Minority Quotas

The article on Disneyland’s announced 15% minority contracting quotas (“Disney Seeks Minority Firms for O.C. Resort,” June 16) failed to note the abuses of such set-asides in the public sector.

Minority-owned firms capable of performing the work don’t need quotas, while smaller firms are often lured into contracts they simply cannot fulfill. They either overextend themselves into bankruptcy or farm the work out to “white” firms. The checkered record of the Century Freeway project is rife with such problems, as has been reported in The Times itself.

Who exactly are the minorities Disneyland is trying to serve? The article mentions an Asian-American-owned firm in Costa Mesa as an example. The firm’s partners themselves said they have successfully competed on projects in the past without any racial preference programs.

Finally, with today’s rising intermarriage rates, it is tougher to sort out minorities from majorities. The Times itself reported in a 1990 series on minority set-asides (“Opportunity Derailed”) that one contractor . . . with 1/64th Cherokee blood was qualifying as an Indian. My own son is half Chinese and half European. Which quota will he fill when he grows up?

Open contract awarding is laudable. Racial quotas are not. They stigmatize minorities, divide our society and are difficult to enforce in a country whose increasingly mixed population defies neat categorization.

CHRIS NORBY, Costa Mesa