Wonder what the lefty-racists will say about this... Sunday, July 6, 1997 . Page B 8 San Francisco Examiner LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Rose Elizabeth Bird's ignorant and poorly reasoned column ( "A brutal education legacy," June 29) in which she identified the end of affirmative action at the University of California with apartheid is an example of why race-based policies have become so bankrupt among the citizens of California. Apartheid classified individuals strictly according to race and ignored their individual abilities. Blacks in South Africa could not go to white universities regardless of their intellectual accomplishments. Affirmative action classified individuals according to race and their individual accomplishments. The end of affirmative action means that individuals will be assessed in terms of their individual accomplishments. It is as far away from apartheid as a policy could possibly be. Moreover, the end of affirmative action will not result in ethnically homogeneous campuses at the University of California. The student population in this state is astonishingly diverse. There are large numbers of men and women whose forebears came from all over Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. What the end of affirmative action will do is to change the mix. There will be more individuals of Chinese, Japanese, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani and Russian descent, and fewer individuals of African and Latin American descent. Bird might not like this new mix, but the astonishing ethnic diversity of California universities will not end as a result of the termination of affirmative action - only race-based discrimination will. Stephen D. Krasner Department of Political Science Stanford University Rose Bird's "disgraceful, social do-gooding, liberal attack' Anent Rose Elizabeth Bird's disgraceful - albeit typically social do-gooding liberal - attack upon Gov. Wilson and UC Regent Ward Connerly for taking us from "affirmative action to California-style apartheid" : The opinions, political philosophy and judicial activism of former California Chief Justice Bird were unequivocably repudiated by the voters of California when she and two other like-thinking liberal justices were deservedly removed from the court. Bird's words today - as were her pronouncements from the bench of yesteryear - would be laughable were they not so dangerous. Thomas M. Edwards San Francisco ==================================================== US NEWS & WORLD REPORT UPDATE July, 1997 The IRS loses a round SOON AFTER PRESIDENT CLINTON announced his "mend it, don't end it" policy on affirmative action, U.S. News reported ("Between the Idea and the Reality," July 31, 1995) on race-and-employment skirmishes within the federal bureaucracy. In one prominent example, critics accused the Internal Revenue Service of maintaining virtual quotas in its hiring practices. In the past two years, the IRS has lost several cases involving charges of "reverse discrimination" that were brought by white males. Two of the cases involved accusations by IRS employees who charged that the agency had retaliated against them for filing or supporting reverse-bias claims. Federal District Court Judge Donald E. Walter in Shreveport, La., recently declared the IRS's policy on racial and gender diversity unconstitutional, saying that it amounted to a "quota, guarantee, or set-aside." The judge issued his ruling in a suit brought by four white males that is set for trial next month. The case may be settled, but the IRS will be under pressure to overhaul its policy, which may be challenged in a class-action suit.--Ted Gest Copyright U.S. News & World Report, Inc.