A tipster named Shireen alerted us to the unusual situation of 11 year old Nikita Rau, who had earned entry into a “gifted and talented” school in Brooklyn, called the Mark Twain School, or IS 239. Nikita was denied admission to the school based on the school’s archaic racial quotas, established in 1974, which require that exactly 60% of the school be white, and 40% be composed of minorities. At the time, the quota reflected the demographics of the area; today, minorities comprise more than 40% of the local population — and have little trouble getting the test scores to earn admission to the school. The 40% minimum has, over time, become a maximum quota.
The New York Post covered the story yesterday in sensationalistic terms: “NOT WHITE ENOUGH: Brilliant Girl Cheated By School Quota.” And today they follow up with a story on the Chancellor of Schools, Joel Klein, who has indicated that he supports Nikita Rau’s right to study at IS 239. (They also have a colorfully written editorial on the subject, entitled, “Cockamamie Quota”.)
Despite his opposition to the quota, Chancellor Klein has thus far declined to act, mainly because the Supreme Court is about to rule on two major desegregation cases elsewhere in the country, which could potentially vitiate federal programs aimed at achieving racial balance or diversity in primary and secondary schools. If government-enforced racial diversity is thrown out (and many commentators think it will be, given the current conservative leaning of the Supreme Court), it will be relatively straightforward to throw out the old quota in Coney Island.
Of course, one could argue that the quota at this school should just be thrown out irrespective of what the Supreme Court decides in the cases in Seattle and Louisville — simply because excluding Nikita Rau was never the intention of the judge who made the 1974 ruling that set up the quota in the first place.
Finally, it does strike me as an interesting irony that at the college level, East and South Asians are not considered “underrepresented minorities,” while in this case, Nikita Rau is clearly being defined as a “minority” student.
I’m curious to hear where readers are on this issue of quotas, desegregation, and diversity, specifically with regard to how it affects South Asian students in primary and secondary schools (K-12).
[I should also link to a couple of earlier SM posts on Affirmative Action, here and here]
I’m curious to hear where readers are on this issue of quotas, desegregation, and diversity, specifically with regard to how it affects South Asian students in primary and secondary schools (K-12).
the only area where it would affect south asians directly as an ethnic group is in parts of NJ & NY right? where else do we have the critical mass? otherwise, we’ll just little brown stars in the multiracial firmament.
I don’t get it, are you saying desi’s only live in NY/NJ?
http://tazzystar.blogspot.com/2006/08/where-my-desis-at-and-look-they-be-non.html
Secondly, Is this a public or private school?
concentration. policies obviously aren’t going to take account a group that is less than 1% of the local population.
i beleive that quotas are neccessary, but shouldn’t be determined by ethnicity, but family’s income. because there is such thing as poor indian american and rich african american families.
Shlok, I have a feeling that school systems that currently use various kinds of racial balancing/diversity systems may end up going the route you suggest — family income, rather than race — if the court rules against “desegregationism” next week.
HMF, this is a public school with selective admission (based, normally, on test scores).
And Razib, isn’t it possible that immigrant minority groups could be a factor even where they constitute only a small slice of the population? In this case, it’s not stated anywhere how much of the 40% minority quota at IS 239 is underrepresented minorities, and how much is East and South Asian students. Perhaps the Desi factor in this case might involve forcing school districts to either be more specific in how they define “minorities,” or reconsider the generalized rhetoric of “diversity” to include a greater emphasis on economic equity.
This would not be surprising if properly understood. Black and Hispanic minorities are good minorities because they underachieve to such a large extent and need government assistance. Asian minorities are a bad minority because they achieve and do it without the help of government institutions. If this is understood, then it’s easy to analayze any situation. In the case of colleges, Asians are not minorities because they crowd out Blacks and Hispanics. In the case of the above mentioned school, Asians are minorities because they crowd out Blacks and Hispanics for the 40% quota.
In the case of the above mentioned school, Asians are minorities because they crowd out Blacks and Hispanics for the 40% quota.
VC, did you see this specified anywhere, or are you just speculating on that?
