Bias and Political Correctness

* Re “Injudicious Disparity,” Dec. 10.

Thank you, thank you, for reciting the very thought behind meritocratic selection of public servants, college students, public suppliers, contractors and even county judges.

In your complaint about the absence of more Latino judges on the Ventura County bench, you bemoan the fact that critics see the local judiciary as “too white, too male and too laden with recent prosecutors.”

We would ask if it is not also true that in looking for the most professionally trained, the most respected for professional experience and for academic distinction, we would find most candidates for our county judges also to be white, to be male and to have previous courtroom experience?

To put it in terms in accord with our recently passed Proposition 209 [the 1996 anti-affirmative action initiative], you say it well for the candidate for university admission, for the competing contractor, for those who select public servants, when you say: “But for people to have faith in the system that determines their fate, they must believe that no qualified person is excluded . . . on the basis of their color.”

Es verdad?

Other than for a politically correct bias to gain support of the growing Latino ethnicity (and market?), why would you choose skin color and accent over professional recognition? Is the professional sanctity of the court to be surrendered to cries for diversity of skin color, national origin, accent or popularity in the minds of the accused? How very sad.

Is there real virtue in having more Latino judges on the Ventura County bench just because “in Ventura County jails, roughly half the inmates at any given time are Latino”?

Thank you, Gov. Gray Davis, for adhering to what you believe best for your state--no matter what anomalies occur in local population characteristics. And do stick with the death penalty: There are crimes too grievous in the suffering of the survivors’ families to permit the continued existence of the perpetrator!

T. BRUCE GRAHAM

Port Hueneme