A couple of weeks ago, one of my fellow columnists published an article about self-segregation. We seem to agree that self-segregation is a negative influence on campus, but for very different reasons.
Self-segregation is not a necessary result of having a diverse student body. Segregation occurs in part because it is encouraged -- through organizations such as ethnicity-specific housing programs -- and partly because it is comfortable. It is undoubtedly easier to stick with a group of people that share your cultural experience than it is to take the step beyond and become friends with those of different backgrounds.
Segregation is not confined to blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians or any other ethnic denomination. To be sure, these groups tend to identify with each other and stick together. But the whole point of Penn's having almost a 40-percent minority demographic is to expose students to people of different backgrounds in order for us to expand our own perceptions of the world. While this is clearly a generalization about campus as a whole, it is definitely a pervasive characteristic of the Penn community.
The problem is that, for all Penn's "diversity," we expose ourselves to exactly what we want to be exposed to, the result being that most students don't take advantage of the enormous heterogeneity of this campus.
This isn't something that anyone should be blamed for -- it's just the way people distribute themselves, and for the most part it isn't a conscious decision of any one group to segregate itself. What it does point to is a larger problem.
Our generation in particular has been imbued with the idea of political correctness as the natural response to any kind of differentiating characteristic. What "PC" does is come up with a nice alternate vocabulary that tries to be as inoffensive as possible -- I'm not short, I'm vertically challenged.
In a country as ethnically diverse as the United States, political correctness has developed as a way to mollify differences, attempting to classify everyone together so that no one group feels excluded or looked down upon. It is well-intentioned, but as is often the case, wording provides an easy way of bypassing the real issue.
First of all, political correctness involves an alteration in vocabulary, not attitudes. Whether or not a person is "PC" bears no relation to how accepting he or she is of diversity. It might superficially change the way we refer to people, but it does nothing to improve attitudes; rather, it allows them to lay dormant beneath the surface. If anything, the post-Sept. 11 backlash against Arabs living in the U.S. is a case in point. Whatever latent anti-Arab sentiment that existed was given voice in a wave of hate crimes and ostracism.
Second, and more relevant to Penn's situation, by giving everyone "PC" title, we are encouraged to put people of all different ethnicities under one homogeneous label.
This is the problem. People are different -- their differences are what make them unique. We aren't here to pretend everyone is the same and it's those differences that we want to learn from. Political correctness is fine in itself, but it is too easily misapplied and used as a superficial disguise. As long as you outwardly conform to "PC," there's no pressure to really rethink deeply held prejudices.
Much of the reason for this self-segregation is that this politically correct attitude puts us in the complicated and often uncomfortable position of ignoring differences that are clearly present. Having to be "PC" makes people hypersensitive about offending others, making it easier to keep within one's own ethnic parameters rather than branching out. Instead of appreciating people's differences, we see each other through this "PC" veil, through which people are inherently associated with a group -- "Asian American," or "Southeast Asian American," or "African American," rather than as individuals.
People of different cultures are brought up in completely different ways whether they be in Los Angeles, New York, Brazil or Indonesia. We want to appreciate those differences for what they are and learn about them, rather than trying to homogenize them. As much as it is comfortable to stick with a group of people with whom you have things in common, this type of self-segregation will not stop until people are comfortable enough with each others' differences that they have the curiosity to go and learn about them.
Channtal Fleischfresser is a junior History major from São Paulo, Brazil.
