A few weeks ago I was at this panel discussion listening to someone tell me how to be Asian-American. He was Chinese-American. He had a triangular mohawk. He had a snazzy floral-print vest.

None of these things mattered. He was still wrong.

One of the things he said was that Asian-Americans who dye or perm their hair are trying to be white. This may be true for some, but definitely not for all.

In any case, I get annoyed when people start preaching about what Asian-Americans can and can't be. As if we come pre-packaged, hair follicles glued in place a la Cabbage Patch Kids.

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to hear a lot of this talk on campus. It seems that everyone, regardless of skin color, has a notion about who's who and what's what. I'm hoping for more intelligent discussion about race.

That's one of the reasons I support ethnic studies.

Yes, ethnic studies. What those students at Columbia were hunger-striking about last month. Maybe you read about it.

"P.C. Separatists," smirked the headline to one New York Times oped. An article in the Sacramento Beeblamed the nation's educational lassitude on women's and ethnic studies.

Personally, I think the critics are being silly.

Ethnic studies seems pretty simple to me. If you do some honest, objective scholarship about issues involving ethnic groups, you'll be able to spot some of the misconceptions surrounding them. If you take a class on ethnic studies, you'll be less ignorant about other people.

Ethnic studies would complicate our perceptions on race. And that's what all good scholarship does. It helps us see the shades of grey in every picture. That doesn't sound very separatist. It sounds like people just want to learn more about other people, maybe get rid of some stereotypes.

In any case, I'm kind of surprised ethnic studies is called separatist when the students who are supporting it, at Harvard and across the nation, come from all different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Personally, I wish my mohawk-headed friend had taken more ethnic studies classes. Perhaps he would have realized the diversity of experiences in the Asian-American (not to mention Chinese-American) community, and not been so quick to lump them all together under demagogically convenient labels.

I should preface my comments: I'm an American history and literature concentrator.

Yes, I honestly like to study dead white males. Melville and Hawthorne and their ilk.