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University of California Expands Race Categories

By Tanya Paperny - Nov 20th, 2007 at 6:03 pm EST

Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog

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Tags: APIA, ethnicity, race, University of California

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The UC system is adding categories for Asian Pacific Islander undergraduate applicants to self-report their ethnicities in an attempt to broaden the information they collect about the API community.

Next year's applications for UC admissions will include separate categories for Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and "other" Asian.

I think this is a great idea.

Reader Comments

Makes perfect sense.

By Superduperficial Nov 20th 2007 at 6:44 pm EST

Beat me to it

By N.Raider Nov 21st 2007 at 1:35 am EST

I'm glad you posted this article and I think this is a good step forward towards eliminating discrimination against Asian-Americans in the United States.

Re: Beat me to it

By Superduperficial Nov 21st 2007 at 9:37 am EST

Just to check consistency here a bit - so you support California's Proposition 209?

Re: Beat me to it

By N.Raider Nov 21st 2007 at 11:50 am EST

No, I can't say that I am in favor of 209. It may seem like 209 would have prevented Asian-Americans from admission to UC, but it actually would allow more sub-groups of Asian-Americans access. For the Berkeley campus, the plurality of Asian-American students are Chinese. Minority groups such as Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders (all currently clumped under Asian-American) are not given the representation they would have.

It is important to note that affirmative action says that if a minority student (mainly ethnicity and gender) is equally qualified for admission as a non-minority student, the minority student should get preference until the ethnic and/or gender makeup is consistent with that of a pre-specified community.

Re: Beat me to it

By Superduperficial Nov 21st 2007 at 12:30 pm EST (Updated Nov 21st 2007 at 12:44 pm EST)

""For the Berkeley campus, the plurality of Asian-American students are Chinese. Minority groups such as Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders (all currently clumped under Asian-American) are not given the representation they would have.""

Are you intentionally trying to be misleading, or is this just a gaffe? You're picking one UC campus that's not at all representative of the whole in terms of the breakdown of Asian-American students. Ever been to UCI?

Your factual conclusion at the end here is simply untrue. Representation of all Asian-American groups that are in California in significant numbers, including Southeast Asian Americans, has *increased* after Prop 209. The numbers lag behind Northeast Asian Americans, but that doesn't mean the haven't benefited from Prop 209.

Also, you completely ignore the active discrimination against Asian American applicants by the UC system that Prop 209 was the first step in ending.

Re: Beat me to it

By N.Raider Nov 22nd 2007 at 4:00 pm EST

The admission of API students compared to all admits at Irvine and Berkeley is about the same percentage (48% and 45% respectively in 2003). For that same year, the percentage of the overall admission of API students was 39.7% in the UC system.

I find that hard to believe that Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders as a whole have increased in their admissions rates than Northeast Asians in the UC system since the API community at Berkeley is very much against 209, which they should not be if it helps their cause, as you claim.

They forgot Afghan

By Ali M. Latifi Nov 21st 2007 at 1:17 pm EST

They forgot to list "Afghanistan," we'll forever be deemed an "other" by the University of California.

Re: They forgot Afghan

By Superduperficial Nov 21st 2007 at 3:52 pm EST

Afghanistan is the new Poland!

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