We know Nikita Rau’s ethnicity, but we don’t know the ethnic background of the rest of the 40%. If you have seen the ethnic breakdown of the school specified somewhere, please help us out by giving a link. It’s entirely possible that Nikita Rau is one of very few Asian or brown students at the school.
Perhaps, while Bay Ridge was once the quintessential Italian-American hood (setting for ‘Satarday Nite Fever’), the nabe and surrounding areas have had significant Asian and Arab influx. The parents ahve hired a pretty shrewd lawyer who’s been working the color angle on the local news, so the Post can’t take full credit for its sensationalism.
It doesn’t really matter where your ethnic group has reached critical mass, any person who feels slighted because of govt mandated quotas and feels strongly enough can/will seek legal redress
Ok, so here’s the link that I’ve found for IS 239. It’s a little hard to say exactly what happened to Nikita Rau based on this data. It’s entirely possible that Nikita was kept out to make room for another minority student since the Asian/Pacific Islander percentage is higher (28.2%) than those of other minorities. But I’ll allow for the fact that this may not be the case.
http://schools.nyc.gov/Common/Templates/MainTemplate/CommonMainTemplate.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID=%7b1A54F0B2-4E2F-403B-9B23-1635240B1F52%7d&NRORIGINALURL=%2fOurSchools%2fRegion7%2fK239%2fAboutUs%2fStatistics%2fregister%2ehtm&NRCACHEHINT=Guest
From the Post article:
What going on here? Are Asians bringing up the curve? Why wouldn’t the Chancellor scrap standards where black and hispanics have to score higher than whites. Am i missing something?
The Supreme Court’s decision regarding the racial assignment plans of two public school districts should be issued tomorrow. The plans at issue concern the use of race as a tie-breaker in assigning students to “over-subscribed” public schools. Several legal commentators have suggested, based on whether the Justices have already authored opinions in certain cases from this term, that the Chief Justice will be writing the opinion in these two cases. As a result, one may expect the circuit court rulings in favor of the school districts to be reversed, and that the Chief Justice’s opinion to be based on narrow grounds in order to command a majority and for the Court to speak (as much as possible) with one voice.
Well, Coney Island reaffirms how unfashionable it is by declaring brown the new black.
I am opposed to affirmative action in all its form.
Personally, I prefer passive-aggression. But do whatever you think works for you.
Sirc, the Chancellor appears to be waiting for the Supreme Court decision. I agree with you that he should act independently of the Supreme Court, and do what is right. As Dave’s helpful comment #11 suggests, the ruling that’s probably coming down tomorrow may not speak directly to this precise case. The Louisville and Seattle cases are about racial criteria in over-subscribed regular schools; this is a case of a quota in a “special” school.
Unless Roberts declares the whole principle of diversity dead (he might), the decision might still leave some ambiguity about the policies at IS 239.
Oye Rahula, kabhi serious bhi ho ja, yaara!
Then you should be opposed to the plethora of white recipients who’ve received more “affirmative action” benefits than anyone else in the US.
I think there is something postive in having such quotas –obviously not for some like Nikita. This is a school for the gifted and perhaps a different issue to a normal school.
In UK many schools have a near 90%+ asian kids and in some they are of the same religion. This type of quotas would be welcome in these areas. Perhaps a better mix of colours and even religion might help us get along with each other. It would mean that some kids would have to travel far to attend but Im sure would be worth it.
Sorry, Amitabh, but I’ve nothing useful to contribute, and a long night of work contributes to excessive punchiness 🙂
Seriously, what I’m curious about is how much leeway do local administrators and chancellors have in practice, and how that interacts with court orders. Specifically, one of the articles seems to indicate that the chancellor has the power to override this decision. What is the meaning of a court order then?
Wait a gosh darn okkaly dokkaly minute. When the same reason is used to support AA in the states, as to combat the large white-dominated everything-industry, for example, it’s met with scorn and disdain that it’s ‘reverse-racist’, ‘anti-American’ and ‘against everything MLK stood for!’
But when it’s to combat an Asian majority, all of a sudden it’s a social service?!?!
From the NY Sun: “I think probably that court order is no longer necessary,” Mr. Klein said at a press conference yesterday. He stopped short of taking any action, saying he will wait for a U.S. Supreme Court decision due this week. Rau’s lawyer: If the justices deem considerations of race unconstitutional, Ms. Arnold said she will ask the court that first handed down the decision to vacate it.
