I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I witnessed a college student make this remark to me and a few of my friends in an upscale Japanese restaurant. I don't know what Ice Age this guy was coming from, but since when did I, an Asian-American female, become a piece of furniture or a rug? Political correctness aside, I probably should have been offended by his comment, but coming from Greer, S.C. (a state nowhere near a Mecca of diversity), I am used to correcting people. We are not rugs or vases -- we are, in fact, Asians.

Comments like these have caused me to be troubled, actually disenchanted with the status of race relations on our campus. Now before you sigh and say, "Oh great -- she's pulling the race card. Put it back in the pocket," -- hear me out. I am not writing to chastise the majority nor am I writing to rant and rave about how we need more diversity on our campus. Rather, I hope that my writing will incite dialogue about that scary four-letter word we all seem to dance around at this campus -- race.

Coming to Wake Forest, I knew that I would be a member of a small 12 percent minority population. This small percentage did not daunt me, however, because I have grown up being in an extremely small minority percentage all my life in rural Greer, S.C. I have never let my racial identity be an excuse or an impediment, and I have always felt that who you are -- and not the color of your skin -- as cliché as this may sound -- determines your identity.

As soon as I arrived at Wake Forest however, I immediately became aware of what it means to be a "minority," meaning that I distinctly recognized and felt myself as an outsider of the majority. Walking around campus and seeing so few diverse faces, I sometimes feel like a statistic. What was even more upsetting was the fact that my freshman roommate cited that one of her reasons for coming to Wake Forest was specifically because of its lack of diversity. She had no minority friends in high school and she didn't want to go to school with people who were "different" or "weird" (subtext: a minority).

Yes, I was that "weird" and "different" girl she specifically was trying to avoid in coming to Wake Forest. A girl in my freshman dorm mistook me for another Asian girl and in apology said, "Oh sorry, wrong one." So now I am a "one" in addition to a rug?

Sometimes it just amazes me that we live in the 21st century and yet in some ways we still think so archaically. The other day a girl told me to my face that probably one of the only reasons I received a top merit-based (not racially based) scholarship was because I am "ethnic." Wow. Let's just forget about my 10-page high school résumé É

You can only imagine my amazement and my subsequent disenchantment with the idealistic notion that race relations can easily be solved. What I have discovered is that relations are incredibly difficult at a school where the majority is so overwhelmingly the majority and very little interaction occurs between racial groups.

I think that one of the best ways to improve race relations on our campus is through interaction and dialogue. This is the only way we can break down racial barriers to learn about people of different backgrounds and cultures. Minorities say that majority students don't make an effort to go outside their "comfort bubbles" to learn about different cultures, and majority students say that minority students are self-segregating. Majority students often feel that if they approach a minority student and inquire about cultural or racial differences, they will be perceived as "racist" or grossly ignorant.

Well, as a minority, I think that this is the reason why we have such a huge problem of race relations on our campus. People simply don't talk. They don't interact. How can we expect to be a cohesive community when we don't talk? I know I personally would not be offended if someone were to come up and ask me whether I'd prefer to be called an Oriental rug or an "Asian" or how Chinese works as a tonal language. I invite the majority to talk and to interact! I have slews of entertaining anecdotes about my immigrant parents!

One of the best examples of this new and wholly revolutionary idea of multi-racial, multi-cultural interaction is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival celebration held this past week by ASIA, the East Asian Studies Department, and the Wake International Students Association. I was amazed at what a diverse cross-section of our student body came to learn about Asian culture.

It gives me hope about the future of race relations on our campus when I see different groups eat food, chat and learn about each other. Even if people only attend these events for the free food, that's okay as long as people are talking and interacting (hopefully not simultaneously talking and eating). The issue of race need not be averted any longer; instead, we should all --majority and minority alike -- make a more conscious effort to talk and interact with each other.

Angel Hsu is a sophomore.