Olive complexion?  I guess in Kansas, being Eye-Talian means you’re not American.

Jeebus, what a fucking asshole.

Also, “I would bet a lot of money that he did get in-state tuition, though.”

Damn right he did. The difference between in state & out of state tuition is usually huge and if your mom’s a state rep, you (probably) don’t need fucking financial aid.

Children of undocumented workers who grew up in the US, but weren’t born here, have pretty much no shot at student loans or scholarships.  Their parents live in the state and typically have been paying state taxes for years, contributing as much or more as others who are citizens, often without recompense (e.g. paying into Social Security which they can never receive).  It’s unconscionable to deny state tuition to their children.

(site is again rocking the Turtle Shack ad)

Italian, Hispanic, Greek, tanned Caucasian, Asian, light-skinned African.

“Just as long as they are white, they are precious in His sight…”  :/

My son is an American Mongrel - Celtic/English and Albanian with native American and Black heritage. He has very full lips, wide nose, olive skin, dark brown eyes and black hair.  If you have the Radical Rags ad to the lower left, that’s pretty close to what he looked like when he was a year or two younger. He looks Brazillian when with his best friend, Middle Eastern when with an Arab friend, Hispanic when with his girlfriend, and Balkan when hanging with his dad’s Albanian cousins.

His younger brother is very fair skinned and blond.

I wonder if this piece of teabag could even tell that they were as related as it is possible to be without being a twin? I doubt it.

Never mind that much of my family has been in this country for almost 400 years, and the rest have been here longer than that!

I think the real problem is how she dyes her hair so we won’t see how flaming orange it is, uses a lot of makeup to cover all her freckles and goes around drunk and picking fights all the time.  If she and her son weren’t so busy munching on potatoes and drinking Guinness they would have seen the “No Irish Need Apply” sign on the window of the financial aid office.

I love how when we point out their racism on “coded racist” statements like “states rights” or “welfare queen”, conservatives are all like “you are over using the race card, you can only use it for REAL racism.”  Then something like this comes along and they are totally silent or even go on the attack.  Remember when some teabaggers called John Lewis the n-word?  They went in total denial mode and Andrew StupidBart even bet money that nobody said it.  Look at Dr. Laura when she said the n-word, the MesSarah came to her defense and told her to “re-load.”  I think the lesson is that nobody should take the right seriously when it comes to what is and what is not racism.

@7:  I think it’s even more than that.  One has to proceed from a basic position that every right-winger is a racist on some level, and usually a very obvious or barely concealed one at that.  There is no other way to assess all their statements and make any kind of sense out of them.  Their position is that the US (“Amurrrrrika”) is for white people - and only white people who look really, really white. 

They’re not just stupid, they’re actively evil.

Here’s a hint: we could settle this whole thing by raising taxes and giving financial aid to everyone who needs it.  Racism may lie dormant (and I’d argue that it’s dying out in the younger generations), but it doesn’t flare up until the public sector shrinks to the point that the average racist starts to feel the pain.

Actively, but often banally, evil.  That is almost worse than the active evil like this woman showing being here.

9 Flora, that’s a good point but they ALWAYS feel the pain. Racist tea baggers see evil at work around every corner where people who are not white are gaining even the most measly benefits from a government program.

The economy was on a roll during the Clinton administration (for the rich and middle class anyway) but my alma mater, the University of Michigan, was still sued by two entitled people who could not believe they were denied admission and other lesser beings (i.e. black folks like me) were admitted. Shit like this (and the patriarchy) gets way worse and way more obvious during economic downturns, but it’s always there. Always.

This woman looks like and sounds like a late aunt of mine.  A woman who believed she was all white, until it came out that her mother’s father was Cherokee, a man who passed and married a white woman and blended into white society well over a century ago.  A discovery that must have come as some shock to her.

This aunt made some nasty comments about my wife’s heritage after meeting her for the first time (which she didn’t know anything about, just like the shrew from Kansas, but she could see my wife had dark skin and that was enough for her to judge a person she didn’t know at all), and that prompted us to cut off all contact with her until about a year before she died.  She missed out on knowing my beautiful and smart daughter, among many other things.

