Affirmative Action Review

“Clinton Review of Affirmative Action May Signal a Shift” (Feb. 25) cites two situations which are the basis of the popular dissatisfaction with this program. President Clinton asserts that “minority preference programs have helped the disadvantaged”; the Small Business Act said that “blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Pacific Americans” were presumed to be disadvantaged.

Both of these instances insult all members of these minorities by presuming them to be disadvantaged. Affirmative action would gain wider support if it truly were set up to help all disadvantaged people, not all minorities. In this way the government could continue to help the disadvantaged while being truly colorblind.

Seeking the end of affirmative action is not racist. Helping the disadvantaged is not racist. Let’s put these two ideas together to make a better program.

PHILIP TERHORST

Bellflower

* “In Fairness to All, How About Some Facts?” (editorial, Feb. 28) is an excellent observation. Throwing out the baby with the dirty bathwater is stupid, but it is the apparent intention of proposed legislation and initiatives to terminate affirmative action programs in California.

Affirmative action has opened doors formerly closed to qualified working women, and the goals of elimination of discrimination, pay equity and equal rights are within sight because of these programs. But working women still earn only 71.5 cents to every dollar earned by men, and the glass ceiling still exists.

Let’s find the abuses and eliminate them, not return to the inequities existing prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

JACQUELINE A. MELVIN

Woodland Hills

* I can understand The Times attempting a defense of affirmative action, but your implication that most of the opponents opinions are based on anecdote and misperception isn’t fair. I have personally experienced two instances of reverse discrimination. Don’t you dare call my experiences anecdotes. They are the “muggings” which have turned this traditional liberal into a one-time conservative. Affirmative action is discrimination, however well intended.

Journalists and academics typically pose numerous questions, then cop out with the statement, “We need answers.” Enough questions. The answer has been offered. Scrap affirmative action. End all forms of discrimination.

WILLIAM DeBUSSEY

San Diego