Mon 17 Jul 2006
The process of racial classification at Williams is endlessly fascinating (see here, here and here). In a previous thread, I was struck by this comment from fellow EphBlog author Reed Wiedower ‘00.
As I pointed out during Winter Study, I’m still curious as to why the college keeps lying about the racial question.
Many people my year refused to answer the question, especially those of mixed heritage. Many so called “whites” were equally dismissive of it.
I think that removing oneself from racial aggregate data is statistically a good move. Why? Because it forces the administration to take a look behind the numbers at what is going on.
I should have challenged Reed at the time on his use of word “lying.” First, there is the issue of the anthropomorphizing the “college” — a sin of which I am regularly guilty. The college doesn’t lie (or talk or tell the truth). Individuals at the College do. Second, the honest and hard-working Ephs at the College who are actually responsible for these statistics are doing the best that they can given the constraints that they face.
In fact, Dave Winters ‘95, Director of Institutional Research (and the man whose name appears on these documents), was kind enough to explain the mechanics of what happens. Endless details below the break.
Winters writes:
Like all colleges and universities Williams is required to submit reports to the government via the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) system. Below is probably more than you ever wanted to know on the subject, pasted from the IPEDS website .
Method of collection - The manner of collecting racial/ethnic information is left to the discretion of the institution provided that the system which is established results in reasonably accurate data, which may be replicated by others when the same documented system is utilized. One acceptable method is a properly controlled system of post-enrollment self-identification by students. If a self-identification method is utilized, a verification procedure to ascertain the completeness and accuracy of student submissions should be employed.
Assignment to categories - For the purpose of this report, a student may be included in the group to which he or she appears to belong, identifies with, or is regarded in the community as belonging. However, no person may be counted in more than one racial/ethnic group. Racial/ethnic designations are requested only for United States citizens, resident aliens, and other eligible non-citizens. (See definitions below.)
Racial/ethnic descriptions - Racial/ethnic designations as used in this survey do not denote scientific definitions of anthropological origins. The categories are:
- a. Black, non-Hispanic - A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa (except those of Hispanic origin).
- b. American Indian/Alaska Native - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.
- c. Asian/Pacific Islander - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, or Pacific Islands. This includes people from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands, American Samoa, India, and Vietnam.
- d. Hispanic - A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central, or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.
- e. White, non-Hispanic - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East (except those of Hispanic origin).
Other descriptive categories
- a. Nonresident alien - A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely. NOTE - Nonresident aliens are to be reported separately in the places provided, rather than in any of the five racial/ethnic categories described above.
- b. Race/ethnicity unknown - This category is used ONLY if the student did not select a racial/ethnic designation, AND the postsecondary institution finds it impossible to place the student in one of the aforementioned racial/ethnic categories during established enrollment procedures or in any post-enrollment identification or verification process.
As you can see from the last paragraph the government is clear that use of the “unknown” category is to be considered a last resort and not used as a convenient punt.
At Williams the racial classification begins with the box that is checked by the student on their common application for admission. Most students will self-designate at this point. A small number do not and some will choose multiple boxes. Once students matriculate, the Registrar’s office makes every effort to assign that matriculant to one of the race classifications as defined above. Students are given the final say however, in that the Registrar’s office then contacts every student informing them of the racial assignment they have on file, and explaining the IPEDS requirement for racial assignment, and the official definitions of those race classifications (as above). The student is asked to inform the Registrar if they wish to change the classification to which they have been assigned. In practice, very few students request changes.
This is the process used at Williams. This process has been designed to achieve the best results given the sometime competing objectives of:
- maximizing compliance with IPEDS
- maximizing data accuracy
- minimizing student discontent
- minimizing administrative burden
Thanks to Chris for taking the time to clarify these issues. Comments:
1) It is a pleasure to interact with someone like Chris who takes the time and trouble to explain things to interested alumni. Although many/most college officials (Dick Nesbitt, Jim Kolesar, Jo Proctor, to name just a few) are similarly helpful, not all are.
