Monday, April 13, 1998
Letters
Distorted facts
The recent article by Anatoli Ilyashov ("Prop. 209 threatens
return to pre-civil rights thinking") is so plagued with
inaccuracies, distortions and what could only be complete B.S. that
I shudder to think that some people actually take this at face
value! First, Ilyashov states that Prop. 209 opens the door to
discrimination. This is untrue, since the proposition (Article I,
Section 31 of the California Constitution) explicitly prohibits
discrimination by the state! Furthermore, it is emphasized that
Prop. 209 is "segregating" this university. This is blatantly
wrong. Segregation is the act of classifying people into races and
treating people according to racial classification, not
individuality. Those classifications were treated unequally – which
is what happened under affirmative action, and what Prop. 209
explicitly prohibits! Prop. 209 is the antithesis of pre-civil
rights thinking. Ilyashov speaks of diversity, and completely
ignores the fact that individuals (of any and all races) are
diverse. Racial classifications are just hollow words. Lastly,
there is a mention of "progressive" professors and students. This
emphasizes that all opponents are backward-looking "oppressors" or
"sell-outs." This is decisional, since what is usually meant
(though there are admittedly rare exceptions) by the term
"progressive" would make Karl Marx look like a Capitalist! Ilyashov
is seeing this through distorted and biased glasses, and tends to
hide, distort and falsify to attack the truth.
Daniel B. Rego
Second-year
Political science