BTW, I love that Mona-Lisa-style I’m-proud-of-my-ignorance smile.  Makes me want to vomit. 

May her son fall in love with a girl with “olive complexion”, and have several beautiful kids that grandma can’t see because her son won’t allow their children to be exposed to grandma’s ignorant racist rantings…

Funny how these same eegeets complain that Harvard was being “left wing socialist” for taking PRIVATE funding and eliminating the standard financial aid in favor of a very generous income/asset based formula for undergraduate tuition, fees, and lodging.  If you make less than about 200K, you pretty much get a free ride - meaning that IF you can get in, you can afford to go to Harvard.

They don’t like meritocracies like that, though.

MikeEss, I was looking at her and thinking that she tans a bit too well and has a wide nose.

Seems Connie has a son-in-law named Walid:
http://www.connieobrien.net/meet.html
I wonder how that went over.

My son is an American Mongrel - Celtic/English and Albanian with native American and Black heritage. He has very full lips, wide nose, olive skin, dark brown eyes and black hair.  If you have the Radical Rags ad to the lower left, that’s pretty close to what he looked like when he was a year or two younger. He looks Brazillian when with his best friend, Middle Eastern when with an Arab friend, Hispanic when with his girlfriend, and Balkan when hanging with his dad’s Albanian cousins.

Sounds like my kids.  I’m pretty glow in the dark white—I like to call it “northern European mutt” and, at least on my dad’s side, my family has been on this side of the Atlantic for a good 300 years or so.  My husband is Sri Lankan Tamil, born in Jaffna, came here as a teenager for college and stayed.  Our kids can pass in all sorts of different situations.  I get asked regularly when I’m out with the boys and not their dad “what they are.”  And yeah, depending on which friends they’re with or where we’re at, they have passed for Hispanic, Arab, Indian, Native American, Greek, Ethiopian, and so on. 

But just because they’re brown doesn’t make them illegal immigrants or magically not Americans—we do come in pretty much all colors.  Unfortunately, many, many Americans, usually of the conservative variety, would disagree with that fact.

11 @serious bette: Asshats will always be with us to some extent, and it will always be right (and satisfying) to call them out.  It may not change the asshat’s mind, but by making it known that that’s unacceptable we eventually change the minds that are open to changing. 

But the average fool’s inner racist doesn’t come out except in times like these.  It’s important to keep calling racism, to expose what’s really going on, but we can’t ignore the economic decay that precipitates the racism either.

”...I was looking at her and thinking that she tans a bit too well and has a wide nose.”

I was thinking the same thing.  If she does some decent research into her ancestors, she might just find out some things that would change the whole “complexion” of her world view…

Mike Ess @18
Ms Kate @14
“...I was looking at her and thinking that she tans a bit too well and a wide nose.”

And here I was thinking that her makeup artist hated her because white women don’t have to search hard to look for foundation that matches and the line of demarcation between her neck (super tan) and face (pasty white) is ridiculous.

my alma mater, the University of Michigan, was still sued by two entitled people who could not believe they were denied admission and other lesser beings (i.e. black folks like me) were admitted.

IIRC, that effort was partly bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund, a thinly-veiled group of academic racists in upstate New York, a fact that didn’t get much (if any) coverage in the press.

And it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Ms. O’Brien has a bit of Cherokee or Iroquois in her family, a fact which would no doubt send her frantically reaching for a bottle of skin bleach.

She offered a non-apology this morning.  Typical I’m sorry if my racism offends you stuff.

Our school had a racial make-up survey this year.  I think you could mark ‘does not want to state’, but it was interesting. The kids go to a magnet school, and its original purpose was to integrate the school system, but they aren’t allowed to use race as a criterion for admission anymore.

Green-eyed eldest kid was properly indicated as ‘Hispanic’, but his younger sister, glow in the dark/Elizabethan blue white/straight from County Clare, wasn’t.

They *know* they’re siblings. I know I checked the boxes when I enrolled them. The boy doesn’t even have an olive complexion!

Anyway, don’t you all know it’s much much worse to call people out for their racism than to be racist?

