To the Editor:
This letter is in response to Adam Siegel '98's column "Confronting Reverse Racism" [The Dartmouth, May 6].
To point to men such as Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas and say that America no longer needs affirmative action is like holding up a few apples that grew wormless and say the rest of the orchard doesn't need pesticide. Obviously, people of color and women who have "made it" should be commended for their success in a society that tries to keep them down.
However, let's face facts: one out of four young black men are in jail. Single mothers are the largest group of welfare recipients. Mexican and Asian immigrants must perform menial, backbreaking labor in fruit farms and textile sweatshops because the Immigration and Naturalization Service will not grant them legal status and thus access to better jobs.
How quickly we forget Crown Heights, Howard Beach, Los Angeles. How easy it is to twist language, to throw around suggestive terms like "reverse racism" and "preferential treatment" to obscure the fact that the orchard is blighted, and in dire need of treatment.
Siegel and others like him will selectively choose individual women and people of color as examples, as long as they remain examples few and far between. A small, moderately-successful minority "elite" is tolerable, even desirable for political objectives. But if this elite grows in size and visibility, then the status quo is thrown in a state of chaos. After all, affirmative action is intended to provide those opportunities to all people hitherto open only to white, wealthy males. The conservatives' furor over affirmative action is rooted in one thing, and one thing only: the threat of the destruction of their power base.
