abusing diversity funding

[Bill McBlueState]

There's a program at my university that's designed to increase diversity in the natural sciences and engineering. From the graduate student perspective, it's primarily a scholarship program. Students who fit certain criteria for adding to the diversity of the graduate student body get a fellowship for their first and their fifth year of a PhD program. These fellowships are pretty cushy -- they pay better than a TA or RA and do not have a teaching requirement.

This is excellent -- we need to make sure all Americans have the opportunity to participate in scientific research, especially research supported by tax money.

What I'm suspicious of is how my department is using this money. We have prospective students coming through who by all accounts are run-of-the-mill white people, but I later find out that they're eligible for diversity money because they're X% Native American, for example, where X is some smallish number. The impression I get is that the department is using this program as a convenient way to fund students who technically qualify for it, adhering to the letter of the program, but not to its spirit.

People who in some sense "pass" as white are not the ones programs like this seek to help. Would it kill my department to try a little harder to attract candidates who actually identify themselves as underrepresented minorities?