Preferences Debate

As the affirmative action debate has focused on whether a history of racism against African Americans justifies affirmative action for the benefit of African Americans, nonwhite immigrants and children of immigrants appear to have been given a free ride in having to justify why they should be given preferential treatment over whites.

My parents voluntarily emigrated here from Central America, without any expectation that they should be given preferential treatment over Americans with much deeper roots in the U.S. When, for example, Italians and the Irish emigrated here, they were the subject of bigotry, yet succeeded without the benefit of any affirmative action. Yet we are now telling their descendants that someone like me, with no family history of being persecuted in this country, has a “civil right” to be preferred in employment and college admissions over them. What logical or moral sense does that make?

RONALD A. MORALES

West Covina