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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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For all we know, this is already happening. I attended a prestigious school in which there were rumors that at least two people in my class had identified as black, and at least one professor (!), all of whom were lily white by visual inspection.

The awkward part, and probably the only real check on this behavior, is that if you check black on your application, you are auto-enrolled in the black students' orientation programs, and other students can look at you askance.

Wouldn't be too hard to argue you don't want a separate but equal orientation and you want the white people treatment implying it's better.

I think the black students' orientation is optional, prior to and in addition to the regular orientation that everyone attends. So sure, you could skip it, but the administrators are probably going to include your name and bio in the informational packet they send to everyone who is eligible.

From a cursory googling it seems to be common in Australia, at least. Looking at graduation photos for those who've received scholarships for indigenous people (e.g.), I'd say that for most of them it's impossible to tell that they're supposed to have any aboriginal ancestry at all.

In Australia, there are no widely-held rules about identifying as Aboriginal - any amount of claimed ancestry is sufficient, and plenty of Aboriginal-identifying people pass as something else, often with only the tiniest amount of Aboriginal descent. The media sometimes publishes stories about how racist it is to question the Aboriginality of fair-skinned, white-passing people.

You might ask then why everyone doesn't just tick the Aboriginal box on all forms all the time, since it can be advantageous for employment and so on. As far as I can tell it's still just the honour system, though.

The awkward part, and probably the only real check on this behavior, is that if you check black on your application, you are auto-enrolled in the black students' orientation programs, and other students can look at you askance.

this would be a great beavis and butthead skit

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