Elizabeth Song | Creating an all-inclusive req.

Even if it also signifies the end of midterm season, Thanksgiving means turkey to me. The word conjures up images of Norman Rockefeller watercolors, turkeys sweating with baste and children dressed as rosy-cheeked pilgrims. It's the beautiful and essential American holiday.

As Americans, we all like our turkey differently. In the South, we have it with collard greens and mac and cheese. Irish Americans sometimes spare the turkey and go for beef prime ribs. Mexican-Americans like their south-of-the-border birds with mole. Vegetarians will stuff and bake a pumpkin. My family forgoes the turkey altogether and has Beijing duck.

By this point, the Thanksgiving turkey has turned into little more than a metaphorical turkey. It was just an excuse for us to crowd around the dinner table, anyway. If we are what we eat, then Americans are one tremendous hodgepodge of Thanksgiving leftovers. Just like you won't find only one Thanksgiving dinner, you won't find one American voice.

To educate students on Americans' diversity, the College of Arts and Sciences is considering a U.S. cultural diversity requirement. It would allow students to study American minority culture and the patterns of inequality that arise from differences in social categories like race, gender and religion. Unlike the Cross-Cultural Analysis Requirement for the Class of 2010, which mandates the study of global diversity, this requirement would focus on diversity within America.

"We can't talk about the global without talking about the local," United Minorities Council Chairwoman Shakirah Simley said.

The requirement is not designed to make kids who are as plain as Wonderbread feel bad about themselves. Nor is it about teaching us how to be politically correct. The goal is to recast history - traditionally the privilege of the powerful - as the collective story of minority voices.

It's also a good idea for white-washed bananas like me. Yeah, that's my picture in the corner. I'm Asian, and I need this requirement as much as the next person. In high school, I was the first Asian girl to ever play on the varsity field hockey team. I could count the number of Latino and black kids in my classes on the fingers of one hand. Like some of my peers, I've had very little interaction with minority cultures, including my own.

At Penn, it's more of the same. We camouflage ourselves in alphanumeric acronyms for Latino sororities, Asian worship groups and black honor societies. We've found a place for minority culture by isolating it from the mainstream.

Back in kindergarten, we learned that we are all special. Despite our differences, we are part of one, big, happy family. We sang "I Love You" with Barney and fell asleep at nap time.

In college, we learn pretty much the same thing. We make at least one friend from a different social background. We go see a cultural group perform. We come to appreciate diversity like any good kindergartner: Despite our differences, we are part of one big happy family. We sing "One Love" together and wake up the next morning with hangovers.

As a nation, America is becoming more diverse than Sesame Street - but more clueless about the world around us than Grover. We are driven by a majority culture that teaches us to fear rather than embrace diversity. Minorities are not the face of America. They are the faces of janitors, rapists and terrorists - both on our movie screens and in our minds.

As College Dean Dennis DeTurck mentioned in last week's student forum on the new requirement, a school's curriculum endorses what it thinks is important. It should force us to confront social issues that appear in the community and open a dialogue with our peers.

The requirement certainly pushes us in the right direction.

The real challenge will be developing a curriculum that fully addresses these issues of minority culture and crafts a practical definition of cultural diversity. It will be the challenge of finding the perfect Thanksgiving turkey for us all to feast on.

Elizabeth Song is a College sophomore from Clemmons, N.C. Her e-mail address is song@dailypennsylvanian.com . Striking a Chord appears on Thursdays.

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