WITH CASUALTIES mounting in Iraq, a murky economic recovery, and unsustainable Social Security and Medicare programs, Americans have a plateful of problems for their dinner discussion. Still, so many of us continue to write about issues of race because, despite what we have on the dinner plate, race remains on the back burner. With once divided Shiite and Sunni Muslims uniting against us, it would be ironic if we turned against each other at home.
One promising sign of progress is a nascent rebellion against the old, irrational racial regime. Increasingly, Americans are choosing to opt out of any racial classifications on the Census, college applications and the SAT. The Washington Post recently reported that a record 25 percent of SAT test-takers refused racial classification. While the data for college applications is diffuse, the Post reported last year that nearly 20 percent of applicants to William & Mary refused racial classification.
Here at the University, official statistics show that roughly 20 percent of the Law School student body refused racial classification. The undergraduate student body may be an anomaly -- with only 4 percent of students refusing racial classification.
It is also worth noting that the rejection of racial classification is often genuine and not a cynical ploy to get around affirmative action quotas and admissions formulas. At one Arlington public high school, the Post found that 18 percent of African-American students -- who presumably would benefit from affirmative action -- refused racial classification on the SAT. While race still matters in our society, what these iconoclasts are saying is race should not matter.
Proposing ways to advance race relations has usually presented us with a Catch-22. We cannot talk about racial progress without using the language of race and collective identities. These concepts subvert subtlety for stereotypes; they ignore individuality and impute generalizations. Thus, any explanations or solutions for racial disparities have necessarily entailed sweeping statements that can sometimes be misunderstood as offensive.
Around Grounds, unless one is genuinely colorblind to race, it is impossible to ignore the racial disparities that exist in classes and activities that are not deemed to be of minority interest. Often, such disparities are the result of cultural and societal influences and attitudes both within and without minority communities. Still, it is impossible to address these matters without someone misconstruing the discussion as a stereotype that all minorities think or act in a particular way. These misunderstandings are a result of the unhelpfully broad concept of race.
The refusal to submit to racial classifications will liberate us from such stereotyping. While the lack of demographic data will make it more difficult to monitor disparities in racial achievement, race is in many ways a psychological phenomenon. As more individuals cast off the psychological racial stigmata that held back their self-confidence and success, racial disparities will likely narrow. Stanford psychologist Claude Steele offers intriguing empirical evidence for this assertion. In his studies, Steele has found that minority students who have historically fared worse on the SAT do better when they refuse to classify their race on the test.
Some readers may be particularly offended at this challenge by an African-American psychologist against the orthodoxy that the SAT is inherently racist. Still, they should carefully consider these findings before questioning the messenger's motivations.
Despite there being five commonly used racial categories-- Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American -- discussions about race at the University have frequently centered around the continuing black-white divide. This is entirely expected, as this was the deepest division in the histories of our country and this institution. Still, it is helpful to take a step back and look at the larger picture. In a recognition that these five categories fail to capture the full array of diversity in our society, the Census now features 63 racial and ethnic categories.
The increasing irrelevance of racial categories will hopefully enable us to discuss issues of race in less offensive and stereotypical ways. In fact, some of these issues may simply go away. Maybe then we can have true diversity.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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