July 28, 2003

"Black like me"

Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has an interesting column on exactly what qualifies some people to be more equal than others:

Yes, we know that the Supreme Court permits selective colleges to award a "plus" to black, Hispanic, and Native-American applicants. But just who, exactly, qualifies as black, Hispanic, or Native American?...

Is an applicant of Moroccan descent an African American entitled to a plus � or is he an Arab American, who gets none? Does an ethnic German applicant recently emigrated from Peru get a Hispanic plus? Does a white applicant with a black great-grandfather get an African-American plus? And why doesn't a native Hawaiian get a Native-American plus, as do Alaskan natives?...

Some states employed the "one drop" rule � any black ancestor, however remote, rendered one black. Alabama held that anyone at least 1/32 black � i.e., who had at least one black great-great-great-grandparent � was to be excluded from white schools. North Carolina, on the other hand, only went back four generations...

These are similar to the questions I raised in the old post "Three-fifths of a job applicant":

I wonder, do bi- or multi-racial people have an advantage when helping a corp meet its Diversity Goals? Will ProFound require a breakdown of ones ethnic components? Would someone who's, say, half-Colombian and half-Lebanese count as 1 person of each, or would each half only contribute .5 to the corresponding Diversity Goal?...

If someone is three-fifths black and two-fifths white, do they count as one black person towards my company's Diversity Goals?

What if someone is mainly white, but has a little bit of black blood in them. Even if it's just one drop, can they count as black for our Diversity Goals?

Posted to MultiCultiCult at July 28, 2003 11:33 PM

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