Community College and Affirmative Action

Re “Affirmative Lifelines,” May 20: California has the best affirmative action program. It’s community colleges.

I graduated high school without reading a book. I had attention deficit disorder, wrongfully called laziness. I became a surf bum, but a small voice within said, “I want to be more than a goofy foot with surf knots.” I enrolled at Santa Monica City College and flunked out. I joined the Navy, became a man, read a first book, Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War,” and loved it. After our disgraceful defeat in Vietnam, I used the GI Bill for city college, excelled in literary studies, transferred to a university, became a teacher. I am now a loving husband, father and writer.

I was not given a seat at a UC. Why, 48 years after Lyndon B. Johnson’s trillion-dollar Great Society should students be given a UC seat because their skin happens to be black, brown or purple with green polka dots? That “solution” failed last century. If the UC uses public funds for social engineering it will suffer the fate of Los Angeles city schools. Taxpayers will choose to no longer use or support the UC because it is not first-rate.

Noel Anenberg

Encino