But she vowed to fight the decision even if the court defends race considerations. She said she would argue that Mark Twain’s current quotas are antiquated and do not match the district’s actual makeup.
well all I know is that I’m going to have trouble getting into med school just because I’m brown, despite not really ever being connected to the medical community either through my cultural community or my family. my race has nothing to do with my ability or inability to be a doctor and i’ve taken to calling myself Bangladeshi as opposed to Indian (don’t worry, I’m at least bengali) on the central application to see what difference it might make, seeing as I really have no choice but to play their game
ehhh..Sorry about the formatting/unnecessary bolding..I meant to blockquote to indicate quotes
This is an interesting tidbit. I read a book a few years ago about the recruitment process for college admissions among elite universities and liberal arts colleges that was written by a career counselor for a private high school (the name escapes me today). Anyway, one of the students that was profiled was Asian student (I think Chinese-American) from Palo Alto who was trying to get into an Ivy League. She was rejected from several elite schools. The interesting thing was that her grades, extracurricular activities and test scores were comprable to students of other ethnicities that were admitted to the schools that rejected her. In fact, she was more impressive than some of the other students profiled. One of the possible theories as to why she was rejected was that she was not held to the standard of all applicants, but was held instead to a standard of applicants in her demographic. The theory was that she had to perform better than other Asian students in order to get in and that performing better than the general pool of applicants was not enough.
I don’t know where I stand on affirmative action. I think it is good in that it can operate to rectify past discrimination (which was its original purpose), but when the quotas from another time are rigidly adhered to, the end result is that some really qualified students are systematically excluded from specialty programs. If schools are going to adhere to quotas, they need to appreciate that demographic groups and their respective needs will fluctuate with time and the quotas need to be adapted. Perhaps for this reason, socio-economic criteria rather than race is a better measurement.
Shlok in #4, Amardeep in #5
An economic and need based form of affirmative action is something some of us have been trying to advocate for the reservation system in India for sometime now. Oft given explanations include
Caste based discrimination affects even those who are relatively not poor.
A person of a particular caste even if not economically poor when given such an opportunity will later act as a seed (in the form of encouragement, economic and other forms of support) to promote such development in his own caste.
Even if someone is economically well to do, the support structure for education in backward castes in terms of the community and within the home is discouraging or at least inadequate.
Plus there is the politics of it all which does not allow it to happen in India.
I think these issues will be quite relevant to even race based affirmative action in the US.One thing that matters more here and is something never considered in India is disparity which may tilts the equation towards race based affirmative action in the US even more.
coney island is mostly black and puerto rican. I don’t think it was 60% white in 1974. It was crazy in 1974 and throughout the 80s and still mostly black and puerto rican back then, at least as far back as early 80s. Desegregation is not about making the schools mirror the community in which they are, but the exact opposite — hence the boston riots of the same year when black kids got bused into mostly white south boston. Desegregation says even if the neighborhoods are segregated, as they are, let’s mix up the schools through busing, presumably so the kids won’t grow up to be the racist gorillas that their parents are.
South asians in NYC, especially bengalis from bangladesh, don’t share that high income/high education demographic profile that many south asians in other parts of the US have, including much of NJ, and this might account for and justify their status as “underrepresented” minority, though I don’t know if that’s the case here, and most south asians (except, interestingly enough guyanese and trinis) don’t qualify for lots of “minority” scholarships.
Mark Twain is public (as is any school that begins with PS or IS (public school/Intermediate school).
If I recall, the first chapter of Dinesh D’Souza’s illiberal education tells the story of a similar case, i think involving berkely. california did indeed compare applicants only to other members of their ethnic group, essentially giving whites preferential treatment over asians, as is happening now at Mark Twain. SCOTUS eventually declared the admissions program unconstitutional as they surely will in regards to Mark Twain if it gets that far.
The two cases before the Supreme Court will likely address quotas. For example, the circuit court in the Parents case held that:
From the dissenting opinion:
For those interested, the circuit court’s opinion in the Parents case is available here in .pdf format. The opinion in the companion case is available here also in .pdf format.
