On Thursday, a photo went viral of a student admissions chart from the University of Maryland, which depicts a bizarre new racial category for non-White students titled “Students of Color, minus Asian,” the Daily Caller reports.
The photo, shared by investigative journalist and leading opponent of Critical Race Theory Chris Rufo, depicts freshmen admission rates over the course of four years, from 2017 to 2021. At the bottom of the chart, newly-admitted freshmen are separated into two categories: “Students of Color, minus Asian,” and “White or Asian students.” Across all four years, the latter category notably made up roughly 80 percent of all admissions in every Fall semester.
“We’re at the point in the discourse when colleges have created the highly scientific and totally legitimate racial category of ‘Students of Color, minus Asian,’” Rufo sarcastically remarked on Twitter.
In response to the controversy, the University of Maryland issued a statement in which it defended maintaining these two categories, saying that the chart was meant to depict the data of students that the university considers “underrepresented.”
“During his annual State of the Campus address,” said a university spokesperson, “President Pines shared information about the demographics of the freshman class, including information about the diversity of the class. The data in this specific section of the slide refers to student populations that are considered underrepresented on our campus.”
This approach is echoed by the university’s Diversity and Inclusion Dashboard, which specifically lists its “underrepresented minority” category as consisting of “African-American/Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian.”
Asians are instead described as “other minority,” and are included with either White students or students who select the option of “multiple races.”