Affirmative action is not clear-cut or justifiable

TO THE EDITOR:

While I am glad that there is dialogue on the validity of affirmative action today, there has been no good logic or data from the side supporting it, highlighted by Amanda Younger's column (Minority students work hard to be here"" March 23).

I would love to hear what skin color or race inherently have to do with people getting the short end of the educational stick."" I agree that those who are disadvantaged should be considered differently in admissions and scholarships" and while there are no clear-cut measures for identifying the disadvantaged there are much better ones than race. Why isn't socioeconomic background good enough?

In fact Princeton researchers looked at the race sex SAT scores and legacy status of more than 124000 applicants to elite colleges and universities and found that having applicants state their race actually puts Asians at a disadvantage. Plenty of Asians immigrate to America learn English come from anything but a privileged background and still succeed.

Why can't we try a test run of removing race as an admissions factor? I hardly think you'll encounter people of authority at UNC consciously trying to keep minorities down (if you do please do point them out).

Sure Ms. Younger a race columnist might be needed in the paper. But how about we get a real underrepresented population — those of us who oppose racially based affirmative action — some column space



Sam Thomasson

Chapel Hill