I don’t expect this little girl to get much sympathy from SASA type organizations. Most are are pro-affirmative action despite the fact that it does not benefit the desi community.I expect any support that she does receive from desi “progressives” to be along the lines that the quota allocation should be changed to reflect current demographics rather than questioning raced based preferences altogether
strangely, i admire the sasa type organizations for their stand on principle, as opposed to whatever happens to benefit desis. just because a policy results in a particular group being under-represented, doesn’t make it unfair.
Listen! African-Americans have been the most disadvantaged. Have you heard of a poor Indian in America? Indians are NOT a disadvantaged minority.
The best thing to do is do away with all quotas. Unfortunately, this country has an ugly past history of racism, so there would be a lot of fierce opposition from certain quotas. Then again, I wonder whether, in 200 or 300 years, these same groups which claim to be on the bottom rung of every performance marker because of discrimination, will cite racism as the excuse?
*From certain quarters, excuse me.
Manju- My point is that it is odd for groups to form based on ethnicity, rally vocally when second rate academics of the same ethnicity don’t get tenure but then pursue policies that make it harder for “co-ethnics” to gain admission.
From the New York Post article:
“Maybe you should have worked harder and got an 85”
How many of y’all have parents who would say that? I can think of atleast 1 Mr and Mrs XYZ who would.
So this is the Mutiny on vacation? 🙂
School Desegregation and Affirmative Action are different things, and are occasionally in short-term conflict, though supposedly subserving the same long term goal. (Although in the literal sense, one is acting affirmatively to enforce both, AA now connotes mainly the college-level and workplace actions to reduce and eliminate educational and job discrimination. And while AA was sold as a means of correcting past discrimination – really, given that prejudice and discrimination are continuing facts of life, it should be here to stay, with continual refinement of the socio-economic criteria for obtaining preferences or qualifying for quotas. The free-market, to say nothing of humans, is imperfect, and this is a way of correcting the imperfections that human prejudice brings). Desegregation is related to AA in that, a desegregated grade school environment, it was thought, would contribute to a lessening of the adult prejudice that made AA necessary.
The earlier minimum but now ‘maximum’ of 40% is exactly what you would want if the goal is to ‘desegregate’ schools. The idea is not to have a majority brown-black school, even if that mirrors local demographics. Otherwise, the school is still in effect segregated. Another way of looking at it is that the school district is mandating a minimum white representation in that school, and so relaxing school standards for whites. In other words, the AA in this school here is for the whites, so that the school does not become majority black-brown.
There are other interesting issues here – the parents seem to feel that this decision (age 11) would impact her Harvard-Princeton-Yale chances – really? I have trouble believing that. And even if it did, is that really the end of the world? (No). The article does note another ‘talented and gifted’ school in the same district that Nikita could attend. It’s not clear why that’s not good enough. The other interesting issue is whether the very process of tracking students and differentially allocating resources to schools – and thus creating ‘talented and gifted’ schools – is not in itself so discriminatory in impact that it should be given up in favor of a more equitable distribution of resources to schools and districts, and let the kids sort themselves out in high school.
TOTALLY UNRELATED TO THE POST BUT
i just wanted to stop by and say “hi” and i fucken luv your blog. i can’t believe i haven’t heard of it before. i eat brown intellectual blogs for breakfast!
thank you for doing your thing, a fan j.f. bennett
Don’t blame the AA blame the white man on that ,maybe if more minorities stuck together it would be a different story. Apathy kills.
“Black people yelling racism, white people yelling reverse racism, chinese people yelling sideways-racism. And the Indians ain’t yelling shit cuz they dead. Don’t nobody have it worse than the American Indian, everyone needs to just calm the fuck down.” -Chris Rock
the school’s a public magnet school.
