I don’t think we should require everyone who asks for special treatment based on race to wear black or brown armbands to signify their special status, but since foolproof identity cards are now being seriously discussed as one component of dealing with the illegal immigration problem this may well be a good time to consider requiring everyone to have such a card, at least if we continue to bestow preferences based on racial identity. After all, if you’re going to maintain a racial spoils system you need some objective and efficient way to determine who is entitled to the spoils.
Although the usefulness of racial identity cards has been discussed here before, I was prompted to think about them again today by a remarkable article in the New York Times that should have been (but wasn’t) entitled “DNA Tests & The Racial Spoils System.”
It begins:
Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.
The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.
“Naturally when you’re applying to college you’re looking at how your genetic status might help you,” said Mr. Moldawer, who knows that the twins’ birth parents are white, but has little information about their extended family. “I have three kids going now, and you can bet that any advantage we can take we will.”
Naturally. You bet.
Just as “affirmative action” has probably helped as many white women as black men (as preferentialists are quick to point out every time preferences are challenged, as though preferring more people based on race or sex makes the system better), I suspect that widespread DNA testing would allow large numbers of “white” people to get in on the racial spoils system, as Mr. Moldawer (look at the picture of his son) hopes.
In fact, this is already happening.
Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights.
One Christian is using the test to claim Jewish genetic ancestry and to demand Israeli citizenship, and Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.
“This is not just somebody’s desire to go find out whether their grandfather is Polish,” said Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York University who has studied the social impact of the tests. “It’s about access to money and power.”
….
Ashley Klett’s younger sister marked the “Asian” box on her college applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European.
How ironic, or something, if the “one drop rule” and its modern equivalents, which served to exclude people, comes to be embraced by people as a sneaky means of access and favors.
Not surprisingly, the preferentialists are worried, so much so that they frequently forget their lines. Thus:
“If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they haven’t experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is supposed to remedy,” said Lester Monts, senior vice provost for student affairs at the University of Michigan, which won the right to use race as a factor in admissions in a 2003 Supreme Court decision.
Still, Michigan, like most other universities, relies on how students choose to describe themselves on admissions applications when assigning racial preferences.
Mr. Monts obviously forgot that the University of Michigan based its entire defense of racial preferences on the chimera of “diversity,” eschewing any reference at all to compensation for past wrongs.
And then there’s the black-to-red problem:
Other slave descendants, known as the Freedmen, see DNA as bolstering their demand to be reinstated as members of the Indian tribes that once owned their ancestors. Under a treaty with the United States, the “Five Civilized Tribes” — Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles and Cherokees — freed their African slaves and in most cases made them citizens in the mid-1800’s. More recently, the tribes have sought to exclude the slaves’ descendants, depriving them of health benefits and other services….
“Here’s this DNA test that says yes, these people can establish some degree of Indian blood,” said Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee Freedwoman who is suing for tribal citizenship in federal court. “It’s important to combat those who want to oppress people of African descent in their own tribe.”
As the assets of some tribes have swelled in the wake of the 1988 federal law allowing them to build casinos, there has been no shortage of petitioners stepping forward to assert their right to citizenship and a share of the wealth. Now, many of them are wielding genetic ancestry tests to bolster their claim.
In fact, given the extreme “underrepresentation” of American Indians in selective universities, I would think that Indian identity would be even more valuable than black identity in securing admissions and financial aid.
If claimed minority identity increases, perhaps universities will feel compelled to require DNA tests in order to determine who “really” deserves racial preferences. It’s hard to see how they, or the applicants seeking preferences, could have any principled objections.
Until then, perhaps black and brown arm bands could serve as a temporary, low-tech solution.
UPDATE [13 April]
Chetly Zarko is as flabbergasted by the Lester Monts quote as I am.
UPDATE II [14 April]
Based on the above story, the Chronicle of Higher Education news blogger comments:
Such deceptions might make a difference in admissions offices, which don’t check up on applicants’ claims. But if more applicants start making such claims, can a genetic college-admissions test be far behind?
“Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.”
You know what’s funny — the same DNA test could be used to take an Indian Scholarship AWAY from Ward Churchill!
“But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.”
Those DNA kit people have got a beautiful cottage industry going here. They ought to market the kits right alongside SAT prep materials. JACKPOT!!!
I suspect universities will start requiring pictures (of course, they’ll say it’s for a different reason, “to prevent identity theft” or something), and the smaller universities might start interviews of so-called minority candidates. They’ll find a way.
