Affirmative Action

I'M AN African-American who is the beneficiary of affirmative action. I find the recent federal court decision ordering the University of Michigan Law School to dismantle its affirmative-action program disturbing. I was able to take advantage of educational opportunities, first by attending Harvard College and Harvard Business School and now the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I know I was qualified for admission at all three institutions, where I and other minority students have done well.

Affirmative action in higher education raises difficult questions of access and fairness. Opponents argue that it discriminates against whites and certain other groups, while proponents emphasize that it increases opportunities for underrepresented minorities. Though concerns about fairness properly limit the scope and frequency of affirmative action, minority underrepresentation in highly selective colleges and universities continues to validate its use. For almost 40 years, the Supreme Court has grappled with challenges to the scope and validity of race-based affirmative action programs.

WASHINGTON -- As the battle over affirmative action heats up, I am bracing myself for the time when my side -- the side that supports it -- loses.The winners will be my rivals like Ward Connerly, the black businessman who led the anti-affirmative-action proposition thatCalifornia voters passed in November. Mr. Connerly recently formed an organization to spread the movement to other states.Martin Luther King III organized a group to counter Mr. Connerly's. But though his organization may have some successes, ultimately the pro-affirmative action side will lose.

I support The Sun's position on Dr. Ben Carson ("The price of free speech," April 13). Dr. Carson was accorded his First Amendment right to freely express his views on marriage equality - and those outraged by the hurtful and insulting comments he made also have a right to express theirs. Not only that, Hopkins students have a right to a say in who addresses their commencement. What I find most disturbing about Dr. Carson's views is that they generally reflect right-wing Republican ideas.

Dawn Hyde has made a second career out of helping companies with federal contracts and those that are federally insured meet affirmative-action hiring rules.A former personnel officer at Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Co., she quit 10 years ago to launch Columbia-based Berkshire Associates Inc., an affirmative-action consulting firm.A decade later, the company boasts about 60 clients looking for advice on meeting federal regulations on the hiring and promotion of women, minorities and the disabled.

ORLANDO, Florida -- "How can you have any objection to this statement?" Ward Connerly, famous affirmative action foe, asked me this in a recent debate.Then he read to me the language of the anti-affirmative action proposition known as Initiative 200 that Washington state voters will decide today.It says essentially that the state "shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin," in education, employment or contracting.

FROM Nicholas Lemann, writing in the New York Times Magazine, June 11:As we begin the process of thinking about the bulk of affirmative action programs, it's important to keep in mind three core principles.First, because the country is so segregated, the natural default position for white people is to have no contact at all with blacks. It's healthy to have some way of pushing people, as they make hiring and contracting and admissions decisions, to go far enough beyond the bounds of their ordinary realm of contacts to find black candidates.

WASHINGTON -- When circumstances pressed President Clinton to declare himself on one side or the other on affirmative action, he found a classically Clintonian footing on the middle ground.''Mend it, don't end it,'' he declared.That sounded great, the perfect bumper-sticker slogan, even though nobody knew what he meant. Now we are beginning to find out what he meant. His recent efforts to ''mend it'' are essentially ending it.First came the Clinton administration's August 14 announcement that it is considering a proposal to make it easier for white-owned businesses to qualify for government contracts that originally were set aside for businesses owned by racial and ethnic minorities.

WASHINGTON -- In a departure from their long-held, unqualified support of affirmative action, three prominent liberal Democrats -- two of them leading black legislators -- yesterday endorsed a review of government policies and programs that give preferences to women and members of minorities.But while supporting the review, the three Democrats -- Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York -- insisted that some special efforts were appropriate to help women and members of minorities overcome the effects of past and current discrimination.

If Arthur Fletcher runs for president next year, it won't be a conventional campaign.His strongest vitriol is leveled against fellow Republicans, he's contemplating a campaign theme that could be political suicide, and he hasn't even decided whether to run on the GOP ticket or as an independent.But then, a quixotic campaign for president is completely in character for a man who is considered the "father of affirmative action."Mr. Fletcher, 70, in Seattle recently to speak to a business conference, offered unvarnished glimpses into his political assessments:* On Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, California Gov. Pete Wilson and conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, all Republicans who are running, or are expected to run, for president next year:"I call them the David Duke wing of the Republican Party.

