[ExI] Well-roundedness and character

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 7:46 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for
> admissions.  Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian.  Some
> schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it.
>

### This is a topic of some interest to me, sincy my daughter who was born
last week is half-Polish and half-Han. I had to answer questions about the
race of her parents on the birth certificate and I filled her father's race
as "Other" (Polish). Her mother wrote "Asian". In retrospect this was not
the best approach. We could have both filled "Other" (Unknown).

I am thinking about identifying as African-American, or maybe Latino. After
all, if your gender is nowadays not determined by your sex chromosomes or
your genitals but by how you identify, then race, which on good authority
does not objectively exist and is a social construct, should be also open
to individual interpretation. We have Ms Dolezal, genetically Czech but
very black with the help of some heavy-duty tan cream and hair-curlers, so
why not? Getting a 200 to 400 point boost on admission to an Ivy is
definitely worth it.

I'll start filling out all forms asking for race with "Other", "Unknown"
for now but then let the events guide further interpretations. You never
know if Oceania would continue to be at war with Eastasia forever, so
flexibility may be very useful.

I am reasonably confident though that filling in "Other" (American) would
be seen as very suspect, possibly seditious and altogether racist. Failing
to mention race every five minutes is the loudest dog-whistle we have for
racists, as we all know, so saying you are American would be the
death-knell for one's chances of success in our society.

I'll get some tanning cream and give it a try.

Rafal
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200605/01e96005/attachment.htm>