Jennifer Christian of the Daily Californian adds her perspective to the recent "multiracial" category issue with the University of California Board of Regents:
I’ve learned that “underrepresented,” the word bandied around like there’s no tomorrow on this campus, is being used incorrectly. If BAMN and its ilk are going to exploit it as a justification for affirmative action, they should know that their favorite word to rattle off is inaccurate.
Yvette Felarca, Northern California’s BAMN coordinator, said the UC Regents’ idea to create a multiracial check box on its admissions applications “denies students and the population at large the right to hold UC accountable to ensuring that we have an actual representative student body that reflects our state’s population.”
OK, so BAMN’s goal is to have UC’s student population reflect the state’s in terms of race. Let’s take a look at the statistics. According to the U.S. Census, 46 percent of California’s population is white. According to UC Berkeley, the student body is 35 percent white. Looks like whites are also underrepresented: to represent the state, 11 percent more of our students should be white. Since BAMN is trying to bring more blacks, Hispanics and American Indians to school here, why not add whites to the mix?
Read the rest here. This entry also posted at A Mixed Blog.