Multicultural. In the last few weeks, this word has been thrown around ruthlessly without people giving a second thought to what it actually means. Culture is self-explanatory, but multi- is defined as more than one. Typically, I keep to myself regarding racial issues on this campus, but after reading Jesse Kiley’s article in The Badger Herald on Friday, I could not keep my mouth shut any longer.

Kiley needs to understand one very simple fact — African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and any other group of Americans in this country are not multicultural at all. I am an Asian American, and I can assure you that I am no different than the white boy walking in the street next to me.

African Americans are 100 percent pure Americans and have not even adopted, but rather actually partaken, in the making of the culture America represents. So have Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans. As stated previously, multicultural implies more than one culture.

People immigrating today from Africa, South America, Europe or Asia are considered multicultural because they are, in fact, people who have had to learn to accept and adopt American culture as their own. But a person whose lineage in this country can extend back to the 1700s is of no other culture than American. Just because skin color is different does not mean the person is, and this misconception needs to be killed immediately.

I do agree that minorities tend to be more concentrated in lower-income communities and therefore are underrepresented, but that has to do with their economic background, not their cultural background, and to allow economics and culture to be synonyms for each other is ludicrous. There are poor white people and black people, and there are also rich white people and black people.

It comes as a shock to me that people of color on this campus use their skin color as a platform from which they can just spew off anything, certain the color of their skin will stand as their defense.

Kiley’s article was completely out of line, especially the part where she suggests she should paint her face white to make white people feel more comfortable. What if a white male had written the same article and claimed he was going to paint his face black to make black people feel more comfortable? On this campus he would have been hung.

White people on this campus have to keep their mouths shut and just accept that half a million dollars is thrown to an organization so it can sponsor picnics and parties for multicultural students, while places like the chemistry learning center have to cut their tutorials because they cannot afford to pay their staff. African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans get to sit around and blow as much money as we feel like to diversify this campus.

And what is our argument? We feel more comfortable at the Multicultural Student Center because we get to hang out with people just like ourselves and feel like a community. How absolutely preposterous. How dare we even claim such a thing! First of all, just the fact that we need to make a little hideout for us multicultural people to retreat to when we feel threatened by white people is ridiculous. In fact, it only makes the racial dividers more rigid. If anything, we should be forced out of our hideouts and made to associate with as many white people as possible to find out that they are in fact not evil or racist, but rather exactly like us in every respect, because we share the same culture. There is no question the MCSC serves an excellent purpose: to represent different cultures around the globe and educated people on the topics. But it is losing sight of this goal and focusing on racial barriers, all the while superficially calling it “culture.” It just seems like being white today automatically makes you not special, while being multicultural (different colored) makes you unique and different.

I’m an Asian American, and I want to be proud to say that. But right now, stealing money from the student government when it is desperately needed somewhere else, having the audacity to blatantly insult someone and say whatever I feel like because I’m of a different color, proceeding to preach about diversity and then alienating myself from the general public by retreating to my special MCSC hideout and making white people feel at a disadvantage for being white makes me not feel proud at all.

Anahita Dua is a sophomore majoring in pre-med.