OPINION & EDITORIAL
Letters to the editor — 2/14/02
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Thursday, February 14, 2002
Although the complete and total absence of reason in Benjamin Thompson’s article leads me to believe that any sort of response will be useless, gross insults to common intelligence fill the article and make such a response necessary.
It might be possible to understand Mr. Thompson’s argument in a world of black and white, where the truth can be ascertained in simple, concise ideas. However, the rest of us live in a more complex realm, where every idea has its own benefits and drawbacks.
It is easy to paint Russ Feingold as a defender of all civil liberties and then to accuse him of being a hypocrite for failing to do so. The reality is that every political situation requires a judgement as to whether the benefits of a decision outweigh the drawbacks. From what I understand in various news sources, Mr. Feingold felt that the drawbacks outweighed the benefits of the Patriot Bill, and vice versa for the campaign finance bill.
This evaluation hardly makes Mr. Feingold a hypocrite; rather, it makes him a sane, rational person able to weigh the merit of an idea. I fear for a world in which politicians blindly adhere to principles when making decisions, regardless of the outcomes that may result.
Whatever he chooses to do with his political career, Feingold has at least shown to the nation that he has the ability to make sensible decisions.
Rob Welygan, UW sophomore
I would like to pass my deepest sympathies to Anna Gould, whose bumbling rant against affirmative action only exposes just how profoundly steeped in naivete she is.
Gould builds the argument that affirmative action is harmful, for it somehow damns African Americans for their “entire lives” to wearing the label “quota filler.” First of all, Gould needs to research beyond polemical op-eds. Admissions quotas are illegal, and affirmative action does not pander to the “unqualified” as Gould so blatantly claims.
I find it doubtful, though, that her having covered a racially-charged news story last year would authorize her to make the claim that she has her fingers pressed to the pulse of the UW-Madison students of color and therefore can tell them how they feel they are being treated.
Yet that is exactly what Gould attempts, bouncing frenetically between abstract generalizations about Hispanics, African Americans and other “minority” students and even attempting to speak for students of color.
In one instance she completely disfigures a student’s account of “white racism” and instead inserts her own claim that the discrimination that the student felt was “a symptom of what affirmative action does to a group of people.” It is okay with me if Gould wishes to state her own opinion, yet it enrages me that Gould would claim for herself the right to pervert another student’s words.
Moreover, Gould’s statement only reveals the shallowness of her own argument, for she falls into that flaw, endemic to many white Americans, to yet again blame UW-Madison’s shameful homogeneity on its efforts to diversify rather than on the racist and classist climates that many students of color face both here and at home. Next time Gould wishes to cover a story concerning how students of color feel, I would suggest that she actually speaks to some rather than prancing around the cushioned confines of her own delusional fantasies.
Oh, and as a last thought, I think Gould forgot something in her argument. Statistically, it’s white women who have benefited the most from affirmative action. Gould may wish to heed her own advice, stop victimizing herself for being a “quota filler,” and just drop out.
Jesse Kiley, UW senior
Afro-American and Women’s Studies Major
Student of Color Liaison to ASM
