[268] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Affirmative action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pius A. Uzamere II)
Sat Apr 28 01:40:37 2001
Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010428010001.00be5da0@hesiod>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 01:36:45 -0400
To: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
From: "Pius A. Uzamere II" <pius@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <200104280448.AAA20232@ten-thousand-dollar-bill.mit.edu>
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I'm just going to point out an interesting piece of information about the
MIT application.
It does not ask for your "skin color." Rather, the Affirmative Action
question is phrased as follows:
"In connection with its Affirmative Action Plan, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology guarantees equal opportunity in education to
students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. I consider myself to belong
to the following ethnic group(s) . . . :"
Thus, it never asks for the color of your skin. What is does implicitly
ask you is what your "cultural perspective" is, as Beland put
it. Literally, every student has the prerogative to identify his or her
own culture to MIT Admissions, irregardless of how much melatonin is in
said student's skin.
[If you think that this is just playing games with semantics, consider the
following. I know a student who is 100% Italian by blood, but who grew up
in a Hispanic environment and thus identified his cultural background as
such. He was granted admission to Project Interphase, an MIT program for
incoming "underrepresented minority" freshmen.]
If we value "diversity of cultural or intellectual perspectives" as a
worthy goal for the MIT Admissions Office, then we should correspondingly
value its Affirmative Action Plan, for it achieves exactly what we are
striving for.
-Pius
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I'm just going to point out an interesting piece of information about the
MIT application. <br>
<br>
It does not ask for your "skin color." Rather, the
Affirmative Action question is phrased as follows:<br>
<br>
"In connection with its Affirmative Action Plan, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology guarantees equal opportunity in education to
students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. I consider myself to
belong to the following ethnic group(s) . . . :"<br>
<br>
Thus, it never asks for the color of your skin. What is <i>does
</i>implicitly ask you is what your "cultural perspective" is,
as Beland put it. Literally, every student has the prerogative to
identify his or her own culture to MIT Admissions, irregardless of how
much melatonin is in said student's skin.<br>
<br>
[If you think that this is just playing games with semantics, consider
the following. I know a student who is 100% Italian by blood, but
who grew up in a Hispanic environment and thus identified his cultural
background as such. He was granted admission to Project Interphase,
an MIT program for incoming "underrepresented minority"
freshmen.]<br>
<br>
If we value "diversity of cultural or intellectual
perspectives" as a worthy goal for the MIT Admissions Office, then
we should correspondingly value its Affirmative Action Plan, for it
achieves exactly what we are striving for.<br>
<br>
-Pius<br>
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