"I never think of myself as a color," one of my professors said last week in class. It made me wonder: Do I ever think of myself as a color? As just a color? It's a good point, because I don't think of myself as a color, either. Do you? Do people ever think of themselves primarily as a color?

It seems like an odd question to ask, but — given the way our society is organized around color lines — it's also a very significant one.

I guess the closest I ever got to thinking of myself as a color was in the fourth grade, when I made the mistake of calling the color peach the "skin color." Perhaps it was because it was closest to the color of my skin, but in fourth grade, I didn't really consider the ramifications such a comment could have on my psyche as a woman of (light) color.

I eventually got over the whole "skin color" idea, but I know I'm not the only person to have ever made that exact mistake. It makes me wonder if these labels have effects I'm not considering.

In Portuguese, you can distinguish between a person who is dark-skinned (negro) and a thing that is dark (preto). According to my Portuguese professor, when you describe a person with the name of the colored object, you turn them into a thing. That's pretty demeaning.

Although English can't convey this exact difference in meaning, it can still be pretty offensive to call someone a color in the right circumstances. If you read through any literature written for most of this country's history, you'll be able to feel the tremendous disgust of white Americans at the thought of darker peoples. Even Abraham Lincoln — the man "responsible" for freeing the slaves — was pretty disgusted by dark skin, I recently learned.

And while English doesn't work the same way as Portuguese, the difference brings up a good point: What does it mean that each "race" has its own corresponding "skin color"? I consider myself Mexican-Latino (but not Hispanic), and I'm not literally brown — but I would still call myself that in the right circumstances.

It's definitely useful when talking about race and ethnicity in a society as diverse as the United States to have a nomenclature that easily provides tangible symbols, such as colors, for different groups.

But how far is too far? Is it appropriate to call someone black or African-American? Do the metaphors of Twinkies, Oreos, coconuts and apples illustrate the absurdity of the whole system? Do you end up making unfair categorizations — maybe Irish white and German white are different colors? Is Mexican brown a shade apart from Salvadorian brown?

I guess the point is that it has little to do with skin color at all, but rather, it's a way to easily identify a group by one of their most basic elements — color. A lot of Latinos I know aren't brown. A lot of African-Americans I've met aren't black. I have never met a yellow Asian. I have yet to meet a red Native American.

I'm sure that if these labels were traced back, they would have less-than-egalitarian origins, and I'm not sure what that means, but I do know that I myself wouldn't want to be called a color — because that's not what I am. I'm more than that, so I guess that means everybody else is, too.

Sara Inés Calderón is a senior majoring in graduating. If you would like to give her a job, e-mail her at sarines@stanford.edu.