January 16, 2003

To the Editor of Journal News

Quotas or Politics?

Recently the issue of “set-asides” for minority students has become big news with the recent Supreme Court case involving the University of Michigan Law School. Obviously only history will judge whether affirmative action has been a successful trade-off, providing access to minorities with lesser bona fides, and reverse discrimination to others with supposedly more qualifications. As a society though, no one could argue that we have declined as a nation because of these efforts. The question really is, as always, fairness and to whom? But isn’t it funny how things never seem to change. After the recent Trent Lott fiasco, where the former Senate Majority Leader bent over backwards to apologize for his ridiculous support for South Carolina’s favorite Neanderthal, and was jettisoned by the President, our same President weighed-in with his learned view on what is constitutional and not constitutional. Ignoring the usual separations of power, the President, while grappling with burgeoning deficits, a sluggish economy, a 50% rise in unemployment, North Korean saber-rattling, an elusive Bin Laden, UN inspectors demanding more time to do their work, and the issues of war and peace, found time to re-affirm the usual Trent Lott “bloody red” flag of racial antipathies.

Richard J. Garfunkel