Inciting racial enmity in a multiracial society is a seditious, borderline treasonable activity. I know it will never happen (at least not in the US), but it would be nice if Ms. Racist lost her citizenship for making remarks like that and was reclassified as an enemy alien, or something similarly accurate.

@15, I’m sure that Walid is a “get out of racism accusations free card” in her mind. See? I let a s—- n——- f—- my daughter!

“After all, both birtherism and this particular rant come from the same place, which is to say a belief that certain things—-financial aid, college degrees, the Presidency—-are only obtained by non-white people through fraud, or that there’s something illegitimate going on.”

I think its deeper than that. Wingnuts believe that they and ONLY they are the “producers” in both the bullshit Randian sense and the everyday go to work and pay taxes sense. So of course they don’t see the irony when THEY get welfare, medicare, free college… after all, they are the only ones who paid into it! Since non-white always cheat, pay no taxes and only leech off the producers, of course they don’t deserve anything from the Government…

Ms Kate:

I’ve always wondered how the old boys network would take Harvard’s “you get in, we pay” policy. Nice to see they’ve lived down to their reputation… good on Harvard though.

As an actual financial officer at a major state university, this idiot’s statement is even more egregious than just her equating financial aid with in-state tuition rates.

If her son (or anyone’s son or daughter) applied for federal financial aid, he got it.  It may not have been the kind or amount that he wished to get, but he got it.  Every student, repeat, every student qualifies for federal financial aid, with the exception of those who are either in default on federal student loans or who haven’t met the satisfactory academic progress standards.  Or if they indicate they are not interested in the Federal Stafford Loan and that is all they qualify for.  But every student qualifies for something, if nothing more than the student loans.

We didn’t ask the girl what nationality she was, we didn’t think that was proper. But we could tell by looking at her that she was not originally from this country.

*headdesk*

One has to proceed from a basic position that every right-winger is a racist on some level

And that every American right-winger considers himself either “white” or an <a >honorary Aryan</a>. It may take contortion worthy of a pretzel, but somehow he’ll manage it.

May her son fall in love with a girl with “olive complexion”, and have several beautiful kids that grandma can’t see because her son won’t allow their children to be exposed to grandma’s ignorant racist rantings…

Nah, grandma will promise to make a special effort to include even the “little brown ones” (to use Bush the Elder’s charming turn of phrase). In addition to being racists, right-wingers are also hypocrites to one degree or another when it serves their own purposes.

Relatedly, an article in the local newspaper today gave the names and pictures of some 16-year-olds who are in trouble for sharing a water bottle of whiskey in the school cafeteria. One of the kids has a given name of Persian origin, a family name of Arabic origin, brownish skin and dark hair. Comments on the article crow about how “she would have gotten 100 lashes in her home country,” and imply that she should get those 100 lashes now, apparently for the crime of having a Middle Eastern-sounding name and looking like a furriner. Because all them Ay-rabs want to put us under sharia law, so see how you like it, missy!

There’s no information in the article to suggest that this kid is an immigrant, that her parents are, that any of her family originally comes from a country now under Islamic theocracy, that either she or her parents are Muslim, or that either she or her parents even know anybody who wants to impose Islamic theocracy on the US. It’s just as likely that she and her parents were born in the US and are raging liberal atheists, for all the information we have.

But her name and appearance aren’t WASPy enough, so she should be punished according to some other nation’s interpretation of Islamic law, to show them Mooslims who’s boss!

*bangs head on desk* Yes, because skin tone TOTALLY tells you what country someone was born in.  It’s not like there are any second-generation Mexican immigrants or anything.

This ivory-complexioned immigrant want to kick someone’s ass right now.

As an immigrant, I just love the idea that the immigrants who got here a few generations earlier are more entitled to financial aid than those of us who got here after we were born. Because we don’t pay taxes or work or anything amirite? And of course, any immigrant that’s not pasty white is an “illegal.” Is that what they are using the brown paper bag for now, to determine “legality”? Yeah, that’s not racist or xenophobic AT ALL.

