On racial gaming – Tyler Austin Harper in NYT:

‘Nearly every college admissions tutoring job I took over the next few years would come with a version of the same behest. The Chinese and Korean kids wanted to know how to make their application materials seem less Chinese or Korean. The rich white kids wanted to know ways to seem less rich and less white. The Black kids wanted to make sure they came across as Black enough. Ditto for the Latino and Middle Eastern kids.’

Read the article here.

It reminds of me what some asylum seekers told me: I know what they want to hear and that’s what I tell them.

The results were sometimes disappointing but the principle is the same: gaming the system.
And rightly so, what else can you do?