And if amnesty is granted to illegals, there will be so many more affirmative action candidates!
Razib Khan at Gene Expression (gnxp.com) or its Science Blogs sister (linked form GNXP), also comments on this issue, although not in this detail.
Razib has a more scientific aspect to his outrage, but largely based on similar ideas.
May all the universities can require DNA tests for all students.
They could then aggregate the smaller percentage ancestries of each student to prove to the politicians and the regulators that they really do have a “diverse” student body.
The whole issues seems to be, in a nutshell: “How can we exclude white (hetero) men.”
Gay white men have also been beneficiaries of the quota system. It’s a long story, but it’s true. Since black men are largely unavailable for executive positions, managers tend to look to gay white men as their opportunity to pat themselves on their back for “diversity” hires and promotions.
John, I’m surprised you have had so little to say about the farce at Duke over the lacrosse team. It’s beginning to look like yet another hate crime hoax.
if universities start asking for pictures, what will be the fate of black people who in a picture look white because they are lightskinned. what about black people who have thin lips. will they be deemed to have faced less discrimination than people with full lips. i predict this whole thing is going to get crazier and crazier.
I suspect universities will start requiring pictures (of course, they’ll say it’s for a different reason, “to prevent identity theft” or something), and the smaller universities might start interviews of so-called minority candidates. They’ll find a way.
“We’re sorry, we can’t offer you this scholarship because you don’t look/act black enough.”
or what about mixed students?
“We see that you are 20% african, but you’re also 25% asian, and we already have too many asians here, so we can’t offer you this scholarship.”
Of course, most Americans are pretty much genetic mutts to one extent or another (I’m mostly European….from just about every corner of it!), but we still make false dichotomies into ‘black’ and ‘white’ when in reality it’s one of those things that’s really a spectrum. But we can’t be taxing admissions committees affirmative actioning judgment too much, can we?
Maybe if I use these DNA tests I can show that I have some European ancestry and then I can use those results to help flag down one of the 10 cabs that zipped by me as I waited to go home last night.
Maybe the DNA results can also prevent people from using the N-word and burning Black churches.
I think if I took my DNA results to a neo-Nazi rally they’d be more than willing to treat me kindly.
Right?
Maybe if I use these DNA tests I can show that I have some European ancestry and then I can use those results to help flag down one of the 10 cabs that zipped by me as I waited to go home last night.
Problem: Racial discrimination by cab drivers.
Colorblind Solution: Enforce law by requiring cab drivers to pick up passengers regardless of race.
Affirmative Action Solution A: Require cab drivers to pick up passengers in proportion to their share of the population in the i) neighborhood; ii) city; iii) state ….
Affirmative Action Solution B: Require cab drivers to refuse to pick up white or Asian passengers until a “critical mass” of black passengers have been picked up.
Affirmative Action Solution C: Increase recruitment of minority cab drivers until percentage of minority cab drivers reflects the geographic area the cab company serves. Then ensure that only minority (or a non-minority sufficientlly culturally sensitive) drivers pick up minorities.
A bit off topic:
There seems to be the assumption that if a cab driver prefers a White customer to a Black one, then he is necessarily being racist. Related to this is the assumption that a Black driver is unlikely to discriminate in this way.
I question both of these assumptions, for the obvious reasons.
Hull,
Isn’t it ironic that the only time that blacks are accused of being racist is when they fail to pick up blacks who are hailing a taxi?
I thought under the rubic of modern American victimology is that minorities can never be racist since they are not “in power.” But somehow they become racist when they get behind the steering wheel of a cab
So let me get this straight. Somehow, my anti-affirmative action type friends here have a problem with DNA testing for race verification, when hypodescent, the “one drop rule” has been used as a bludgeon against visibly non-white Americans for CENTURIES.
My AAA-type friends seem to forget about the American Eugenics Movement and miscegenation laws, which were pervasive. My AAA-type friends should review the majority decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson:
Justice Billings Brown–
>>>”We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of any-thing found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits and a voluntary consent of individuals…Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane…”
Does this sound familiar to frequent readers
Hmmm…there’s an old idiom…
“There’s nothing new under the sun.”
How apt that idiom truly is.
–Cobra
I wonder why cabbies don’t pick up black would be passengers?
Just a question.
Are the cabbies all white, or do black cabbie pass by black would be passengers, too?
Maybe cabbies of whatever color don’t like the 1000% higher homicide rate (10x’s)among black males?
What would you do?