This letter is in response to George Zornick's April 20 column "Affirming the need to overcome."
While affirmative action in and by itself may have been a good idea when it was instituted back in the early 1960s, it has become nothing more than an aberration of its former self. While the system was designed to create equal opportunities for minorities, which up to that point had been discriminated against with the endorsement of federal officials of the likes of Sen. Strom Thurmond, it has outgrown its original boundaries and is now being abused left and right for what I would consider morally inferior purposes.
While it is true that mainly minorities are affected by poverty, there are also members of majority races that are affected. It is therefore surprising to see that there are very few, if any, non-minority students in affirmative action-related programs here at UB.
The problem of quotas and/or the pressure for politically correct hiring practices is also a serious one as it forces organizations to aim for the most diverse workforce as opposed to the most qualified and efficient.
I reject the notion that being born into a specific race automatically determines one's destiny. This is a typically lazy liberal attitude that ignores reality. Just because I happen to be Caucasian does not make me an executive at birth. I have to work just as hard as the next man or woman and cannot see how my race fattens my paycheck.
On a larger scale, I therefore believe that affirmative action hurts our society more than it benefits us. We should be looking at more effective means of reform, such as education reform, that benefit all races and creeds and not just minorities. I also believe that this is responsibility of all Americans and not just majorities to end race-based inequalities. To this end, for example, segregation needs to be ended from both sides.
