Affirmative Action Debate

Re: “UCLA’s Young Plans Vocal Affirmative Action Defense,” March 3:

Throughout the ‘80s, “profits for profits’ sake” management was widespread in corporate America and was evidently disastrous in its effects and consequences. Since then, however, such counterproductive, result-oriented approach has been swept away by the forces of marketplace.

Unfortunately, UCLA chancellor Charles Young and his institution exist outside of such forces. It seems that Young still embraces results-oriented thinking and is determined to corrupt the intellectual dialogue concerning “diversity for diversity’s sake” affirmative action. He says that the opposition to race-based preferences is based on the false premise that they benefit only minority students. Actually, the critics of such policy have been arguing just the opposite--that it is, by its very nature, detrimental especially to the students it is supposed to benefit.

If Young truly believes in racial preferences and their benefits, he should be able to offer argument and evidence to show how such policy is producing positive academic and social experiences for minority students at UCLA and other college campuses, and let us see if those arguments and evidence will stand up under public scrutiny.

TOSHI TOMITANI

Long Beach

As one of those who participated as a faculty member in the beginning of affirmative action at UCLA in the late ‘60s, it was particularly gratifying to read the ringing re-endorsement of its principles, and call for action in its support, by Chancellor Young.

Young is right on the mark when he says affirmative action was never done just to benefit minorities who had been systematically and unjustly excluded from higher education. We always thought of it as a way of enriching the education of all UCLA students and, not so incidentally, its faculty and administrators.

It also represented a painful acknowledgment by UCLA (and the University of California) that its admission policies and practices unjustly discriminated against racial and ethnic minorities. It was the beginning of attempts to overcome the destructive legacy of that and, again not so incidentally, the racism in the larger community. While I had occasions to disagree with Young (most notably on the Angela Davis case), I never doubted that without his commitment to overcoming racism we would not have been able to accomplish what we did.

THOMAS ROBISCHON

Venice