I have first-hand experience with this kind of bullshit. I was working for a nonprofit that was subcontracted to run a federal youth employment program. The program is specifically for low income youth with barriers to employment to enable them to gain work experience/training, not just for kids who want a summer job. I personally had to talk down a parent at an info session who was ranting about how her kid needed help finding a job too and he didn’t qualify, and yet there were all those other kids getting the help obviously just because their parents were immigrants blah blah. Apparently, every Latin@ is an immigrant - and this in a state where Latin@ families have lived since before there was a state. Not to mention that even documented immigrant kids have significant barriers to employment and are often living in poverty, so yes, they do need the help and they do qualify. And there’s a limited amount of funding or spots in any program like that - job readiness, financial aid, whatever - so, yes, those more in need get to go first. But, I was working, so I couldn’t say that, so instead I agreed with her that it’s super-hard for a youth to find a job and that they do need a lot of help and suggested her kid take advantage of some of our other job readiness programming. Never saw her or the kid again, as far as I know. And no, she wasn’t a representative like this assclown, but she was a state agency worker. You’d think (hope) government people would know better, but nope.

For her part, O’Brien counters that she’s been told she’s “got olive complexion” and that she’s not going to apologize until she’s “had time to think.”

Nice. Shades of Sharon Angle’s “I’ve been called the first Asian legislator” comment. See. If you say something that indicates that you have something in common with a non-white person, you automatically have a pass for any bullshit that spews from your mouth.

I just looked up the demographics for my county.  Whoa!  26% white?  That’s a whole lot of illegal immigantz!!  I mean, I just knew that almost every person I see had to be illegal.  Because, you know, they aren’t white. 

I’m from Kansas and I wondered just what part of Kansas this woman is from.  Because, while my area may be almost 100% white, there are plenty of “olive” people, due to the high population of Italians. 

SHE’S FROM KANSAS CITY.

KANSAS FUCKING CITY.

A BIG FUCKING CITY. 

HOW HAS SHE AVOIDED “ETHNIC” PEOPLE??  This is just ... fresh and new kinds of stupid.  When I thought she might be from Bumblefuck Near Colorado, well, I could understand it better.  KANSAS CITY???

Her picture looks like a dictionary definition of “smug”.

Had time to think?  Honey, the time to think is BEFORE you open your smug piehole.

Jesus Christ, this is what comes of electing people that you “relate” to.

I really think that the richest classes use racism to keep poor people down.  They frame it as a zero-sum game where there’s only enough education/money/whatever to go around for one group.  So all the groups feel like they have to fight each other for it, which really just makes forget the possibility of having enough resources for everyone.  And O’Brien has totally bought into this. 

I have a cousin who lives in a poor town that has had a failing economy since their main industry left about 40-50 years ago.  There just aren’t any jobs to go around and his only hope is to go to college and get out of that town (like my mom did a generation ago, which is why I’m not in the same place as my cousin).  But there are just no jobs for his parents either, aside from temporary part-time things.  So his only chance to escape the lowest class is to rely on government funds and grants.  And because there aren’t enough grants for everyone, it’s very easy for him to resent the people who get them.  And if they’re a different race than he is, that just makes it even easier to hate them.  He’s white Italian but because of his poorly-funded school, he is completely unaware of the history of the way Italians were treated in that area.  He doesn’t even get the irony that he’s doing to others what would have been done to him not too long ago.  His mom complained that when they were filling out some forms, that they were available in other languages.  The poor little soul had to scroll down half a page on her monitor to get to the form she needed!  And it’s really easy to snark about her doing that, but the truth is that the ruling class loves to see stuff like that.  That’s exactly their goal.  If all the poor people worked together, they might be successful at changing things.  But if they are pitted against each other, then it’s just that much easier to keep the lower class down.

Catgirl, it doesn’t help that certain programs seem to have been rather intentionally structured to fuel resentments among poor whites by awarding race+merit rather than need+merit. 

I went to college with housemates who grew up in some urban war zones, but they were gobsmacked to find out that 1) whites could be poor at all and that 2) whites could be much poorer than they were and have fewer opportunities due to rural location.

Of course the answer to this problem isn’t to deny opportunity, but to extend opportunity ... but that’s where the zero-sum game comes in as you have noted.

