I haven’t followed this closely so maybe this has been covered, but I’m basically in Mark’s reader’s camp. It is creepy. The idea of checking ancestry before getting benefits sounds like a too-clever-by half measure that actually moves us in the wrong direction. In fact, I don’t get the logic of it. Since we already dole out benefits for “diversity’s” sake to Latinos and women in some circumstances, why are immigrant and blacks less deserving? Why are their children? This would make sense if racial preferences were limited entirely to black descendants of slaves and, I suppose, native Americans. But it seems to me that a kid of a Mexican immigrant who arrived ten years ago is just as deserving of racial preferences as a kid of an immigrant who arrived ten minutes ago — which is to say neither of them deserve racial preferences at all. But if we’re going to have such a system — and I emphatically do not want one — then it seems to me an American is an American is an American. Maybe there’s some fiendishly clever Trojan Horse here that Ward Connerly sees as a way of bringing down preferences generally. If that’s the case I’m all ears. But even so, it sounds like using a bad policy to undermine a bad policy.