPA. But I believe that the admission officers would be wise enough to evaluate a person as a whole instead of just puting "tags" on him/her.
This reminds me of a thought I had in one of my college courses. It was in regards to college admittance. If we want to avoid bias, then why to we track it. That is if we shouldn't care if the person is black/white, male/female, dis/abled, etc then why do we ask for that as part of the sign up/interview process?
I know with names its is hard to exclude some identifiable info as assumptions can be made, but leaving this out would probably do more to close these gaps.
It was a tangential comment relating to natch saying,
> I wonder if they still allow the names of admissions candidates to be revealed to the people who review the applications? It seems that hiding this would be a really basic step.
> And no I'm not saying that a name tells you the race. But sometimes it is an indication.
I guess a more relevant point is that if they think your race is relevant to admissions, then they're probably not thinking about removing names from the equation at all. I'd think that they'd happily admit to biases inherent in the process, but at the end of the day they'd argue that more information will allow them to make better decisions than less.
I'd imagine you wouldn't be lying. You'd be "identifying" as black. And while you're at it, identify as a black woman. It would throw the whole system into chaos (until people start profiling based on names).
Eye color correlates a lot with skin color so it would also be illegal, otherwise you can filter out almost all black people by only accepting blue eyed applicants.
No. There was a prominent case of Rachel Dolezal who identified as black and used that in college and job applications as well as welfare claims.
She got sacked, sued by the state government, and vilified in the court of popular opinion. You might get away with this kind of fraud, but it's not a good time for it if you do get caught.
I believe you can check any race and they will never question it. You could state you identify as Black and so long as the name and application looks 'black', they'll never know. You'll start your first day at university and what will they do, ask you to take a genetic test?
How, precisely, is this true? Aside from giving yourself cancer via tanning-bed-overdose? The first person to see you would notice you lied on your form. Not typically good for getting hired.
>then they run the risk of being expelled or even having their degree revoked for unethical behavior.
Have either of these actually happened? Someone put an 'innacurate' representation of their 'race' down and that happened? I'm trying to imagine how you could prove it. For instance, some theories hold that humans emigrated from sub-saharan Africa and thus most/all (even Americans) would be technically 'African-American' by some definition of the word.
It's my understanding that these forms request your self identified race thus there would be no wrong answer, you merely need to self identify for the second it takes to check the box.
1) someone on the admissions committee must come to know you (that is, match your face to your name)
2) they must then remember that you were one of the people who identified as black on an application
3) they must then assume that you aren't actually black based on appearance alone (knowing that there are indeed many half-black people who don't look obviously black)
4) they must then decide to tell other important people about this
This just seems really unlikely in any reasonably sized school. If you really want to be careful, find out who is on the admissions committee and avoid them.
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