[extropy-chat] Hyphenated Americans WAS: Getting AId to people in need

[kevinfreels.com]

>
> If an African-American is born in America, both her parents are
> born in America, all her grandparents, great grandparents, and
> their parents were born in America, at what point is it no longer
> legitimate that she call herself African American?  When does she
> become, like me, a native American?  I have an ancestor who was
> born in Pretoria South Africa.  May I call myself African
> American?  Will all my descendants, for all eternity, be able
> to call themselves African American?

This reminds me of a point I made for several years while a mortgage broker.
The 1003 loan application REQUIRES a portion on page 3 to be filled out
called HDMA for "government monitoring purposes"

It asks race and asks whether a person is Latino or non-latino. in a
separate section. The excuse is because you can be a latino and an asian or
a latino AND an african american. Of course, you are asked to check all that
apply in the second section that has boxes for caucasian, native american,
asian, african american, etc.

It has a box checked "I do not wish to furnish this information."

Of course, if you do not furnish it, the lender will not do the loan because
HUD requires that information to track and make sure we aren't declining
people or charging higher rates because of race or "ethnicity". No one ever
stopped to think that if you didn't ask, the underwriter couldn;t do that
because they would have no idea what race or ethnicity they were.

As  a mortgage broker I was very upset at this. I refused to ask these
questions and I began checking all boxes for everyone - regardless of race
or ethnicity. The way I saw it, everyone descended from Africa and was
therefore African American. EVen the "native Americans" descended from
African stock, so we are all native americans - and asians, etc.

One day at a closing a borrower noticed this and asked about it. He was very
upset with me. After all, he was black and NOT caucasian!