More to individuals' idiosyncracies than just ethnic background

I am white — pale, pasty, milky, translucent, whatever you want to call it. My heritage goes back to some of Europe's most pallid fathers. Now, growing up near a small village in northern New York, home of the Snow Day, where one of the biggest pet peeves is death by exposure, this never made much of a difference. Pretty much no one ever moved up there, so the fact that there were basically no non-white people (my school had one African-American girl, who was in the first grade) was no more noticeable than the fact that there were basically no people, period.

Everybody knew everybody. Yes, I come from "that village" — stereotyped by Laura Ingalls Wilder herself — where if someone needed help on his farm, neighbors pitched in and someone would bring a fresh-baked pie. You would think that such a long-standing, close-knit community would be suspicious and gossipy if anyone of a different ethnicity were to enter the scene, at least the way Hick TV portrays it. I don't know, we never really got tested. Truth is, I don't think anyone really would have cared.

I left. I was the only one from my graduating class of 39 people to leave the state. I moved in with six girls, four of whom were blonde (it took me at least a month to be able to tell them apart).

So much for diversity. I know Princeton is not even close to being representative of the racial proportions in the "real world" (it's not really representative of the sweater-wearing, crew-rowing proportions of the real world either, but we haven't developed a committee to curb that yet), but for a hick like me, it's still a pretty big jump, statistically speaking. My friend group stayed mostly white, but not through any sort of segregation. It just was.

Then the Latin thing started. I'm not sure how, but suddenly I gained a Mexican and a Puerto Rican roommate. Shakira blared from the CD player, floral print skirts hung around the room well into February and the Rican roomie would break out into a salsa step at the oddest moments. And I tried to follow in all things Latino, but no luck. That's when it became obvious that I was white. It provided endless amusement for everyone else, and just as a safety, I learned all of the bad words in Spanish so I could jokingly fight back in very, very broken Spanish. And it was funny. It probably wasn't PC, but it was funny.

I took a trip to Puerto Rico. Seven of us went, in cheap airline seats that had a rosary instead of an oxygen mask. And when I got to the island, dressed for a New Jersey January and glaringly displaying my fair skin and mop of curls, in stark contrast to every single person around me, I think it became even more obvious how white I was. I found it didn't really concern me. It was supposed to be one of those revelations, where you realize what it's like to be the minority, even though it's for one measly week. But it wasn't.

And I realized how little I care. It is the most indifferent, non-confrontational and some are going to say naive, position to take in regard to ethnic differences and racism, but I just don't care about anyone's ethnicity. I'm not an idealist — I don't believe in equality, I believe in apathy. I don't care if you're majority or minority, or if you happen to be in some sort of uber-race that represents exactly 50 percent of the population. To someone else, you're different.

People are unique enough without bringing heritage into it. People will always have something to argue about and will always have something or someone to hate. If you took away different backgrounds and skin colors, people would shut up for about three minutes before they started in with the blonde and lawyer jokes. And if you took away occupations and hair color, then everyone would have to tell Harvard jokes. And what a dull species we would be. Jen Adams is a psychology major from Ogdensburg, N.Y. She can be reached at jladams@princeton.edu.