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Dear Prudence,
My Hispanic surname is from my adoptive, now deceased, father. Since childhood I was told I was Hispanic. And unlike my blue-eyed, sandy-haired mother, I have dark hair and dark eyes and look Hispanic. This is the ethnicity that’s been checked off for me on all school and other forms. My parents always told me this might give me an edge for college admissions or some government jobs. I have recently found out I’m not Hispanic. My mother told me my biological father was Mediterranean, maybe Armenian. I make good grades and was accepted into a good college on my own merits. I’ve been offered a substantial financial scholarship available only for Hispanic students. Is it ethical to take it?
—Latin Not
Dear Not,
There is one essential criteria people must meet in order to be considered Hispanic by the U.S. Census Bureau: That’s what they say they are. You were raised by a Hispanic father and have his last name. For most of your life you identified yourself as Hispanic. On your behalf the “Hispanic” box was checked on the relevant forms. If you want to shed your Hispanic identity, of course you are free to do so. But given your last name, people will still assume that’s what you are, even if you are no longer checking the appropriate boxes. This Pew Hispanic Center report shows just how squishy and variable the term “Hispanic” is. I’m confident your college is thrilled to include you in their count of Hispanic students and doesn’t really want to know you may be thinking of yourself as Armenian. Given the price of tuition, a substantial scholarship is a blessing and you should claim it with equanimity. Let’s say you were applying to a school your adoptive father had attended that gave a leg up to children of alumni. Even though he wasn’t your biological father, no one would dispute your right to that benefit. Maybe, too, you are selling short his legacy as a part of your identity by only looking at it as a way to gain an advantage. There are companies that take a DNA sample from a cheek swab and say they can tell whether you were descended from Genghis Khan.* These tests can indicate where your forebears may have lived, but the results also illustrate just how ambiguous this information is. It’s possible your biological father’s Mediterranean ancestors even paused for a time in Spain. Sadly, your adoptive father is no longer here to cheer your accomplishments, but he surely would have been proud to know you will use your scholarship money well.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence: Dog Owner in Mourning
Dear Prudence,
Twelve years ago when I was a 14-year-old girl, my parents sent me to a tutor to improve my grades. The tutor was a man in his 30s. One evening he stood up, closed the blinds, and locked the door. He moved his chair next to mine, grabbed my hand and began stroking it. He didn’t let go when I tried to pull away, and told me to focus on my work so that he could focus on what he was examining. After our session ended I told no one. But I convinced my parents to let me stop attending his classes, and rationalized that I had overinterpreted his actions. Then last month a teenager I mentor mentioned that a friend of hers had a tutor—this man!—who tricked her into getting into his car. He drove her to the mountains to “enjoy the sights” while he commented on her looks. I also heard that another girl had been hit on by him. As far as I know, none of this has been reported to the police. I’m unsure how to proceed. I don’t want to approach these other victims directly. I’m afraid that if I tell the police what happened to me they’ll say it was too long ago, there’s no evidence, or what happened wasn’t inappropriate. However, these recent events make me feel sick that this predator is still out there. What should I do?
—Distressed
Dear Distressed,
Please report him to the authorities—the police, the prosecutor’s office, or both. It could be that someone has a file of a few creepy incidents, such as the ones you describe, that have been collected over the years. It may be that each event hasn’t risen to the level of being actionable, but your information could be galvanizing, particularly since attitudes about what crosses the line have changed since you were his student. Think of how many girls since you have felt a chill up their spine when he flipped the blinds and closed and locked the door. This predator may think he has been careful to keep just to the right side of the law, but the episodes you describe could possibly constitute false imprisonment or kidnapping. Tell the police or prosecutor that you were moved to act because you just heard of two girls who were recently preyed upon. Say that you don’t know them, but do have their names and you need some guidance about revealing this information. It may be that you will want to let the teenager who told you about her friend know that you contacted law enforcement regarding the tutor. You can explain a similar thing happened to you and it’s time for action to be taken against him. What a malign manipulator he is, knowing how to gain girls’ trust, exploiting it, and then leaving girls, like you at the time, wondering if they somehow did something wrong or misunderstood what was happening. Imagine how many victims might come forward if he’s finally caught.
—Prudie
Dear Prudie,
Thomas, my good friend of over 10 years, is getting married shortly, and I was excited to attend with my significant other. Then he called and professed his love for me, rather than for his soon-to-be bride. I laughed it off as if it was a joke. (It wasn’t.) Thomas and I have never been more than friends. I have never given him a reason to believe otherwise, and while I’m not close to his fiancée, I like her a lot and think they make a great couple. Should I tell her, even though I really don’t want to? Should I even attend the wedding?
—Baffled Guest
Dear Baffled,
Your friend Thomas is not the only person to walk down the aisle thinking that life would be a lot more fun if the ring were going on the finger of someone other than their intended. Feeling this way is obviously an inauspicious start to a marriage, but I’m not sure it’s a certain disaster in the making. It could be that when facing what should be a death-do-us-part decision, other unexplored possibilities start to appear more bright. Now that Thomas is on the cusp of not being able to turn back, he’s reviewing a decade of declarations to you left unsaid, of passes never made, and he finally needed to find out if you might have been feeling the same way all these years. That you treated his revelation as a punch line to a bizarre joke let him know where he stands. That may allow him to proceed, finally, with some peace. Don’t say anything to his fiancée, and quietly take your seat at the ceremony. If, at the last moment, he jilts the poor woman, at least you will be one person in attendance who knows why.
Dear Prudence,
I have a wonderful girlfriend of almost a year. Everything in our relationship has been amazing, but I’m hung up on what is probably an insignificant little detail. When we started sleeping together I learned that she wears “enhancing” undergarments, so she’s not as well-endowed as she appears. This sounds shallow, but it was kind of disappointing. I would feel a lot better about this if she would hang up the Wonderbra in favor of more honest attire, but I don’t want her to feel self-conscious, or that I’m only interested in her breasts. Is this something I can bring up, or do I just need to get used to it?
—Underwhelmed
Dear Underwhelmed,
Louis C.K. has a riff at the end of Hilarious about how when women get to assess the endowment of their prospective male bedmate, they’re generally already in bed, and women are so nice that they rarely comment on the inadequacy of the wares. The last time I went undergarment shopping I discovered a stack of water bras. I did wonder what went through a guy’s mind once he unfastened one of these things only to discover an aquarium’s worth of assets was coming off. But it’s generally true that the unfastening is its own reward. Your girlfriend may also enhance her eyelashes with mascara and her hair with highlights. But you’re hardly going to tell her it would be more honest if her eyes were naked and her hair less sunkissed. You say she’s wonderful, so just appreciate that, Wonderbra and all.
—Prudie
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Correction, April 20, 2012: This article originally misspelled Genghis Khan’s name as “Genghis Kahn.”
