This is in response to Matt Simmons’ Oct. 20 column, “Removing the Blindfolds.” Simmons is correct that minorities do not go out of their way to enforce ethnic boundaries, but merely do so because of convenience.

Self-segregation does start at home in the neighborhood you grow up in. So why are neighborhoods segregated? Simmons suggests that our current neighborhoods were created by such social phenomena as white flight. The fact is that segregated neighborhoods are and were created for the most part by a cycle of self-segregation due to convenience.

If our parents grew up in a segregated environment and neighborhood -officially enforced or not- it is likely, and shown by studies that Simmons referenced, that they will be most comfortable in that social environment. Then it should be no wonder what kind of neighborhood, what kind of wife, what kind of friends and what kind of culture our parents chose. White flight has nothing to do with it. They chose what they grew up with, and now it’s likely that we will choose what they grew up with.

Self-segregation and ethnic cliques are rampant on this University. True diversity is a myth created to satisfy the leading fad of the day, political correctness.

Supposedly this University is diverse because the administration goes out of its way to recruit people from different ethno-cultural-linguistic groups than the mainstream, but is it really diversity if these groups only serve to perpetuate self-segregated ethnic cliques that hold an event or two per semester that is “open to everyone”?

Ask yourself how many friends you have who speak a different mother-tongue than you and who practice a different culture than you. I already know your answer; let it prove to the administration how well their social engineering Diversity Experiment is faring.

Sharad Bijanki

junior in LAS