The news anchor did not understand the game. And it has nothing to do with the kid, or his mother. The kid applied to numerous colleges because his high school’s college counselor told him to. The high school gets bonus points for sending better kids to the college. The colleges get brownie points for accepting kids “of color” even if they did not enroll at the school (at least they tried). Everybody wins, accept the kid who spends extra time enrolling everywhere. It may cost the kid a little more, but not likely too much. Some colleges wave the fee for kids like this.
A kid who “identifies as black or native American” and can get a 30 on their ACT is gold to these colleges. And gold to the high school. There are so few out there. And nobody wants to admit that. Also, nobody wants to admit that they don’t have many black students. So “identifying” raises the pool.
The reality is that students of color is easy if you include Asian and Hispanic. Asian has the obvious advantage of high test scores and even higher grades. If anything they are quota’ed out of their rightful place at many colleges like Harvard. And Hispanics are too easy to get. As anyone with a Spanish last name can play that card. You can have blond hair and blue eyes and lived in this country going back 150 years and be legitimately Hispanic if your name is Rivera. And of course the colleges are looking for that group too (blonde blue eyed Hispanics).
She wasn't Hispanic--it was the surname of her ex-husband, who had a Hispanic father and an Irish-American mother. His father had abandoned him when he was young so he had been raised by his mother. But now his ex-wife was benefiting from the Hispanic surname.