And here' why, for the purposes of law school admissions, Latinos should not be considered "minorities. Law schools these days are blasting about globalizing legal education, translational law classes, and how the entire nature of law school education has changed and will continue to do so. Enter American born Hispanics. Many, and I do not speak for all, but many speak English and Spanish fluently, and consequently are able to hook onto a third language at a relatively young age, be it Mandarin, French, whatever. Think about that for a moment. A student who speaks Spanish, French, and English fluently? You are talking about the entire Americas from top to bottom (French in Canada to Spanish in Tierra del Fuego). Not to mention the language of the European Union and Spain to boot. Not too shabby. Enter typical white American from, lets just say, the working class suburbs of Philadelphia (Read, NOT the rich suburbs). The kid struggles to speak coherently in Spanish or any foreign language, but maintains same if not better academic performance in college. Guess what? The Hispanic will get preference, assuming similar strength in essays and recs. And might I add, what the hell is a Hispanic after all? My skin is white but guess what, I am Hispanic. *Gasp* Ive never been discriminated against b/c of skin but you see Im Hispanic on paper. We've got White Hispanics from Ecuador, Cuba, all over the Latin American world, and these may have better access to education, and then, voila, we get this huge yet unfair boost in law school admissions. For the dark skinned Latinos, the story is completely different. They should be looked at differently b/c people have looked at them differently their entire lives. In this light, who WILL BECOME the true international minorities of the 21st century? It will not the the well-educated Hispanic, who, as we have seen, will be able to deal with the languages of the world. It will be the working class whites and blacks who will become the minorities (Apologies to the Asian Americans, you guys always get the shaft, but you merit your own discussion). I am restricting this statement to graduate school admissions. In my opinion, linguistic diversity of all kinds should be encouraged at the undergraduate level.
The mere fact certain people might not like your skin tone wouldn't seem to affect your LSAT much.