As Will Rogers once said, \We are all ignorant. We are all just ignorant of different things."" Patrick Meehan's letter on Thursday ['UW ""white culture"" stops recognition of race issues,' Dec. 5] proves this to be true.
Mr. Meehan apparently forgets his location in his blatant appeal for affirmative action. Unfortunately, Pat, your ""verbose"" language only proves you own a thesaurus and doesn't serve to strengthen your argument. This is a publicly funded university, whose purpose is primarily to educate students from Wisconsin. In fact, 86 percent of students who attend Madison are from Wisconsin and Minnesota, and in those states, the percentages are staggering: 88.9 percent in Wisconsin and 89.4 percent in Minnesota are white students. Sorry that the state of Wisconsin is predominately white or that my admittance to this university denies someone of a different ethnicity that same chance. But to characterize that as blatant racism is simply idiotic.
I suppose I couldn't possibly understand your argument, though, as I ""don't deserve to be here"" and I'm too busy riding my moped around and talking on my cell phone to crack a book. Apparently, there is only one monolithic white culture of which I am a part of that admits no differences of, say, income, religious creed, sex, age, etc.
Look, there are plenty of people here who don't ""deserve"" to be here of ANY ethnicity and time will bear that out. If you deserve to be here, your grades will prove as much to be true. The bottom line is that a top-down solution such as affirmative action is only a pithy attempt at equal opportunity. If you want authentic change, start a lot earlier by providing quality K-12 education that is open to EVERYONE. No admission politics or ethnic diversity requirement necessary.
