LETTER: Past letters didn’t hit mark

Editor,

I need to respond to the letter from Nic Baker and the column by Professor Rodriguez in the Jan. 7 Utah Statesman.

Instead of trying to argue for affirmative action by offering a compelling need for it, Baker talks about senators being able to get their kids into preferred jobs in the military. That may be something we should talk about, but it has nothing to do with giving racial preferences to college applicants. As for his claim that the bake sale was unoriginal, so what? Were all the war protests across campuses meaningless because protests have been done before? The College Republicans recognized the sale as a good way to bring up and encourage discussion about this issue. In those terms, it has been very successful.

As for Rodriguez’s column, it appears she has missed the point. Why should white students only compete against white students and black students only against other blacks? Do white doctors only treat whites and black doctors only treat blacks? She goes on to say that affirmative action is needed because we have not yet realized Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. I contend that we will never achieve his dream as long as we continue to judge by the color of skin for any reason. If someone really wants to help out low-income/poor opportunity minorities, he should focus his time on encouraging voucher programs.

The answer to the disproportionate amount of minorities in higher education is not to lower the standard for minorities. Instead, we should try to change the miserable state of inner city education. Liberals have taken hostage many areas of public education and then insist on things like affirmative action to cover their failures.

It is time they recognize that their education policies of the last 40 years have failed. It is time to recognize that pumping more money into failing programs does not make them successful. It is time for people to think outside the box. Until this happens, we will have to continue rehashing the stale arguments of people that are still living in the 1800s.

Matthew Jones