Shortly after I graduated from my public magnet high school (that required a college-like admissions process), the school turned towards affirmative action and put aside it’s purely merit-based system. My class of 420 had about 8 black people, and 20 hispanic people, most of which weren’t quite the underpriviledged types. The rest were your standard intelligent asian or white suburban kid (everyone at the school was intelligent). In response to the affirmative action, the alumni, students and parents went ballistic. That system didn’t even use racial quotas, even though racial quotas was the obvious stupid goal. Instead, it used “regional” quotas for various parts of the county that fed into the school. I -believe-, but I’m not sure, that the school’s since gone back on some of the stuff it tried to do since then. I think instead the school board decided to offer free admissions-test lessons and stuff like that. Not too bad.
The fact that this isnt just any old public school is very important. This is a school that you apply to. This is a school where everyone around you is smart, intelligent. Everyone will go to a top-50 college. There will be your usual sex and drugs, but there are no idiots that throw their life and potential away. Peer pressure is awesome there. What sort of diversity do you want there, keeping in mind that most of this environment is only possible due to the objective nature of the admissions process?
“If we make it to 300 years from now, there’s not going to be any more white people, there’s not going to be any more black people. Everybody’s going to be BEIGE. The whole world’s mixing. Eventually we’re all going to become some sort of hybrid mix of Chinese & Indian. They’re the two largest populations in the world. So you can run from us now….” RUSSELL PETERS
The sooner these schools realize it & change their racial quotas…the better!
fwiw, New York has for years had a huge white flight problem in the public schools, so it’s not impossible that the quota was set years ago in an attempt to keep the school from being majority-minority (which is to say, sadly, in our school system, dumped).
This does sound odd to me, because the elementary school my kid went to was about 20% white, and the middle school she’s going to is predominantly asian.
Coney Island, sadly, is a strange place.
It’s a great mystery to me how people, white-identified or non-white identified can actually be constrained by racial quotas in America, because with the exception of racial profiling by police officers, race is based on momentary self-identification in America. As far as I can tell (and I have a law degree from a top 5 American law school) there’s nothing stopping Nikita Rau from situationally identifying as white so as to bypass the minority-restrictive quota. And then situationally changing her mind and identifying as south asian or something else in a different context when that’s more in her interest. Of course, that doesn’t work for racial profiling by police officers (and who knows what brown racial group they’d profile her as) but it seems to me that it would work for the purpose of checking of racial self-identification boxes when applying to schools.
Yes, I have known some poor working-class Indians in America. Spend some time in New Jersey or Queens. And some of my friends have gone through horrific ordeals, because of individual racists, institutional racism and of course post-9/11 government profiling. Brown immigrants in the US are disadvantaged minorities, even if that disadvantage takes different forms than the oppression faced by African Americans and Native Americans (and gay Americans, for that matter). The key is whether oppressed groups can learn to work together in solidarity, instead of fighting each other for scraps from the table… none of us are going to be free unless all of us are.
Now thats what I am trying to say Sarah. Let’s stick together and stop the BS.
Looks like the Supreme Court has just ruled against this sort of thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/us/28cnd-scotus.html?hp
This is nonsense. Race has always been a social phenomenon, if she checked white because happened to be shopping at the Gap for 3 hours that day, the moment she walked on the school premises, not a single person would identify her that way. Secondly, there’s no way of knowing which race is “beneficial” pre-emptively, given her score.
my first take on this mornings scotus decision is that klein should immediately go to the courts and ask that the order imposing racial quotas be dropped, as it is clearly illegal, and restore rau’s constitutional rights by admitting her. this is a no-brainer.
although today’s decision was a victory for a race-neutral and individual (as opposed to group) rights interpretation of the constitution, it is worth noting that the “diversity” exception, first put forth by justice powell in bakke, remains…although it is very narrow. i gather that kennedy’s opinion, like powells, is the controlling one, and in it he re-affirms the belief that race can be taken into account as long as it is one of many factors and as long as it is done for the purpose of diversity. although the diversity exception is a minority view, it ironically becomes the rule of law since it is part of a majority ruling. (i hope that made sense).
please note that the way powell and kennedy are using diversity is very different from mlk’s shackled runner metaphor or any view of AA to help the disadvantaged. It fact, i would argue that their view of AA is meant to help whites, since they are the ones who would presumably benefit from a diversity of backgrounds inhabiting their campus and classrooms. it is very narrow, and obviously only applies to classrooms (as opposed to the workplace) where a learning environment may be made arguably better by a diversity of backgrounds being present.
i think, in the past, left-leaning admissions officers ran with the bakke diversity exception as a way to get lesser qualified racial minorities admitted at the expense of the individuals right to equal protection, and scotus has consistently since reeled that in.