2) It seems to clear to me from the above that the College is not “lying” about anything. People like Chris are doing the best they can given the constraints that they face.
3) It would be interesting to learn more details about how the office of the registrar “makes every effort to assign that matriculant to one of the race classifications as defined above.” We have at least one description of this process from Jonathan Landsman ‘05.
Early freshman year, I received a letter from the Admissions Office. It stated that I had declared myself a minority on my application, specifically Puerto Rican. It asked if I still wanted to be considered so, and if not, to contact them and say otherwise.
Sounds like the Admissions Office does its best to classify people and then passes the baton to the registrar. But how, exactly, does the registrar have a classification “on file” if the student did not check any boxes on the Common Application or if she checked more than one? On the one hand, the “best” description — or at least the most sociologically accurate one — for any student who checks white and some other box is probably white. So, perhaps the Registrar/Admissions Office puts all such multi-box checkers in the white category. On the other hand, there is a lot of pressure on the College do be as diverse as possible, so why not minimize the use of the white box by following a policy of classifying students in the most diversity-increasing manner possible?
4) I have no opinion on what is the “right” answer here. I just want to better understand how the process works. If a students checks both the Asian and white boxes (as my daughters might) on the Common Application, what happens at Williams?
5) It would be great fun if a member of the class of 2010 were to make trouble about all of this, either for ideological or entertainment reasons. Surely, there are a couple of Young Republicans out there! Simply insist to the Registrar that you want to be categorized as “Race/ethnicity unknown.” Demand that the College supply evidence for any other classification that it might want to make. Inform the Registrar (in writing!) that you will be checking the College’s common data set to ensure that your classification is correct.
6) There is an interesting Record article to be written about this topic. Who will write it?
July 17th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Well, my original comments that I referenced in the post were based on conversations that I had with one or more friends that circled around two points:
1. Certain people declined to answer the race question.
2. Certain people were from mixed race backgrounds.
It sounds as if the college is now (I’m not sure if this has always been the policy) attempting to “push” people with respect to the first point. The conversations that I recall were held the first month I was at Williams, so it’s entirely possible that several months later students were shunted into a specific category.
But this bring up the point that is raised by number 2: if the college is artificially determining what someone’s race is (as a Southerner, I’m well aware of the sordid racist history of states like Maryland who artificially altered their laws to prevent mixed race children with slave mothers from being declared “white”) even in cases where a “race” is not clear, doesn’t this skew the data?
Again, you have to go back to my earlier post for context: if a total of 4 Native Americans matriculate in a class, it’s easy for me to imagine at least 4 people either witholding their race or a similar number of people coming from a mixed-race background.
The solution is simple, David: allow students to check either multiple boxes or no boxes at all. And Williams should tabulate that data internally. What they submit to the IPEDS system can be determined separately, and should be made clear to students in general.
I will say, pertinent to point #5, that the problem I had with Williams collecting racial data on students was that it was *inaccurate*. The conversations I had with my friends freshman year revolved around how the system itself was discriminating against people of mixed-race backgrounds. (The IPEDS site itself says “no person may be counted in more than one racial/ethnic group.” which is clearly wrong.)
Why did we have this conversation? Because several people in the group were of *mixed race background*. Encouraging a bunch of white Republicans to demand that their racial statistics be removed is, by far, one of the most egregiously selfish tasks I’ve ever heard you suggest.
The racial data is supposed to be helping minorities, not hurting them. Although I think focusing on socio-economics is a better goal, race does play a large role in America today. And a child of a black mother and a white father faces just as much discrimination as one of two black parents. To have to self-select as “white” or “black” envisions a culture from the 19th century, full of “octaroons” and other racist taxonomies.
