This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The editorial "No more leg up: Affirmative action is not a problem" (Our View, Dec. 13) argues against a proposed state constitutional amendment to end affirmative action policies and in favor of the continued use of government preferences based on skin color, national origin and sex.
It does so primarily by pointing to statistical imbalances. Such imbalances may or may not be the result of discrimination. If they are not — if, for example, they simply reflect the fact that fewer women than men are interested in certain jobs, or that fewer Latinos than Asians graduate from college and, therefore, are eligible to become lawyers or doctors by continuing on to law or medical school — then of course politically correct discrimination is not the answer.
What's more, even if the imbalances can to some extent be traced to politically incorrect discrimination, politically correct discrimination is not the answer, either. The way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating, as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently argued.
The solution is not to layer more discrimination of a different kind on top, but to have and enforce laws against discrimination.
Roger CleggPresident
Center for Equal Opportunity
Falls Church, Va.