This letter is in response to Timothy Nault’s Jan. 29 letter “Affirmative action is necessary.” The problem I have with this letter is that the only reasons given for why affirmative action is necessary are economic issues, stating that kids who come from poor neighborhoods don’t get as good an education.

This is true, but unless I’ve been grossly misinformed, white people can be poor too, and minorities can be wealthy. So then, why does a policy that tries to make up for economic issues bring in issues of race? It is bad policy. It’s most likely to help well-to-do minorities and hurt poor whites.

There should be instead a policy which lowers the standards on test scores for kids who come from either poor neighborhoods or who attended poorly rated high schools. This would be a policy that is colorblind and in fact better deals with the problem at hand.

Markus Nelson
sophomore
chemical engineering