‘Anderson’ Model for Discrimination

Re “Remedying Past Discrimination: Following the ‘Anderson’ Model,” Opinion, April 26: While I am sympathetic to some of the arguments in favor of affirmative action, I found the logic in Ian Ayres’ article in support of affirmative action somewhat convoluted. His contention was that because the Daughters of the American Revolution discriminated against Marian Anderson (they refused to rent her a large concert hall in Washington), the National Park Service allowed her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial as a form of affirmative action to remedy the DAR’s discrimination. The argument being presented is that affirmative action is justified to remedy a former discrimination, as in the case of Anderson. Here we are observing discrimination against an individual, and what appears to me to be a righteous response.

Is it logical to apply the principle of affirmative action to members of a minority just because earlier generations of the same minority were subject to unfair discrimination? This is not a persuasive defense of affirmative action; the circumstances are not comparable.

Perhaps affirmative action can be defended simply because less privileged members of our society deserve an extra advantage due to prior disadvantages, i.e. an unequal playing field. But let’s apply affirmative action to all members of society we deem to have been victimized by the uneven playing field, regardless of their ethnicity (even white).

MARVIN KARELITZ

Calabasas

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I can’t think of anyone today who could reasonably object to Eleanor Roosevelt’s action those 59 years ago. The key word in the preceding sentence is “today.” Ayres does not seem to recognize that conditions change. Affirmative action changed. The more it deviated from its original character--the greater the number and magnitude of set-asides and de facto quotas it erringly adopted--the less it applied to developing conditions that evolved into today.

Like most proponents for continuing today’s affirmative action, Ayres does not acknowledge the repugnant racial discrimination into which it devolved and now officially sanctions. As practiced today, it results in the identical immorality the opposition to which gained affirmative action its initial support from so many of us. I and those I know resolutely believe that racial discrimination is wrong, period, and no volume of specious reasoning will change that.

DAVID A. REDMAN

Fullerton