The quote from Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation in your recent article on affirmative action is a perfect illustration of the problem ("Affirmative action on docket," March 26). He says that "Michigan voters struck a blow for equal rights by barring government from discriminating or granting preferences by people's skin color or sex. " I'm sorry but I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that equal rights actually meant that everyone had the same rights, and there was no preference nor discrimination.

The Sun has published several commentaries, including one by Leonard Pitts Jr. ("Wrong about racism," March 3), discussing Justice Antonin Scalia's recent remark during oral arguments about the Voting Rights Act being a "racial entitlement. " None squarely address the justice's claim that this subject has been written about. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of quick sleuthing and discovered that Mr. Scalia "wrote about it" himself using the term "racial entitlement" in a 1979 law review article written before he joined the Supreme Court.

Leave it to The Sun to mock Mitt Romney's voluntary effort to include women in his administration as governor of Massachusetts ("The binding of women," Oct. 18). Must any affirmative action to include women be mandated by government to satisfy The Sun's editorial board? Oh, wait? I get it. If the government had mandated Mr. Romney's action, then our president could have told Mr. Romney: "You didn't build - I mean do - that. " Bob Price, Lutherville

It may be time to say farewell to affirmative action in higher education admissions and to the aspirations that went with it. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a case challenging the sliver of consideration the university gives to race and ethnicity when deciding whom to admit. It is already being billed as "the case that killed affirmative action. " That may prove true, as the make-up of the Supreme Court has changed considerably since the last time it looked at this heated issue, in 2003.

As the Supreme Court once again takes up the issue of affirmative action in college admissions, The Sun's view that this discriminatory practice should be preserved is wrong in both theory and practice ("Race and admissions," Oct. 10). At its core, affirmative action discriminates against a group of people based upon the color of their skin, presumably with the noble goal of helping another group of people with a different skin color. The problem with such a practice is that it legitimizes discrimination.

The U.S. Supreme Court takes up the issue of racial preference in college admissions on Wednesday, and that ought to be a concern for those who believe such policies have provided countless opportunities for minorities - and enriched the educational experience for whites. There is a growing movement in this country to eliminate affirmative action on the grounds that it's no longer needed - or was even helpful in the first place. Granted, this can be a complex issue, and even the most liberal interpretations of the race-conscious policy acknowledge that a balance must be struck to make colleges diverse but also keep the admissions process fair and merit-based.

LAST WEEK, the U.S. Supreme Court passed up another opportunity to enter the national affirmative action debate that has public education officials wondering, in light of recent federal appeals court decisions, how, if at all, race can be factored into student admissions and school assignments -- and whether "diversity" still has a role. This time, the justices let stand a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Montgomery County, Md., school system violated a white kindergartner's 14th Amendment equal protection rights when it denied his requested transfer to a math and science "magnet" school because of his race.

CALIFORNIA's power to cloud men's minds must never be forgot. Under its spell we submitted for eight years to the governance of Ronald Reagan, who had trouble distinguishing history from old movie plots.Under its spell we submitted for six years to the governance of Richard Nixon, who only did what they all do, I'm told, but did it so ineptly that he broke the California spell and had to resign.Now another Californian is starting to cloud the American mind: Gov. Pete Wilson. Wants to be President.

It's time for someone to say it aloud. As a member of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights for more than a decade and its chairman for much of that time, I'm willing to take the risk of being misunderstood. African-Americans are no longer the principal targets of discrimination. Notice I said "discrimination," not prejudice. In the universe of laws to enforce equal opportunity, discrimination is easy to allege but difficult to prove. And prejudice doesn't exactly matter. Corporate America and a good many small organizations have learned how to fire employees without violating anti-discrimination statutes.