Affirmative Action

Local Urban League President John Mack’s statement that racism and xenophobia are “grounded in the white European model and mind-set” (interview, Opinion, July 16) demonstrates a historical perspective based upon the crudest left-wing cliches.

A quick perusal of world history would provide Mack with numerous instances of nonwhite bigotry and inhumanity. Japanese treatment of Koreans up to and during World War II, Muslim persecution of Jews, and blacks enslaving other blacks are just a few examples. Inhumanity isn’t a white European innovation. In fact, as the respected historian Bernard Lewis has pointed out, it is the West that recognized, defined and condemned racism and sexism as evils. Only the West has fully developed a curiosity about other cultures and a willingness to appreciate and respect their achievements. The fact that Mack is ignorant of this is all too typical of the sorry state the civil rights movement has descended to. PATRICK ROMERO Hollywood

Ruben Navarrette Jr. says, “What was passed on to me, I refuse to pass on to my own children” (Opinion, July 16). Of course he shouldn’t--he is now an educated professional and his children will benefit from that. His family will now be like the “better-educated white who has spent years discussing, at the family dinner table, the various attributes of USC versus UCLA” to whom he refers. For the Navarrette family the playing field has been leveled.

But what of present and future generations of young minority minds who do not have the benefit of professional, educated parental role models? I do not trust that institutions of higher learning will expend the effort to seek out promising minority students without the monitoring of affirmative action policies.

DOLORES PALACIO

Playa del Rey