Face the State

Face The State Staff Report

FTS' Brad Jones discusses this story
on 600 KCOL's "Mornings with Keith and Gail" [Streaming Audio]

According to statistics released to Face The State from the University of Colorado, an increasing number of students are declining to reveal their race on their applications to the school. CU is also seeing additional increases in the number of students identifying themselves by more than one race.

The CU application asks applicants to check one of several boxes to indicate race, including: African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, International, Native American or White. There is also a box for those who decline to identify. Administrators records the race of those who decline to identify by race as “Unknown.”

In 1991, just 2 percent of CU applicants, or 234 applicants, declined to identify. Over the next the decade, the number of students refusing to provide their race slowly and steadily increased. By 2001, applicants in the “Unknown” category rose to 6 percent.

According to Roger Clegg, counsel to the Center For Equal Opportunity, a Virginia-based foundation that has studied the impact of race in college admissions nationwide, the trend at CU reflects what is being seen nationally. "More and more Americans are bi-racial or multi-racial . . . students resent having to pick one box to artificially define themselves."

Increasing racial diversity is a factor played out in recent government attempts to classify Americans by race, with three five percent of all marriages nationwide including spouses of different races. And while CU gives students just six different options for identifying their race and ethnicity, the U.S. Census recognizes 63 distinct racial categories. The 2000 census marked the first time that people were permitted to select more than one racial category; 6.8 million Americans responded by indicating a mixed racial heritage.

In 2001, CU followed this example, adding a multicultural box with a line next to it where applicants could have the option of indicating more than one race or one that is not already listed. If CU applicants check the multicultural box but do not specify anything further they are categorized as “Unknown.” According to Peter Caughey, an administrator in the CU communications office, if they list more than one race, they are placed in the category of their first identifier.

Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute and a mixed-race American frequently identified as black, advocates getting rid of the "race box" altogether. "[University officials] embrace the "one-drop" rule - one drop of "black" blood, for example, and you are black, regardless of the mixture of your ancestry," Connerly said, "As more Americans marry across racial lines and have children, the racial boxes and the classifications that they represent are inherently inconsistent with how individuals see themselves."