Article Exaggerates Racial Discord

After reading Emily Carrier's profoundly insightful article, "Black First-Years Prefer Quad Houses" (March 9, 1994), I felt in necessary to express my thanks for your enlightening and informing me about the state of racial diversity at Harvard.

You see, I am also a freshman who will soon select housing for next year. the agonizing process of choosing four Houses has left me bereft of guidance--until now, Since I am Chinese, I will obviously prefer a House with a large Asian population, namely Quincy. I and my blockmates will feel at home living there since I Asian, and there are a lot of Asian people down in Quincy.

In addition, I appreciated your making me aware of the fact that this campus is "largely hostile to minorities."

Being a minority myself, I never realized the extent of unspoken antagonism that must have been directed at me since I arrived in September.

Now I realize that only by living with a "critical mass" of fellow Asians will I be able to remain in touch with my peers. In fact, I wonder how I even ended up here after going to a high school that was roughly five percent Asian extracted a "great personal cost" by isolating me amidst people from other ethnic groups. This isolation must have destroyed my "sense of community" and left me unable to celebrate my ethnic heritage.

Incidentally, my rooming group for next year will likely contain two Asians, two Hispanics, one Black and one Caucasian. But in the interest of furthering your relentless search for racial discord. I kindly request that you overlook this trivial detail. Kenneth W. Lin '97