HMF, what Dave says is true. You are confusing the use of race by administrators with how it plays out in daily life. Check out this New York Times article from a while ago.
April 12, 2006 The DNA Age Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests By AMY HARMON
Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.
The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.
“Naturally when you’re applying to college you’re looking at how your genetic status might help you,” said Mr. Moldawer, who knows that the twins’ birth parents are white, but has little information about their extended family. “I have three kids going now, and you can bet that any advantage we can take we will.”
Genetic tests, once obscure tools for scientists, have begun to influence everyday lives in many ways. The tests are reshaping people’s sense of themselves — where they came from, why they behave as they do, what disease might be coming their way.
It may be only natural then that ethnic ancestry tests, one of the first commercial products to emerge from the genetic revolution, are spurring a thorough exploration of the question, What is in it for me?
Many scientists criticize the ethnic ancestry tests as promising more than they can deliver. The legacy of an ancestor several generations back may be too diluted to show up. And the tests have a margin of error, so results showing a small amount of ancestry from one continent may not actually mean someone has any.
Given the tests’ speculative nature, it seems unlikely that colleges, governments and other institutions will embrace them. But that has not stopped many test-takers from adopting new DNA-based ethnicities — and a sense of entitlement to the privileges typically reserved for them.
Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights.
One Christian is using the test to claim Jewish genetic ancestry and to demand Israeli citizenship, and Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.
“This is not just somebody’s desire to go find out whether their grandfather is Polish,” said Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York University who has studied the social impact of the tests. “It’s about access to money and power.”
Driving the pursuit of genetic bounty are start-up testing companies with names like DNA Tribes and Ethnoancestry. For $99 to $250, they promise to satisfy the human hunger to learn about one’s origins — and sometimes much more. On its Web site, a leader in this cottage industry, DNA Print Genomics, once urged people to use it “whether your goal is to validate your eligibility for race-based college admissions or government entitlements.”
Tony Frudakis, the research director at DNAPrint, said the three-year-old company had coined the term American Indian Princess Syndrome to describe the insistent pursuit of Indian roots among many newly minted genetic genealogists. If the tests fail to turn up any, Mr. Frudakis added, “this type of customer is frequently quite angry.”
DNAPrint calls the ethnic ancestry tests “recreational genomics” to distinguish them from the more serious medical and forensic applications of genetics. But as they ignite a debate over a variety of genetic birthrights, their impact may be further-reaching than anyone anticipated.
Some social critics fear that the tests could undermine programs meant to compensate those legitimately disadvantaged because of their race. Others say they highlight an underlying problem with labeling people by race in an increasingly multiracial society.
“If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they haven’t experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is supposed to remedy,” said Lester Monts, senior vice provost for student affairs at the University of Michigan, which won the right to use race as a factor in admissions in a 2003 Supreme Court decision.
Still, Michigan, like most other universities, relies on how students choose to describe themselves on admissions applications when assigning racial preferences.
Ashley Klett’s younger sister marked the “Asian” box on her college applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European.
Whether it mattered they do not know, but she did get into the college of her choice.
“And they gave her a scholarship,” Ashley said.
Pearl Duncan has grander ambitions: she wants a castle.
A descendant of Jamaican slaves, Ms. Duncan had already identified the Scottish slave owner who was her mother’s great-great-grandfather through archival records. But the DNA test confirming her 10 percent British Isles ancestry gave her the nerve to contact the Scottish cousins who had built an oil company with his fortune.
“It’s one thing to feel satisfied to know something about your heritage, it’s another to claim it,” said Ms. Duncan, a writer in Manhattan. “There’s a kind of checkmateness to the DNA.”
The family’s 11 castles, Ms. Duncan noted, were obtained with the proceeds of her African ancestors’ labor. Perhaps they could spare one for her great-great-great-grandfather’s black heirs? In case the paper records she had gathered were not persuasive, she invited male family members to take a DNA test that can identify a genetic signature passed from father to son. So far, no one has taken her up on the offer. Her appeal, Ms. Duncan said, is mostly playful. Less so is her insistence that the Scots stop referring to their common ancestors as simply “Virginia and West India merchants.”
