Here’s a question I’d like to hear my white friends say: “Max E. Guttman, how can we overcome the racially divisive atmosphere at BU?”

Unfortunately, I’ve never heard that question, and I’m likely never going to. White people are too apathetic and ignorant of what the issues involved really are. And despite what they say, liberals are usually just as clueless as the hard-core conservatives that they bash — and they don’t care. We’re apathetic, in part, because we feel safer not asking.

Minorities need to stop alienating the current generation of whites by constantly playing the blame game. We are taught that we did, do and will always subjugate people of color in this continuing age of “American Empire.” This divisive atmosphere both in and out of the classroom is enough to make me feel downright uncomfortable about myself.

Imagine if a student in a cultural studies class said he was proud of being a white male. That would be enough to have every “progressive” and Reverend Al Sharpton neophyte in the class to bring the lecture to a screeching halt. Apparently, black can be beautiful, but my skin is the white plague that destroyed the Harlem Renaissance.

This might be why I was confused when Phi Iota Alpha, MALIK Fraternity Inc. and Lambda Sigma Upsilon, Latino Fraternity, sponsored the “Take a Stand” demonstration. Black and Latino groups asked BU for more funding of cultural studies, and for minorities to strive for a stronger voice on campus. Great idea in theory, but I walked off when these groups forgot about personal responsibility and placed blame on “the man.”

As a former member of the Juvenile Urban Multicultural Program — JUMP Nation — I can sincerely say that we have organizations willing to help to build a racially unified campus. JUMP weekend, for instance, is an event in which underprivileged eighth graders come up to BU from New York City. The goal is to give them a taste of college, in hopes that they will want to leave areas like Brownsville, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Washington Heights.

Predictably, the only student members of the group are African Americans and Latinos. And so the kids, also of these ethnicities, are made to believe that the only people willing to help them are members of their own race. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and I felt like I was silently being blamed for these kids’ problems.

I had gone into the group to break the stereotype of white apathy, but that very apathy had made me a feel like a pariah among the people with whom I was supposed to work.

I’m not a member anymore, and I will never attend a single meeting of any multicultural groups — no matter they proclaim the hollow message of “everyone welcome” — until this problem is acknowledged. Maybe I’m selfish, but I want to be able say that the TV show “Good Times” was crap, and then compare my skin tone to the color of White-Out, without being labeled a racist. I want to be able to take a fiscal standpoint on affirmative action without being attacked. And most importantly, multicultural meetings should be able to function without me being guilted for something my dead ancestors did.

See the hypocrisy? Take a stand!

Max Guttman is a sophmore psychology major.