The white and wong things to say

I weally hope the title doesn't scare you.

If you take a step back and think about the title, there isn't really anything wrong with it. This play on words refers to race in a facetious manner, yes. And publishing that in the The Daily Princetonian in the same Opinion section that published the joke Lian Ji article with every Asian stereotype known to man a few months back is absurd and quite ballsy. But it's not racist. It might seem out of taste. But why is that, and why do our sensitive hearts skip a beat? Maybe it was reminiscent of an Abercrombie shirt, and maybe we're a little too P.C. Political correctness may have its pluses, but it also causes a lot of tension and misunderstandings.

In a Korean tofu house restaurant, I once jokingly called a Hispanic-looking friend of mine a "Mexican" since she stated she enjoyed eating spicy food. The busboy, who happened to be Hispanic, overheard and gave me a look of death. I felt guilty at first, but then I thought about it again. Mexican food is known for its intense and spicy flavors, which was the basis of my statement. I didn't think my statement was an insult to Mexicans by saying they enjoyed spicy food, but the busboy looked at me as if I had slapped him.

It's gotten to the point now that any mention of some racial or ethnic group may seem out of taste. People get extremely cautious and choose their words carefully when stepping into these treacherous waters. On one of the first days of freshman year at Princeton, our RCA group had a meeting discussing diversity. One black girl brought up an encounter on how some non-blacks paused and refrained from referring to her as "black" and clearly enunciated each syllable of "African American" instead. How things are said has become a big deal. Even mentioning a word that sounds racial can be a bane; a Washington, D.C., mayoral appointee described the use of administration funds as "niggardly" (which means stingy) and was forced into immediate resignation.

We take it for granted that high school history books always review and analyze cultures of other countries, but generalizing objective characteristics about a group of people could easily end a prominent political career. We generally turn a blind eye to ethnic stand-up comedians who like to play stories on race, but get very jumpy when a white person cracks a racial joke and start accusing him of ignorance. Likewise, the fact that I belong to a minority group gives me leverage to write about this issue. Political correctness, in an attempt to redress centuries of racism in America, causes a collection of problems that some have loosely termed reverse racism.

An unfortunate characteristic of political correctness is that it doesn't cover all the bases. For example, people have no problem with labeling Princeton as uppity and white. The accusations that Princeton was still a traditional conservative school, that we were still ignorant and WASPocentric, were hardened when the 'Prince' published its joke issue in February. Thousands of emails flooded in accusing the 'Prince,' the administration and/or everybody at Princeton of racism, and newspapers were more than happy to run a story that reinforced such a stereotype about the University. Most people don't realize how many funding bodies and how many tens of thousands of dollars Princeton allocates to organizations and student clubs for encouraging events of culture and diversity.

I'm not saying our melting pot (or salad bowl, if you see it that way) of a country has eliminated racism. Hanging nooses on trees in front of high schools is not a cool thing to do, and words that relate to serious racial stigmas are still used. We still make generalizations and assumptions about people based on appearance, and that will probably never end. For some things, we get a little too sensitive and confuse what's right to say and what isn't. Political correctness attempts to address this, but it's not a completely streamlined solution. It's too bad our words couldn't be so black and white, so to speak. Rather than beating around the bush with PC euphemisms and refraining from race-related diction, we should be able to accept a more embracing, more direct way to express our thoughts on culture, race and society. Ben Chen is a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering major from Los Altos, Calif. He can be reached at bc@princeton.edu.