THIS JUST IN: the only minority members who are ever born in the US are black or asian. asians certainly never immigrate. also, no white people exist outside the united states. wtf?

Chibi, people around the Boston area are still whining that the INS/ICE cracked down on undocumented Irish immigrants after 9/11.  They speak English and Look American and ... and ... (have a cultural history of terrorism ... shhhh!)... and, well, they’re educated and hard working and Speak English ... and Pay Taxes and .... Look Like Americans ... and ... (collect “charity” money to buy and ship weapons to Ireland ... SHHHHH!) and ... Speak English and Work Hard and ...

What about native americans with a darker complexion?  Or mexican americans who have been here since before the states were?  Does she not even know why we have a state called New Mexico?

Augh.

Also, I never seem to see these ads people are talking about.  I only see the Google ads at three spots and liberal ads to the left (which don’t always load).  What is the turtle shack ad?  There is one ad that comes up with a picture of a gazebo on the beach at sunset but no text or link?

Thus, the “get government hands off my Medicare!” That, translated from wingnut to English, means, “I don’t want other people to have the same privileges I have!”

I always thought it meant “No minorities get shit until I get some of this white privilege I keep hearing about.”

Newspaper article commenters are the most vile breed of humanity, whatever color or race they are. I’ve seen more bile and ignorance in newspaper comments than I’ve ever seen on well-tended blog comments, exceeded only by YouTube comments.

Gene Weingarten (the WaPoMag humorist whose attitudes towards gender leave something to be desired, and who is rarely funny) nevertheless nailed it when he compared a substantial newspaper article with a string of vile comments to a steak served with a side of maggots.

I look Swedish. One of my sisters looks Irish, while another has typical English Rose looks. The third sister has an olive complexion, and get this, brown hair. MY SISTER IS ILLEGAL! RIGHT.

Okay, I’m confused, and for two reasons. First, it says she’s a Kansas State Legislator, but the abbreviation after her name indicates Oklahoma.

Secondly, I agree with Jayn about the whole skin color thing.  I guess Connie has never seen some of the spanish-speaking Mexicans who are descended from Germans who began emigrating there starting around 1833. Some of them have blue eyes, blond hair, and would make even Mrs. O’Brien look like a darkie by comparison.

*facepalm* oh the stupidity.

Jim, my scandinavian ancestors have always taken credit for pastiness and red hair on the british isles, fwiw.

Holy crap. First of all, this racist shitheel doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Federal financial aid consists of Stafford loans and Pell grants. Pell grants are need-based and the amount a student can receive depends on their income as reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The maximum they can receive is $5550.00 for the entire school year. Stafford loans can either be subsidized or unsubsidized (subsidized loans do not accrue interest while the student is enrolled at least half-time at any college or university). EVERYBODY qualifies for Stafford loans. The ratio of sub-to-unsub is, again, need-based. So either her son’s not an American citizen, or she’s a big fat liar. 

The Department of Education does not issue scholarships. Scholarships are awarded by schools and by individual organizations, of which there are thousands in the country.

Second, the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act specifically prevents the release of any educational records without the student’s written consent ( http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/students.html ). Through her sheer stupidity, this dumbass has just put the school on the hook for a serious lawsuit, if Olive recognizes herself and decides to pursue the case in court. It’s no different than your doctor spilling all the details of your medical treatment within earshot of another patient. It’s illegal. Schools take this kind of thing very seriously as FERPA infractions will cost them their Title IX funds.

How telling this busybody doesn’t think it’s appropriate to ask what nationality the girl is, but she’s got no problem eavesdropping on a privileged conversation. FERPA is the ONLY reason the school rep was asking for a picture ID. There are a lot of different requirements for individual scholarships, but possessing federal or state identification has never been one of them.

And you gotta love the use of the definite article… not “she had AN olive complexion” but “she had THE olive complexion.”

That’s not AN axe she’s grinding, it’s THE axe.

Bitch.

After all, both birtherism and this particular rant come from the same place, which is to say a belief that certain things—-financial aid, college degrees, the Presidency—-are only obtained by non-white people through fraud, or that there’s something illegitimate going on.