By telling young, white aspiring Republicans at Williams that they should should engage in “great fun” by thumbing their nose at the Registrar isn’t merely missing the point: it’s actively working against the entire purpose of the system, which exists *in spite of* the people you are encouraging. The racial data isn’t there to help white people.
Wonder why someone who is white can engage in “great fun” with their racial classification while someone who is black or of mixed-race cannot? Hmm. I think that’s self-explanatory.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:51 am
And, just to clarify, the reason I originally suggested that students declassify themselves was not for the purpose of entertainment; it was so that the college would be forced to rexamine the incredibly small-minded taxonomy it was pigeonholing students into. Once re-evaluated to include people of mixed race, I would encourage everyone to participate.
July 17th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
If they’re really counting *noses*, shouldn’t Jews be a separate race?
July 17th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Is all of this getting us closer to or more removed from MLK’s ideal?
July 17th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
For those with more than a passing interest in the topic, I highly recommend “Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences,” by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (MIT Press, 1999). It discusses a number of classification systems (the NIC nursing codes, the racial classifications used in apartheid) and makes it clear this is an area full of shades of grey. How does the system handle multiple category conditions or boundary conditions?
The articles on the nursing codes make it very clear that problems arise when there are multiple uses for the categorization scheme. Categories that work well for one purpose are suboptimal for another. In the above case, if the goal is to get a general feel for the makeup of the population and prevent double-counting, the one person/one race scheme makes sense. On the other hand, if the goal is to portray the rich heritage of individuals, then the one person/one race scheme is overly simplistic. So pick your goal, and then pick your classification scheme.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
How in god’s name did you come to the conclusion that a person who checks white and a non-white box is “sociologically” more accurately described as “white”? Most any sociologist of race would make the opposite assumption in the bulk of cases. The legacy of “one-drop” logic is much wider than you seem to indicate, David.
July 18th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Comments:
1) I suspect that Reed and I are in 95% agreement about what Williams and public policy should be on this topic. Reed writes:
I agree! In particular, I would like to see the College release the raw data from the Common Application. How many people (applicants, acceptees and enrollees) checked which boxes in which combinations? This data should also include information about languages spoken at home, parental education and so on. The more open that the College is, the better.
My main point was to describe the actual procedure, not defend it. I also wanted to defend the College, and good people like Chris Winters, from the accusation of “lying.”
2) Reed accuses me of “[e]ncouraging a bunch of white Republicans to demand that their racial statistics be removed.” Hey! I said Young Republicans, not “white” ones. Surely there are some non-white Republicans, or at least non-white opponents of traditional racial classifications, at Williams. My point is that if a student disagrees with the current system, if she feels as Reed does, than she has the power to do something about it, to fight nose-counting-as-it-is. The more students who do this (white or not, Republican or Democrat), the more quickly we will move to a policy more in line with Reed’s views.
3) I am puzzled by Reed’s claim that “The racial data is supposed to be helping minorities, not hurting them.” What does this mean? I understand that by checking certain boxes in the Common Application, an applicant improves her chances of admissions. That “racial data” does help some minorities. But our debate here is about what the College reports after admissions is complete. Whether the College reports zero unknowns or 5 or 50 does not help, or hurt, anyone.
4) Reed claims that the “child of a black mother and a white father faces just as much discrimination as one of two black parents.” I doubt that this is true, but no doubt Rory knows the literature on this better than I do. Here is one place to start. This even leads aside the fact that some of the black applicants to Williams are 1/4 or 1/8 black. (Not that this means that they have less of a right to check whatever box they feel like checking. I just want to emphasize that all the students who check a given box are unlikely to have exactly the same experiences with regard to their racial/ethnic background.) In other words, isn’t it simply a fact that, in the US today, you will be more discriminated against if you have 8 black great-grandparents than if you have only 1?
