Minority Preferences

Re “Affirmative Action: A Culture Healing Itself,” by David Dante Troutt, Opinion, April 2:

Affirmative action, whatever merits it may have in other walks of life, has no place in admission policies to graduate and professional schools. Failure to excel in college results from either lack of effort or lack of intelligence. This fact should not be covered up by stories of ethnic or cultural disadvantage. College students are too old--and the disadvantaged years are too far in the past--to put the blame for not attaining excellence anywhere but on their own inadequacies.

Affirmative action as it is practiced today promotes mediocrity among the potential beneficiaries of this program in college and lulls them into a false sense of accomplishment. It also cheapens the efforts of the hard-working and bright students--especially when they are members of an underrepresented minority. Troutt writes about the agony of being “thought stupid at the sight of your face” and expresses his belief that affirmative action will undo such unfairness. On the contrary. If the policy continues, they--the professionals with the look of an underrepresented group--will surely be perceived as such, unless, along with their diplomas, they display affidavits of exemption from affirmative action privileges.

N. M. SENOZAN

Professor of Chemistry

Cal State Long Beach

Re “Where to Draw the Lines?” March 28: I was surprised to read that with regard to the federal government I qualify as a minority, with my Spanish surname. I am of Swedish-German descent. This poses a perplexing problem.

Can a person be a minority because he or she chooses to be one? In order to accurately categorize oneself, every possible combination of racial heritage should be listed on forms that require such a statement. Is a person black if he or she is half white? Is a person white if he or she is half Hispanic but looks white? What about those people who truly do not know their heritage? Should such a person be categorized “white” based on the color of his or her skin? Such a categorization could keep this person out of the college of his choice, deny him scholarships, and even lose him job opportunities where minorities have rights for preferential treatment.

Who decides?

DEBORAH TORRE

Irvine

Re “Affirmative Action: Fairness or Favoritism?” series, March 28-30:

When the decision to end affirmative action is not made primarily by white men, then and only then should affirmative action be ended.

JOYCE KERLEY

Cypress