Colleges May Favor Diversity Over Equality
Re “Colleges Will Just Disguise Racial Quotas,” Commentary, June 30: Richard Sander is right on the mark. During the past 30-odd years we have lived in an overtly racist society -- racist against whites. In the sociocultural game of musical chairs, whites are left standing. This is true in academia and in the job market. This is Marxism 101 in action. “Diversity” actually means replacement at any cost while, not so coincidently, diversity of opinion is increasingly prohibited on campus. “To hell with the law” and “to hell with the will of the people” are the implicit messages.
Tom Briggs
Bakersfield
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Re “College Rulings Add Insult to Injury,” Opinion, June 29: I concur with Abigail Thernstrom that the solution in closing the education gap lies with elementary and secondary schooling (achievement). Thernstrom contends that the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court glosses over the need for better early schooling. I also concur with the need for greater achievement as early as possible for all students without regard to the color of one’s skin. But the fact is that a very large segment of the American populace fails to recognize that all men and women are not created equal.
Some in this land of opportunity do not have to work hard to achieve, while other hardworking and achieving people will never get the same opportunities. If this statement is false, then how could a student with average abilities ever attend Yale University and go on to become the 43rd president of the United States?
People are not created equal; nor are public schools. Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court’s admissions preference decision does have merit. The case is made by the president himself, and that is a fact no one can deny.
Ronald D. Radigan
Walnut
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In “Right Wing Risks a Supreme Injustice,” Commentary, June 29, Frank del Olmo celebrates the fact that the Supreme Court’s decisions in the affirmative action cases “came down in favor of racial and ethnic diversity as a social good.” In the next breath he takes strong exception to the contrary opinion of a Latina pundit. Del Olmo clearly views with disfavor the idea that a diversity of political views is also a social good. Surely he does not expect all the affirmative action admittees who graduate to come out thinking the same way. Or does he?
Manuel H. Rodriguez
Burbank
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Del Olmo contributed some light to the political implications of the selection of judges to the appeals courts and Supreme Court. He tells us indirectly that President Bush and his predecessors have used the right-wing Federalist Society established several decades ago to successfully install conservative judges in our judicial system. This also confirms that justices and judges decide cases on both law and political leanings.
The recent affirmative action and privacy decisions have been unexpected from the same court that made the constitutionally dubious 5-4 decision to stop the recount vote in the 2000 election (10th Amendment). It has also selectively decided in a 5-4 majority to reverse several dozen laws passed by Congress regarding federal laws restricting state actions.
These changes had a decidedly pro-corporate bias at the expense of our citizens.
The framers of our Constitution may or may not have planned to have the wealth of corporations decide what laws our citizens must have, but that has been increasingly the result of corporate control of our Congress and the election process by effective use of the corporate media.
James H. Kawakami
Los Angeles
