Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

“I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”

Full story.

My mother is Korean. My father is American, with his father of German and his mother of Scots-Irish descent. So, I’m some sort of half-breed mutt. People see my name, John Daub, and how “white” can you get? They hear my voice over the phone and I sound “white”. But then they see me and my physical looks contrast against those other indicators, and it’s always amusing to me to watch people have that moment of cognitive dissonance while they try to figure me out.

I’m not offended by it because I understand we’re human and we are who and what we are. I understand the contrasts, I also understand that humans like to categorize. I understand that I present contrasts and things that don’t add up. Really, I don’t get bothered by the race issue and openly joke about it because life’s too short to get caught up in it. Of course, if someone is being hurtful well, that’s different… that’s just being hurtful or being an asshole, and I don’t care for that regardless of the context, being presented based upon my race, ethnicity, or my choice in clothing.

But just like these people don’t want to check “Asian” on their forms, I joke with people who I will check whatever box you want to help you fill your quota: I can be white, I can be Asian, whatever helps you satisfy your agenda.

I also recognize that’s the problem (and it’s part of why I joke about it, in hopes of opening dialogue).

See, a lot of people don’t view the problems presented in this article as a real problem. It’s not viewed as racist because a stereotype of “being smart” doesn’t seem like a negative thing. But, as you can read in the article, it is. It causes problems. And ultimately the problem is because of forced diversity. The schools aren’t choosing the best students, they are choosing based upon a whole slew of criteria — race/ethnicity being one of them. So maybe this person isn’t as good of a student, but because they need to have people will all sorts of skin tones walking around, they’ll choose someone based upon their skin tone over someone who may not have the right skin tone but is a better student.

Is that right?

I thought we weren’t supposed to care about the color of someone’s skin? If so, then why are we?

If we’re not supposed to care about the color of someone’s skin, then we need to stop caring about the color of someone’s skin… period. Else, you’ll always have “discrimination”-based problems. And we’ll continue to be divided and have animosity.