I swore I would never do it. I thought people who did were weak or uninformed.

But last week, there I was at an information session for foreign students in Colima, Mexico, making small talk in English with Americans and Canadians about familiar things.

It's easy to say, from the safety of your own soil, that you would be adventurous and enlightened when faced with a new culture to explore. Then you get there, and reality sets in.

You're exhausted from the effort of understanding and making yourself understood in a foreign language. You don't know how to do things as simple as working the shower or making a phone call. You feel cut off from your world, and when you realize you don't know a soul in the entire country, things really start to go downhill.

Is it any wonder I made a beeline for the English speakers and was so happy for the banal, comfortable conversation that I almost wept?

That's something to think about the next time you see a table full of Korean students at the cafeteria or hear a group of people speaking French together on the South Oval.

And maybe, though it's a bit of a stretch, that's something to think about the next time you notice the more subtle self-segregation that's still happening right here among Americans.

To borrow from writer and psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum, why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? Why is it so rare for someone who isn't white to join an IFC fraternity? Why do we implicitly put ourselves in boxes even as we condemn systems that used to do that officially?

I don't pretend to fully understand this phenomenon, but after just one day as a fish way, way out of water, I started to sympathize.

Being in the majority in America is easy. We're a nation ruled by majority vote; the largest groups set the terms of American life.

As a white woman, I'm not sure I'll ever truly know how it feels to be in a minority group (even with America's demographic shifts, whites are still projected to have a plurality). But I'm guessing that, at some level, I would feel the way I do here.

Here, I understand what's going on, but some of my ideas about the way things should be don't quite jive with the mainstream. People can tell after one look or after hearing me say one word that I'm "different."

In such a situation, it's tough to define your identity. As a white American in the United States, I have the freedom to define myself however I want.

Here, my appearance and accent have already started that process for me, and I have to finish it within a paradigm I had no hand in creating.

The easy way out is to embrace what some are inclined to expect from me. To hang out with other "norteamericanos," speak English whenever possible and hold on to my customs and routine.

That's the choice some Americans make when they decide that all black people must listen to hip-hop and wear baggy clothes, that all Hispanics like spicy food and ranchero music or that all Asians are super-smart and super-competitive.

If that method of self-identification works for one particular person, so be it. But the problems start when we try to impose our ideas about how people are "supposed" to be within others -- often others within our own groups who challenge our senses of identity.

What makes some black people dismiss other black people for acting "too white"? Why do Caucasians laugh at those of their ethnicity who embrace elements of other subcultures? It happens when we see people who don't act the way we think people who look and sound like us are supposed to, and it makes us feel threatened.

This subtly destructive force, both within and among groups, has been around forever. It makes life more difficult for those who want to truly be themselves, regardless of their skin color or accent.

Defining ourselves and people around us by a preconceived set of rules is the easy way, but that doesn't make it the right way.

-- Sarah Waldrop is a journalism junior. Her column appears every other Wednesday and she can be reached at opinion@oudaily.com.
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