THE WORD is out.

We are not a monolith.

We are not uncritical, always agreeing, always smiling, never fighting amongst ourselves.

But at Harvard it is news when "minority students" disagree.

Tuesday, The Crimson reported--in a prominently displayed front-page article--that "members of several campus minority groups criticized a report recently published by their umbrella organization," the Third World Students Alliance. At Harvard, it's news when some members of the Asian-American Association, Black Students Association, Raza, La Organizacion Estudiantil Boricua and American Indians at Harvard disagree.

Why? Perhaps it was decided that these groups had not been covered adequately in the media in recent weeks. Probably a combination of factors led to the prominence of an article about some dissension in Harvard's minority community.

But that coincidence of factors does not minimize the significance of the larger issues presented by the article's appearance. It is not a coincidence that many white students expect to find a homogeneous group when they look at minority-Third World students. To be sure, it is ignorant of them, but it is ignorance born of the realities of American society at large and exacerbated at Harvard.

The national media makes the same sort of fuss over dissension among people of color--as if we're supposed to be a monolith, think alike, see the world in the same way simply because we are a shade darker than others--or for some other reason we can't, or don't want to, explain.

WE ARE A color-conscious society. And as far ahead as I can see--in our lifetimes and in the lifetimes of our children and even our grandchildren--we will remain a color-conscious society.

A mere 20 years of quasi-enforced civil rights do not erase the 300 preceeding. We don't like to talk about it--after all, we are liberal-minded. Sure there are racists, but we're cosmopolitan, urban, sophisticated. Maybe down South they care what color you are, but here in Boston and New York and Washington we don't notice.

Right.

In our backbending efforts to ignore color--and other characteristics we associate with "race" and "ethnicity"--we reveal the very real prominence it has in our society and even in our daily lives. I defy someone to tell me they do not notice the color of the person who reads the evening news or drives them to the airport or walks toward them on a dark street late at night.

Wait a minute, though. We're Harvard students, not racists. Think again. Or ask a Black or Asian-American or Spanish-surnamed student if their ethnicity goes unnoticed by their fellow Harvard students. Is there anyone here who could not give me the exact number of Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics in their freshman entryway--that first Valhalla of Harvard diversity?

It is not so easy to get away from the society that made us--especially here at Harvard. The university reinforces our tendency to try to downplay race and issues of race. We proclaim diversity, but let's not go too far in entrenching it. We wouldn't want to have an assistant dean of minority student affairs like most colleges, or a Third World Students Center like many. We all know that a disproportionate number of Third World students live at Currier and Leverett Houses. But let's not find out why or even talk about it.

So it really shouldn't surprise us that, at Harvard, it is news that minority students disagree.