Minority 'Categories' Are Oversimplified

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I appreciate the fairly prominent coverage given to the South Asian Association and the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students Association's joint film screening and panel discussion last Monday ("Ethnicity, Sexuality Are Linked, Panelists Say," December 10).

As a participant on the panel I was struck by the close resonance between my familial confrontations over my gay sexuality and that of the straight South Asian audience members dealing with sexuality issues in their families. Ethnicity indeed creates links of common experience in spite of what has been constructed as a wide political divide in sexualities.

All of us there were forced to define and politicize our "sexuality" and our "ethnicity" because of a social context that is profoundly hostile to both. It was all the more telling then that the journalist should have incorrectly identified me as Laotian. My family is from Goa (an Indian province that was once a Portuguese colony).

I was born in Karachi and grew up in South America. Although not ill-intentioned, the journalist's error is symptomatic of the definition of "race" in this culture where "Black," "Asian" and "Hispanic" are the only officially recognized "minorities."

In my 13 years here I have been labeled politely and insultingly as all three. Any ethnicity that does not fall into one of these three fantasmatic categories gets thrown into a grab-bag of "Other" interchangeable and characterless appellations.

The BGLSA-SAA event helped to point out the commonalities as well as the differences of our "gay/lesbian" and "South Asian" experiences within U.S. culture. I just hope the rest of U.S. culture outside that lecture becomes more sensitive to these commonalities and differences. Vernon Rosario II   Graduate student