Actually, The ‘Birthers’ Began on the Left.  John Avalon uncovers

“the first Birther and finds she’s a Hillary Clinton supporter also implicated in Dan Rather’s exit from CBS.”

If you recall, right before the Iowa Caucus, while campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton, Bob Kerrey was going around saying stuff like this to the almost all-white Iowa audience:

“There is a smear campaign going on. And people are acting as if he’s an Islamic Manchurian candidate.”

“There’s this nonsense out there about him being a Muslim Manchurian candidate. He should do a commercial, look the camera straight in the eye, and say, ‘My wife Michelle and I are Christians, but my father was a Muslim and my paternal grandfather was a Muslim, and that fact and my name means I can speak to a billion people around the world…”

The beauty of smear was the plausible denialiablity.  He’s actually complimenting Obama, we are to believe. Indeed the candidate herself went ahead and said: “I know Bob. He was being very complimentary of Sen. Obama,” said Clinton.

But Ari Melber, writing in the Nation, found the smoking gun. Referring to phrase “Muslim Manchurian candidate”  he wrote:

That phrase only turns up 29 hits on Google, however, and nine of the references quote Kerrey. So very few “people are acting” or saying that - unless they’re discussing Kerrey’s sly effort to raise the line of attack

Busted.

Several explanations of “the black irish”:

genetic studies have provided new insights into the heritage of Irish people as well as their neighbours from the British Isles. Researchers suggest that migrations from Prehistoric Iberia can be viewed as the primary source for their genetic material, having demonstrated marked similarities with modern representatives of the aforementioned time period in that of the Basque people. Proponents of these findings dismiss the influence of better known historic migrations of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman invaders as having had a lesser effect on overall genetics of the populations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish

I’ve been mistaken for everything from Mulatto to Hispanic and Arab.  Eastern European with a heavy dose of Italian/Irish/Welsh.  Racism is alive and strong in the US and sadly the party of pro-business in desperate need to revitalize their base bit into the forbidden fruit of racism.  It began with Nixon’s southern strategy and came to full fruition under Reagan.  Now they’re looking 30+ years of this and we have people openly making racist remarks again. 

This kind of talk is more disturbing than anything Ron Paul may want to lie about with the Federal Reserve.  The fact she wasn’t laughed down makes it even more awkward.  Racism is picking up steam again it seems.  Funded by a political party and their propaganda machine they’re using racism as their veil to hide their pro-corporate leanings.  Essentially using abortion, racism, and muslim-bashing as their trifecta of social issues to keep bloggers and voters busy alike as they steal cash from our society.  I hate to say this but these kinds of issues really are unimportant to say cutting social programs.  I just can’t help but wonder though how long they can keep this charade up before somebody has to call them on the racism.

While there is some variation in the complexion and hair color in the British Isles and Ireland, “Black Irish” is a cover some families use for being mixed enough to have some kids come out darker than others.  Some of my redneck relatives - of the branch that made me straighten my hair when it went frizzy as a teen - call family members who look like my son or my grandmother “Black Irish”. 

Judging from where they came from and when and likely why, and a number of common family traits, “melungeon” would be more accurate.

@Comment #55: Xeranar on 02/17 at 02:44 AM

Racism is picking up steam again it seems.  Funded by a political party and their propaganda machine they’re using racism as their veil to hide their pro-corporate leanings.  Essentially using abortion, racism, and muslim-bashing as their trifecta of social issues to keep bloggers and voters busy alike as they steal cash from our society.  I hate to say this but these kinds of issues really are unimportant to say cutting social programs.

I think you’re making a couple of errors here:
1. What evidence do you have that people like Rep. O’Brien don’t believe exactly what they are saying? What if their aims are exactly as racist as they appear?
2. Why is widespread racism less important than social programs? In reality, racism in culture and racism in policy are just two manifestations of the same underlying problem.

Your point about the Federal Reserve is well-taken. You seem like you might know something about money, which is good. Now extend your understanding to the rest of the culture.

What struck me listening to the snippet was the immediate jump everyone made from “no driver’s license” to “illegal alien”. As if no one poor enough to qualify for need-based financial aid might be in a position where having a driver’s license wasn’t at the top of their list.

