Letters: Equality and affirmative action don’t mix

Re “Affirmative action lives on,” Editorial, June 25

There is nothing admirable about the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action. Universities and corporations may benefit from diverse ideas, but using race and ethnicity as a means to achieve this implies that people of the same race or ethnicity share the same point of view. That is absurd.

Affirmative action is a backward policy that divides Americans according to racial and ethnic lines. In an attempt to compensate for past injustices, it replaces old wrongs with new wrongs and inflames racial and ethnic tensions by giving preferential treatment to people of certain ethnic groups at the expense of others.

In short, affirmative action attempts to achieve racial diversity through reverse discrimination. But achieving racial diversity is not a proper goal for any institution; selecting the most qualified individuals is.

This is why we must abolish affirmative action.

Brady Cuthbert

Irvine

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