As I complete my applications to various graduate school programs, once again I encounter a question I recall seeing on every single college application I filled out four years ago—the race/ethnicity question. Here it is again, on all the graduate school applications, including the one for Minnesota State University Mankato’s school counseling program: “Please describe yourself (for statistical purposes only).” Racial/ethnic choices are provided along with boxes to check. The choices are American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or Other Pacific Islands, or a person having origins in any of the original people of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. What box should I check? The problem is that I don’t think that any of these choices clearly apply to me. This particular application doesn’t even provide the box I usually check, “Other, please specify.”
Since checking “Other” is not an option, I suppose I could check the box for the original people of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, but that category does not really describe my origins. I am a Roma, commonly called Gypsy, from Romania. My birth parents adopted me from an orphanage there when I was eight months old and brought me to the United States where I have lived a comfortable middle class existence in a white family. In Romania, the Roma are an ethnic/racial minority that suffers much discrimination. Although legally the Roma are supposed to enjoy full rights as Romanian citizens, many do not get the chance for even a basic education. As someone who, I’m told, looks “ethnic,” I often get my picture taken whenever an organization or group wants to show its diversity. When I tell people I am from Romania, I often hear “you don’t look like you are from Romania.” People usually think I am from Latin America or India.
I suppose I could check that “Asian” box, but this would require me to weigh in on the validity of recent DNA research that suggests that the Roma may have left the part of the world that is now India many centuries ago, for reasons history has lost and traveled to Romania and many other places around the world. But when or how my ancestors got to Romania, and with whom they may have interbred along the way remains a mystery I will probably never solve. It makes checking a box on an application a very complex question with no clear answer.
I miss that “Other” box, because it best describes my experiences with race and ethnicity in the American educational system. In this country, I am an “Other.” The first time I remember feeling like an “Other” was when I was in the second grade. Our teacher asked us to draw pictures of ourselves and our classmates. My classmate Heather drew a picture of me and colored it with her black crayon. Even at age seven, I realized that although my skin wasn’t black any more than Heather’s was white, I knew that I looked different from the rest. I was not African-American, or Hispanic, or Asian or Native American, but even little Heather figured out that I looked different, and to her, that difference was racial, and to her seven-year-old way of thinking, that meant black. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black, but black doesn’t describe my color at all. Nor does it describe the skin color of most African Americans. I think Heather could have used some of these crayons, not found in my second grade classroom, but which are now widely available.
The kinds of discrimination I have experienced as a Roma in U.S. educational system are more personal than institutional, and they mostly involve people making assumptions about me and my background based on how I look. Yes, I had that high school guidance counselor Newman described who tried to steer me away from the hard International Baccalaureate program, but I did not listen to her (Newman, p. 353). I can also say that it is enlightening to be the target of personal discrimination based on looking like someone from another racial or ethnic group to which I don’t belong! My experiences with that phenomenon must surely prove that race is a social construct and not a biological one! I can relate to Newman’s assertion that racial categories are not natural biological groupings, but instead are the shared experience of identifying and being identified by others as members of a particular racial group, even when other people get it wrong (Newman, p. 340).
When I am lucky enough to have an “Other” box to check on a form, “please specify” becomes a tricky question too. If I indicate “Roma,” not many people know what that means. If I use the more commonly recognized term “Gypsy,” that term carries negative stereotypes having nothing to do with my life or the life of most Roma. No, I don’t live in a caravan, pick pockets, or tell fortunes, and neither did anyone in my birth family, as far as I know. Still, I can’t just ignore that question. Although I didn’t grow up in the Roma culture and don’t really know much about it, I am proud to be a surviving member of an ethnic group that has endured centuries of struggle. I am a survivor too - of malnutrition, poor medical care and neglect in my Romanian orphanage.
As I close my eyes and stab at a box on the MSU graduate school application, I have to wonder what difference it makes. Why is this question even here? The application says that the ethnic/racial information requested will not influence acceptance decisions. According to Newman, a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred the use of race in school desegregation plans and the recent attacks on affirmative action described in our textbook have resulted in several states passing laws banning race-based affirmative action in college admissions as well as employment (Newman, p. 375-76). MSU’s application says it collects this information "for statistical purposes." But if the institution is not going to use the data to make decisions, what is it for? If its purpose is really just statistical, I worry that by checking one of the available boxes, I might skew the count of a group to which I don’t belong. If the school is trying to determine if there are underrepresented groups in its student population, my group, the Roma, are probably not even identified by anyone as an “underrepresented group” in education in the United States. It is hard to find any information on how many of us there even are, let alone how many of us make it to college.
In writing this comment, I wondered how others feel about not fitting cleanly into a box on a college or university application form. It seems I am not alone. Here are a couple of interesting links describing others’ experiences with checking boxes. These two links are about Middle Eastern applicants who have pushed the California higher education system to include more boxes to distinguish among many subgroups:
The following link is about the challenges faced by biracial and multiracial college applicants to balance their desire to present a full picture of their ethnicity and still obtain whatever admission advantage that might apply to applicants who claim one of their ethnic/racial backgrounds. It also presents a good discussion of the problems faced by colleges in sorting out the wide variety of racial/ethnicity considerations in their admission decisions. It is not easy for anyone.
I hope to continue to learn more about my Roma background as I pursue my education in a master’s degree program. I also want to learn more about the social causes and manifestations of racial and ethnic discrimination. Perhaps in some small way I can use my education to help bring about the day when no one feels compelled to ask the ethnicity question because there remain no “underrepresented groups” left to self-identify. Even better, maybe someday the United States will become the “post-racial” society Newman says some thought we might have entered after Barack Obama’s election where traditional racial categories no longer matter (Newman, p. 336). Until then, however, you’ll find me struggling to check the right box!
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