Connerly on Favors, Quotas

In some 30 years of buying, reading, arguing with, fuming at, corresponding with and wrapping fish in The Times, I never thought I would see display advertising on the Op-Ed pages. Ward Connerly’s commercial presentation (April 24) on behalf of his ill-willed project for a new form of serious discrimination, CCRI, should be invoiced by your billing department for 18 column-inches of self-promoting nonsense.

Connerly clearly wants off The Times’ investigative hook for his patent malfeasance while masquerading as a trusted regent of the UC system.

The UC system, with or without selective admissions protocols of recent note, is alive and well and blessed with a depth of dedicated talent in all departments save the regents. The system does not need the bleeding-heart efforts of a Ward Connerly to explain why major donors want their spoiled children advocated to the admissions office.

The history of California’s educational support for the economically and physically disadvantaged shows us a degree of postgraduate social and commercial equality that is unprecedented in the nation. If the minority preferences program is now so onerous as to require a corrective ballot initiative, so be it. But, the disingenuous blather generated by Connerly and others of the status-seeking establishment in attempting to wrap themselves in patriotism is divisive and nauseating.

LEW W. GOODWIN

Los Angeles

* I would like to set the record straight on legalized discrimination against nonminorities. What some call affirmative action flies in the face of the great civil rights movement. Supporters of preferences need to realize that voters passing the California civil rights initiative will take a step in creating an inclusive society where all can develop a sense of belonging and full participation without regard to their race, gender or ethnicity.

It is time to realize the true dream of Dr. Martin Luther King. To judge all on their merits. Not by color of their skin.

COREY MILLER

San Luis Obispo