Harvard Minorities

To the Editors of The Crimson:

As a minority and a member of the Executive Board of the Black Students Association (BSA), I took great offense to the article by Albert Hsia on what he perceived to be the self-segregation of minority groups.

The first issue I would like to address concerns the dining halls. Why do people take such offense to a group of minorities sitting at a table together? Does anyone ever question or even notice a table full of whites? What about the tables where there is a mixed group of people? Mr. Hsia did not even acknowledge the existence of such tables. I, like many of my friends who happen to be of a minority background, have been at a table where we were the only minorities present on many occasions. Futhermore, I believe that it is a credit to the minority students at Harvard that they can choose to eat with whomever they wish. Besides, if a group of minority students wishes to sit at a table together, so what? However, it is also true that a table of minorities hardly represents the entire minority population.

On the issue that organizations such as the BSA focus primarily on social activities, I beg to differ. I am on the BSA's Executive Board and I know that we only have one committee specially designated for social activities. If people like Mr. Hsia would bother to look at the total organization, they would realize that social activities comprise only one of the various activities of the BSA. For example, did Mr. Hsia notice that, during the first weekend of February, the BSA sponsored the Inter Collegiate Conference (ICC), in which Black students from Ivy League and Boston area schools came together at Harvard to discuss the future of Blacks in America. In addition, during the month of February, the BSA sponsored a multitude of events, only one of which was a dance, to celebrate Black History Month. Moreover, the BSA sponsors a Big Brother/Sister program in which incoming Black freshmen are paired with an upperclassman to help them make the transition to college life. Finally, the BSA sponsors the Freshman Black Table (FBT) to discuss issues pertaining to the Black community. In addition, the FBT is in the process of producing a magazine entitled Outlook.

I am not an Asian-American, but I did take great offense to Mr. Hsia's statement that "A Chorus Line is not an appropriate script for an all-Asian cast." According to whom? Just because the Broadway cast is not all-Asian, does that mean that it cannot be adapted by an all-Asian cast? A crucial element to the "Chorus Line" production, which I happen to be familiar with, is dance. Is Mr. Hsia aware that, in the movie version of "A Chorus Line," the actress who was cast to play the part of "T&A" had never had any dance training in her life? I am more concerned with the artistic merit of the cast and I definitely take more offense to a non-dancer in a dance musical rather than an all-Asian cast.

Finally, I am glad that Mr. Hsia's editorial was printed because it brought into the open some of the ignorance that concerns minorities and minority organizations. Harvard is a place where we can all learn from each other. Moreover, the assembly of minority groups should not be seen as a threat or a desire to be separatist. In a community of such diversity, minorities sometimes need to make associations with people of the same minority background for cultural, social, political, or whatever reason and their right to make these associations should be respected and admired. Mecca J. Nelson '92