My son who’s a Kansas resident, born here, raised here, didn’t qualify for any financial aid. Yet this girl was going to get financial aid.

The funny thing is that the college in question seems to be the Kansas City Kansas Community College, whose in state tuition is about $1500/semester. I mean, unless you are destitute, how much financial aid are you supposed to expect from a college with costs like that? The only people who are goin to qualify for financial aid are going to be the very poor.

bad Jim @ 50:
Black Irish are people from Ireland, or whose ancestery is Irish with liberal mixing of darker celtic, welsh or spanish/moorish/german (from their brother Catholics during the battles against the English).  My fil, irish and swedish, had blondish hair as a child that turned black as he matured, he is (and his red-haired brother was) dark complected.  His sisted is very pale and had very blond (nearly white) hair long before it went very pale grey white.  Hers still lightenes even further during the summer and she doesn’t really tan.

What struck me listening to the snippet was the immediate jump everyone made from “no driver’s license” to “illegal alien”. As if no one poor enough to qualify for need-based financial aid might be in a position where having a driver’s license wasn’t at the top of their list.

Plus, the girl in question is, presumably, only 18. I know it seems unAmerican, but not every teenager rushes to get a license as soon as it’s legal. I was perfectly content to be driven around by friends and parents until I was 22, graduating from college, and really needed to drive myself.

Also, there are plenty of medical reasons for not getting a license.

My daughter didn’t bother getting her learners permit change over until she turned 21.  We only had 2 cars for a family of four and the parents got the cars for driving to work (both of us) and ferrying the kids around [mostly (70/30) dad].  We were very solidly middle class at the time (though both spouse and I were extremely poor as children).

The question isn’t why doesn’t someone have a driver’s licence but why do we use driver’s licenses as a universal form of picture ID?  There are a lot of people who do not and often should not drive for a variety of reasons - the demand that they carry a driver’s license to buy alcohol or supply ID is ridiculous.  It should be proof that you can drive a car.

This is one reason why my kids have passports.

What struck me listening to the snippet was the immediate jump everyone made from “no driver’s license” to “illegal alien”.

OMG. So when my DL expired, I became an illegal alien!

Hey…where’s all my free stuff?

OOOOOOooh, olive skin tone….well that whittles it down, lets see, she can be Jewish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Southern French, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Greek, Lebanese, Afghani, Iranian, ect. Clearly she was hispanic. OMG! But aside from her idiocy I dont know how I feel about in-state tuition either. I dont know the whole deal so I cant make heads or tails or it quite yet.

#4 SCott,
Love it! Made me laugh! What might be even scarier to him is that some of those Greeks, Italians, Portuguese and Spanish (GASP) didn’t even have to tan!!!!Some of them were born that way, like the couple on my mothers mail route. The parents are Greek immigrants who are white and their daughter is brown with brown eyes and brown curly hair!!!

#55,
LOL!Yeah I’m Italian (with one Austrian relative) and people always ask me if I’m Russian because of my green eyes? I’ve even had people tell me I have an accent, though I’m born and raised in the U.S.? I don’t think they know alot of southern Italians have green eyes.

The funny thing is that the college in question seems to be the Kansas City Kansas Community College, whose in state tuition is about $1500/semester. I mean, unless you are destitute, how much financial aid are you supposed to expect from a college with costs like that? The only people who are goin to qualify for financial aid are going to be the very poor.

Hey Tyro, the last time I checked financial aid also includes money for books, school supplies, rent, gas, insurance, utility bills, medical insurance, you know, all those things you need to take care of while you’re going to school if you’re not living with your parents, as a good percentage of community college students are. I got a full financial aid while I was going to Santa Monica College in addition to my GI Bill money which only came to $400 a month, and I was still so poor that I had to take the bus to school every day because I couldn’t afford auto insurance, or the gas it took to drive it. Even though I was living with friends, and didn’t have to pay rent, every cent I had I used to buy food for all of us, and keep myself clothed, so monies received by students are generally much greater than the total cost for just attending. Next time think before you open your mouth there, brainiac.