“By acknowledging me, the Scots are beginning to acknowledge that these guys were slaveholders,” she said.
Other slave descendants, known as the Freedmen, see DNA as bolstering their demand to be reinstated as members of the Indian tribes that once owned their ancestors. Under a treaty with the United States, the “Five Civilized Tribes” — Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles and Cherokees — freed their African slaves and in most cases made them citizens in the mid-1800’s. More recently, the tribes have sought to exclude the slaves’ descendants, depriving them of health benefits and other services.
At a meeting in South Coffeyville, Okla., last month, members of the Freedmen argued that DNA results revealing their Indian ancestry underscore the racism of the tribe’s position that their ancestors were never true Indians.
“Here’s this DNA test that says yes, these people can establish some degree of Indian blood,” said Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee Freedwoman who is suing for tribal citizenship in federal court. “It’s important to combat those who want to oppress people of African descent in their own tribe.”
As the assets of some tribes have swelled in the wake of the 1988 federal law allowing them to build casinos, there has been no shortage of petitioners stepping forward to assert their right to citizenship and a share of the wealth. Now, many of them are wielding genetic ancestry tests to bolster their claim.
“It used to be ‘someone said my grandmother was an Indian,’ ” says Joyce Walker, the enrollment clerk who regularly turns away DNA petitioners for the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, which operates the lucrative Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. “Now it’s ‘my DNA says my grandmother was an Indian.’ “
Recognizing the validity of DNA ancestry tests, some Indians say, would undermine tribal sovereignty. They say membership requires meeting the criteria in a tribe’s constitution, which often requires documenting blood ties to a specific tribal member. DNA tests cannot pinpoint to which tribe an individual’s ancestor belonged.
But if tribes are perceived as blocking legitimate DNA applicants to limit payouts of casino money, experts say, it could damage their standing to enforce the treaties conferring the financial benefits so many covet.
“Ancestry DNA tests are playing a part in the evolution of what the American public thinks matters,” said Kim Tallbear, an American Indian studies professor at Arizona State University. “And tribes are dependent on the American public’s good will, so they may have to bend.”
Under no such pressure, Israeli authorities have so far denied John Haedrich what he calls his genetic birthright to citizenship without converting to Judaism. Under Israel’s “law of return,” only Jews may immigrate to Israel without special dispensation.
Mr. Haedrich, a nursing home director who was raised a Christian, found through a DNA ancestry test that he bears a genetic signature commonly found among Jews. He says his European ancestors may have hidden their faith for fear of persecution.
Rabbis, too, have disavowed the claim: “DNA, schmeeNA,” Mr. Haedrich, 44, said the rabbi at a local synagogue in Los Angeles told him when he called to discuss it.
Undeterred, Mr. Haedrich has hired a lawyer to sue the Israeli government. As in America, he argues, DNA is widely accepted as evidence in forensics and paternity cases, so why not immigration?
“Because I was raised a gentile does not change the fact that I am,” Mr. Haedrich wrote in a full-page advertisement in The Jerusalem Post, “a Jew by birth.”
Shonda Brinson, an African-American college student, is still trying to figure out how best to apply her DNA results on employment forms.
In some cases, she has chosen to write in her actual statistics — 89 percent sub-Saharan African, 6 percent European and 5 percent East Asian. But she figures her best bet may be just checking all relevant boxes.
“That way, of the three categories they won’t be able to determine which percentage is bigger,” Ms. Brinson said.
The whole concept of Affirmative Action is unfair at the individual level.
What I really can’t understand is how people think that it ‘rectifies’ the discrimination of the past!!
Isn’t it true that it was one set of people who were discriminated against, and a whole different set of people who are claiming it’s benefits?? Also how do you acertain that a set B are the descendants of set A who were discriminated against, and set D descended from set C who did the discrimination?
It’s appaling how even educated people (even Desis, who’re actually hurt by it) make these pathetic claims of ‘rectification’ to justify such a socialist concept.