UPDATE: Corrected Winters’ first name.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Rory asks:
First, I was speaking of Williams students today, not people in general. Second, to put this in context, we are talking about the process by which the admissions office must place students in a single category (because that is what IPEDS wants) using some good faith method. This is not different from much field work in sociology in which researchers must assign people to a race without the benefit of asking them. One example is studies of racial profiling where researchers need to determine the race of drivers without asking them. Third, I think that we are talking about a very small number of Williams students. I would suspect that at least 5 students check white and at least one other box. I would be shocked if more than 50 (25?) did so.
Assume that 10 students in the class of 2010 checked white and some other box. If you (Rory) worked at Williams and were told to classify these students according to IPEDS, what would you do?
My claim is that, sociologically, putting them all in the “white” box would not be an unreasonable choice. In other words, if a sociologist could see the applications of these students and observe them on campus, she would place them in the “white” box (using the IPEDS description) if forced to pick just one box.
My main reason for suggesting this is that I think that most (80%? more?) of the students who check white and one other box check Asian. (Reed can tell us how many of his friends from that conversation fall into that category.) A few might also check Hispanic and white. I bet that almost none check black and white.
If this is true, then most of these double box-checkers will “look” white to other people, at least people who are not as familiar with the appearance of mixed race individuals. Now, this won’t always be true. Indeed, my children have mixed race friends who “look” quite Asian. But, in a majority of cases, I think that mixed raced Asian-white, much less Hispanic-white or Native-American-white, will appear white (if only one boxed must be checked) to other people, whether they be trained sociologists doing field work or admissions office staff just doing their job.
July 18th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
David,
Interesting reasoning, though, as best I can tell from your post, the numbers are wholly speculative. What makes you say that “I bet that almost none check black and white.” I certainly don’t know whether that’s true or not (and the wording in your post suggests that you don’t either), but I would not have thought this to be true. I’m sure you have some reason for this guess (advantages for admissions purposes, perhaps?), but I would be curious as to what they are.
July 19th, 2006 at 8:39 am
David,
considering I am currently in the midst of fieldwork as a sociologist, I can tell you that we do struggle with identifying people. However, whenever possible, we leave the identification up to the individual as the internal definition of self as fitting one or more racial categories is, in many ways, as important as the external definition of others based on looks.
When we do have to judge the appearance of someone, we say “appears…” instead of “is”, particularly when it is not clear what background that person is from.
I, like Whitney, wonder where you get your figures (though, it does make some statistical sense–whites and blacks are the least likely to intermarry of all racial groupings).
Finally, you make a bold claim saying a half-asian, half-white person will pass for white. Hispanic, being an ethnicity, is a little trickier (one isn’t half-hispanic, half-white…one can be mixed racially and only hispanic, or mixed ethnically as hispanic and “white” and racially only white. anyway, we get the idea, right?) but still, being mixed does not make it clear one is “white”.
For hundreds of years, in fact, the opposite has always been true and continues to be true. Whiteness has been seen and continues to be treated as the “pure” blood by society, the race that can be screwed up via intermarriage. Until one has observed that a person actively “passes” AND believes him/herself to be “white”, then it is still, regardless of the race, best, when forced to choose only one race, to pick the other race.
Williams student or not, these students are part of society. Other than being really smart and active in high school, how does going to Williams make their racial attitudes so clearly “white” in your mind?
July 19th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Whitney,
I have no knowledge of the actual data from Williams. You can see census data on this question here. In the last census, there were 2,206,251 people who checked white and some other race. Of these, 868,395 checked white and Asian while 784,764 checked white and African American.
These numbers were not what I expected to find. Although white/asian is 10% bigger than white/black, I had expected the number to be much higher. My prior was based on knowledge of interracial marriage rates. This link isn’t a particularly good one. In particular, instead of giving us interracial marriage rates for Asians, it uses Other. But, if you think that this is mostly Asian, then the comparison numbers are 300,000 black/white marriages and 900,000 other/white marriages.
