Q: In December, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would review two cases that challenge the University of Michigan's use of affirmative action.

Do you think the use of race-based preferences is appropriate in education? Or in other fields?

End unfair preferences

Affirmative action is discrimination.

At the university level, affirmative action has resulted in students being accepted and given scholarships because of their race, rather than their academic achievements.

There are only so many seats in a class and only so much money available for scholarships. Whenever a minority student is accepted because of affirmative action or awarded a scholarship, some other student is denied a seat and a scholarship.

This is a big country with great diversity and many minority groups. Affirmative action has been used to advance the cause of a few minority groups with political clout at the expense of everyone else.

At the very least, affirmative action should be terminated in state universities, and public funding for affirmative action programs in private universities should be terminated.

Gary J. Kaplowitz

Pikesville

As originally promulgated, affirmative action was a tool for achieving equal opportunity, not by preferring one person over another based on race but by making sure minorities had every opportunity to compete.

In practice, this meant widespread, targeted minority recruitment, but selection that was racially neutral.

But the moment affirmative action is used to justify racial preferences, it destroys equal opportunity and thus its own reason for existence.

I also believe that the tendency to use racial preferences in college admissions is rooted in the fact that too many minority students have been trapped in union-dominated, failing public schools.

The answer is not to discriminate against nonminority applicants for college but to give the parents of minority school children the means to choose the same quality primary and secondary schools other parents can choose.

John D. Schiavone

Kingsville

As someone who remembers the legal discrimination against women of the 1950s, I constantly applaud today's level playing field. So many professions are now open that were once closed to us.

However, if the Supreme Court validates the University of Michigan's race-based preferences, a new Pandora's Box of abuses will open. And whenever an individual is granted privilege based on sex, or race, another individual is relegated to second-class citizenship.

Race-based preferences are not appropriate in education or elsewhere.

I hope the Supreme Court will concur.

Rosalind Ellis

Baltimore

We do need to make sure everyone has every possible opportunity. But by choosing applicants based on their background, colleges are doing just what they should avoid.

Everyone should have equal opportunities, and race should have nothing to do with it.

Colleges need to base their selection process on the best candidate for their school.

Samantha Levy

Reisterstown

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written to ensure "that no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

Since race-based preferences for one race automatically result in race-based discrimination against other races, it's obvious that these preferences are illegal.

If education institutions feel "diversity" is paramount, they should appeal to the Congress to modify the law.

Either we are a country of law, or else anyone is free to do anything he or she thinks is right.

Richard R. Tatlow

Marriottsville

We say we want to achieve a "color-blind" society in which people are "judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Yet we continue to count people by race (and gender and other categories) in the workplace, at the university, and almost everywhere else.

We gerrymander political districts, implement admission programs to favor one group over another and mandate that public service contracts be allocated to certain groups in certain percentages.

Why don't we call this practice "mandated-outcome action" instead?

Richard Grace

Baltimore

Racism is racism - period. Call it what you will, but "affirmative action" is no more than a code for the establishment of race-based preferences and, surreptitiously, racial quotas.

The use of racial preferences invariably denies placement to qualified students and ensures acceptance of unqualified ones. That process results in academic failure and, probably, a lessened sense of self-worth for students forced to fit into a learning environment well beyond their capabilities.

Why do we insist on doing this to our kids? Are we actually helping minority students? Not really. We're throwing them into human experiments designed by leftist social engineers.

These are the people who insist all students are equal and education results must be equal. These are the people who insist on forcing diversity on people who do not want it.

It is high time we recognized the insanity of this process and reverted to an education system that ensured all qualified students an equal opportunity to succeed in an environment devoid of the machinations of those who believe their social experiments are more important than the ultimate success of the students.

W. C. Harsanyi

Pasadena

Higher education has come a long way since the days when it was reserved for the white, upper-class population. Now, the college admissions process has evolved into a competition among people with 4.0 GPAs, 1600 SAT scores and No. 1 class rankings.

One person's congenital condition should not elevate him or her above peers with the same academic marks.

I am currently just one of several million students seeking admission to a prestigious American university. I, and every single other applicant, would be shocked and angered to discover that race was the sole basis for my rejection.

The concept that any person, in any situation, can pull himself or herself up and succeed will be utterly shattered if racial preferences are allowed.

Ilya Plotkin

Baltimore

The writer is a senior at Pikesville High School.

I do believe that there was a time in our history when we Americans needed affirmative action. It made us mingle - in our schools, at our jobs, in our communities.

It worked. Today, I know far too many people of a different race to buy any stereotypes.

I know, too, that the black executive down my street is pretty sharp. His kids compete very well. And hurrah for them. They do not need affirmative action. They need a fair playing field.

So affirmative action must go. It has to go so all Americans can see that we have truly leveled the playing field.

John C. Benwell

Abingdon

Race-based preferences in education and employment are no more appropriate when they prefer a black applicant over a non-black person than when the situation is reversed.

Genetic studies have proved, for any who doubted it, that we are all of one race, the human race. The concept of "race" as we have known it is an illusion based upon visible characteristics that have nothing to do with the person inside.

Making false racial distinctions allows us to deal with people on the basis of group stereotypes rather than as individuals. This is inappropriate and, by definition, racist.

I defy any university or employer or anyone who would dispute this assessment to provide a definition of race that would not be both morally offensive and absurd.

It simply can't be done.

Jeffry D. Mueller

Eldersburg

Affirmative action or racial preferences are inappropriate across the board, but particularly in education.

All people, regardless of race, must achieve their goals based on ability and merit. This is a fact of life.

A person who doesn't learn this when he or she is young will be in for a real jolt later on.

Elizabeth Myers

Baltimore

First, let me say equality is fine and the laws that enforce equality are fine.

But to say affirmative action and race-based preferences are needed to make up for past grievances is to say that two wrongs make a right.

Ability and aptitude should be the only criteria for admittance to any position.

Andrew P. Magnani

Bel Air

Affirmative action is a policy that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity. But is it equality of opportunity to deny an 18-year-old white boy a ticket to college because an equally deserving girl is black?

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Affirmative action is based on the color of one's skin, not necessarily the content of one's character.

Every righteous person in the world wants equal opportunity for everyone.

However, it is downright hypocritical to suggest that equal opportunity is choosing a minority member over a white person just because of his or her race. That is, most simply put, racism.

Alex Simone

Baltimore

The writer is a freshman at Beth Tfiloh Community High School.

This question is easy. Our Founding Fathers answered it in five words: "All men are created equal." And they didn't add any clauses about "some being more equal than others."

Yes, at the time that was written slaves were not considered, but since the Emancipation Proclamation, we have been struggling toward a truly equal society, and rolling the clock back to give unequal privilege to one group over others is not the road toward perfection.

Affirmative action is unconstitutional and should stay that way.

Franklin W. Littleton

Baltimore