Nerd Journal: According to Campus Admin, I'm Now "A Student of Color"
I just got an invitation to another of Nerdworld's attempts at celebrating diversity. This time it's another dinner.
I've been to these things before, and now I don't. The free food (admittedly, a draw for grad students) is no longer worth the effort of sitting through the long-winded, politically correct, and self-congratulatory speeches by administrators that follow dessert. Now I know why the speeches always come with the cake and coffee -- we need the coffee just to stay awake through the speeches!
So I stopped going. Another reason is that I hate sitting around tables with total strangers, with whom I'm supposed to feel some instant connection just because we're all not white. Isn't this idea kind of . . . well, racist?
It's also kind of blind to geopolitical reality and sheer human nature. Let me give you a real example: Suppose you have a Taiwanese-American cheerleader-for-democracy (that would be me). Suppose you have a diehard Communist supporter from mainland China. In an actual event which happened a while ago, these two people met and, surprising enough for all those PC-minded event organizers, did not get along. The non-community started as soon as he asked where I was from, and I said, "My family is from Taiwan." Soon after he asked me if I spoke Mandarin. I said I preferred Taiwanese. At that point he sniffed and said, "Taiwanese is not a real language." That was insulting. Well, that was the end of that!
Anyway, the dinner invitation this time said I've been invited to a "Dinner for Students of Color." I suppose Nerdworld is now defining "color" differently from the NAACP. I wonder what the NAACP would think of that.
I then showed the invitation to a like-minded Caucasian friend of mine. She proceeded to read it and then announced, "I swear, I'm going to crash this party! Isn't white a color? Come on, isn't it a color?"
(Hm, my Crayola box does have a white crayon in it! And hey, HGTV thinks white is a color too, to the point that it has plans for an all-white color scheme. All-white, eh? I'm now waiting for someone to complain it's a racist way to decorate a room.)
Well, given that, I suppose the only people who couldn't go would be people of no color at all -- i.e., albinos. In which case, Nerdworld being what it is, the Albino-American Student Association would team up with the ACLU and file a big fat anti-discrimination lawsuit.
So, no "Dinner for Students of Color" for me. I'd rather have a nice bowl of Ramen at home in peace than a fancypants dinner on campus with no pleasure. OK, back to the dissertation.