Don't Blend Ethnic Groups

To the Editors:

Alexander Nguyen, in "Marketing Diversity" (Opinion, Jan. 30), presents what is in my opinion a seriously flawed vision of the way ethnic groups on Harvard's campus should function. Nguyen asserts that the sole legitimate purpose of ethnic groups on campus is to educate the Harvard community about themselves, and that any events which lack an educational component "undermine" the rationale for the existence of the group.

It is true that one important purpose of Harvard's ethnic groups is to teach the campus about themselves, while at the same time learning about other ethnic groups in an effort to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. But what Nguyen is advocating is that Harvard's ethnic groups themselves should be multicultural. He writes that in an ideal world, the Harvard Vietnamese Association (HVA) would have the resources to approach every freshman and encourage him to join HVA. In Nguyen's ideal world, the participants at a festive dinner for the Chinese New Year would look just like the participants at a festive dinner for Rosh Hashanah.

Anyone, Vietnamese or otherwise, with an interest in HVA should certainly be welcomed at their events, as at the events of every ethnic group on campus. However, Nguyen's extreme view denies the very diversity of the Harvard campus that he clearly supports. If every ethnic group is the same, where is the diversity? One might argue that the diversity lies in the events themselves, rather than the people who attend them; however, when an event is designed to educate an ignorant public, it inevitably loses some of its authenticity for members of the ethnic group running it. The event becomes a show, rather than a time for spiritual or cultural development, or reflection on one's status as a member of an ethnic group.

Social events run by ethnic groups fall under particular attack by Nguyen, especially if the publicity for these events is targeted only at members of the ethnicity. However, the ethnic dining hall tables that Nguyen cites bespeak another critical function of ethnic groups: to enable members of the same ethnicity to meet each other and develop friendships--in short, to interact socially. Harvard is a big and intimidating place, and many undergraduates find support in their smaller ethnic communities. Nguyen suggests that this is wrong; I assert that it is natural. Just as knitting circles are formed for people who like to knit together, one of the functions of ethnic groups is to provide a place where people of the same ethnicity can join together in a background of shared traditions, history, and culture.

Each ethnic group is a square in the multicultural patchwork that is Harvard, each with its own bright colors and designs. Nguyen, in his attack on the "self-segregation" of ethnic groups on campus, attempts to mute the brilliance of our individual colors by blending them together into a banal, uniform fusion--and he does this, ironically enough, in the name of multiculturalism. BETH A. GOLDSTEIN '99   Feb. 8, 1998