CAMPUS CORRESPONDENT : The P.C. Curse: Forever Separate

Multiculturalism on today’s university campuses is a myth. Separatism is the reality, and political correctness, fueled in part by affirmative action, is the cause.

A lesson in P.C. gone wrong came last November at New York University. It started when Brothers for Brothers, a black student group, invited Khalid Abdul Muhammad to be a speaker on Black Solidarity Day. It ended with hundreds of protesters, many from the Jewish Student Union, punching their fists into the air, screaming “Education yes, racism no!”

Muhammad’s anger toward whites and his anti-Semitic remarks were uncalled- for, but the administration’s support of the event was more infuriating. The university feared being labeled “racist” if it had refused to allow his speech, so the show went on. What it got was terrible tension between African American and Jewish students and angry letters in the school newspaper.

I entered college when P.C. was at its peak. The freshman English book was organized like an atlas. Amy Tan offered the Asian American perspective. Alice Walker, the African-American perspective, Paul Monette, the gay man’s perspective, and Richard Rodriguez, the Latino view.

If my classmates wanted an Asian-American opinion, or the Asian perspective, they turned to me. They interpreted my silence as shyness when I, in fact, didn’t have an answer. I’m American-born and prefer egg McMuffins over egg-foo-young any day.

Chances for a true multicultural utopia declined with every new ethnic club approved by the administration. Among the hundreds of campus clubs, at least half are cultural. There’s the Croatian Club, the Caribbean Students Assn., the Haitian American Students Assn., the Arab Society, not to mention the 25 Asian clubs. Most members are friends with each other--and no one else.

We were taught to speak a politically correct language that, ironically, further divided us. Blacks are not blacks, but African Americans. Indians are not Indians but Native Americans or Sioux American or Cherokee American. Women are not women but “womyn.” Vegetarians are “vegans.” The handicapped are “physically disabled.”

When you add various affirmative-action programs and countless scholarships designed to help women, homosexuals, Latinos, blacks, Asians and Indians, you create a campus of gated student communities that interact, when they have to, in stiff, formal ways. The casual, spontaneous dialogue and informal groupings that are so important to intellectual development are lost.

A couple of months ago, I saw John Singleton’s movie “Higher Learning.” For a time, I was back on campus--blacks with blacks, whites with whites, Chinese with Chinese, straights with straights, gays with gays. This wasn’t Hollywood--this was real life.

After the movie, a couple of teen-agers nearby were laughing hysterically at the movie: It was too serious, too stupid, too unrealistic. “You’re wrong,” I found myself saying, “I live with it every day.”