>The only problem I have ever had with affirmative action is that it does not guarantee equal opportunity. While the intention is admirable, it does not apply correctly. To me, affirmative action should mean: two people of different race or ethnicity receive equal consideration and opportunity. In reality that does not happen. The individual from a minority with fewer skills, training, or abilities will take the position over the non-minority with greater skills, training, or abilities and almost never the reverse. Especially when it comes to higher education slots. I hope I didn't open a can of worms...

In fact, what the phrase "affirmative action" is supposed to mean is casting a wider net to find qualified applicants, not just relying on the same old channels for the reasons in my earlier message.

In education, there's an interesting question. The top schools receive applications from several times the number of qualified students they have room for. (For example, for Nathaniel's class at Yale, the acceptance rate was 9% of applicants.) In that situation, does it make sense to somehow quantify "most qualified" and simply take the top or should you look at the whole pool of qualified applicants and select a diverse group.

If you believe that educating young people in a diverse environment is a good thing (and I do and have chosen to live in a diverse community for that reason), then the latter approach makes more sense. Again, the idea isn't that you take the unqualified over the qualified, but that you pick and choose among the qualified to build a diverse student body.

On a related note, Solomon told me an interesting story for this year's graduating class at Amherst (his alma mater). One of the top students in the class, chosen by his classmates at a student speaker for commencement, was a young man who wouldn't have been considered qualified by traditional standards, but the college took a chance on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/education/27grad.html?ex=1184472000&en=b22a502f7a534960&ei=5070

To me, this is affirmative action at its best.

Tamar