So, the background data for the US population as a whole suggests that white/asian is a more common combination that white/black. Of course, I am doing a huge amount of hand-waving here. Just because people have two parents who classify themselves as one race does not mean that they have to follow suit, one way or the other. Moreover, the subpart of the population which goes to Williams is very different from the rest of the US. In particular, it is much richer and more Asian than the rest of the US. So, what we really need is a subset of this population.
A part of my reasoning relies on my (accurate?) impressions of the student population at Harvard and my peer parental population. My daughters have friends who are the children of both asian/white and black/white marriages, but the former are much (5 times?) more common. Of course anecdotes are not data. And, again, just because one’s parents are X does not mean that you have to check the box in the Common Application a certain way. You can check whatever you like.
Blah, blah, blah. I’ll stick with my prediction that the ratio of black/white to asian/white box checkers on the Common Ap among Williams students is no more than 1 to 4.
July 20th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Rory,
I think that we are in agreement (again!). The College does its best to “leave the identification up to the individual.” But, the Federal Government tells Williams to avoid the unknown box in IPEDS and Williams does its best to comply. There is someone in the admissions office or registars or somewhere who classifies students who check two boxes (or no boxes). They do the best they can. They don’t have the option of saying “appears.” They need to place people. They ask people to place themselves but some do not do so. How would you recommend that college officials act, given these constraints? What advice do you have for David Winters?
You claim that I “make a bold claim saying a half-asian, half-white person will pass for white.” Well, this is not what I meant to say. There are no always in classification schemes. I am making no claims about whether or not someone can “pass” as something else.
I am making an empirical claim that if a sociologist were observing the Williams students who checked Asian/white and was forced to characterize them as either Asian or white in some field study, most sociologists would classify most of those students as white.
To be concrete, imagine that the study involved racial profiling by the Williamstown police force. The sociologists were observing people walking down Spring Street and recording which ones were stopped, followed or questioned by the police. Now, perhaps I am wrong about how sociologists do things. (Rory should feel free to educate us on the topic.) But my belief is that most such Williams students would be classified as white in this research. If that is the case, then it would be not unreasonable for the nice folks in the admissions office to do the same.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Dave –
Minor point, but when you refer to “Dave Winters ‘95,” I believe you are referring to “Chris Winters” from the Class of 95 — we overlapped at Williams and in fact were in the Octet together for a year or so. In any case, the email on the docs to which you refer us are Chris’ and that is the name I know he goes by — I’m not certain if his actual first name is “Dave/David.”
dcat
July 21st, 2006 at 5:32 pm
David,
The police and racial profiling is a bad example–in that case, the sociologist would be more interested in how the police viewed the student than the student’s internal identity. If the police describe all the people they stop as “black”, that’s important, even if the person deems him or herself “white”. That descrepancy would be interesting as well.
Rather, picture a survey or interview on student views of interracial dating and whether or not it is acceptable in society. In that case, a student’s outward appearance AND inward identification would be interesting. The sociologist privileges the participant’s right to agency, in other words, the individual’s right to self-report and self-identify racial identity. However, when that seems discrepant with their outward appearance, that becomes a noteworthy moment to the sociologist, and preferably, we’d ask questions about “why” and “how” such things come about.
This is the crux of our confusion (disagreement?): “I am making an empirical claim that if a sociologist were observing the Williams students who checked Asian/white and was forced to characterize them as either Asian or white in some field study, most sociologists would classify most of those students as white.” From my experience with people who are half white and half asian, they do not experience the world as white people. they do not identify as “white” and, looking back, they would not be identified by sociologists as “white”. Now, I might be missing a large group of people I’ve known who also are asian/white who pass for white and do not actively assert a non-white identity. But I doubt it.
So what I want to gather is, when faced with someone who checked two boxes, what makes you believe, empirically, that they would be identified as “white” when pretty much all previous data collection would instead identify them as “non-white”? The question sounds condescending as written and I can’t think of better wording, but it is not meant to be so, I am honestly curious and intrigued.