Race, ethnicity

Regarding “Trump’s disdain for affirmative action could kill college diversity programs” (HoustonChronicle.com, Friday), it’s ironic that your editorial defending racial preferences in university admissions would cite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After all, Dr. King’s most famous declaration was, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” That’s the principle most Americans would like to see universities follow when it comes to admitting students: Don’t weigh skin color or what country someone’s ancestors came from.

As America becomes an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic country — where individual Americans themselves are more and more likely to be multiracial and multiethnic — it also becomes increasingly untenable for our institutions to classify our people and treat some better and some worse based on which box they check on some form.

Indeed, when I said that universities’ politically correct discrimination would come under greater scrutiny “as the demographics of the country change,” I was talking about discrimination not only against whites but also against Asian-Americans “and others as well,” who are now all targeted.

So the Trump administration was right to rescind the Obama administration’s “guidance” in this area, which pushed schools to treat students differently on the basis of race and ethnicity. Here’s hoping that one day the Supreme Court, and the Houston Chronicle, will also come around to this view.

Roger Clegg, president and general counsel, Center for Equal Opportunity,

Falls Church, Va.