THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 13, 1995 TAG: 9507120006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
I believe you had your thinking cap on backward when you compared ``veterans' preference'' to ``affirmative action.''
The longstanding complaint against race- or sex-based affirmative-action hiring is twofold. First, these programs base nonmerit hiring decisions on an applicant's race or gender. Both are highly suspect classifications.
Second, as the Supreme Court recently pointed out, it is impossible to apply corrective measure for historical class discrimination to individuals who may or may not have suffered that discrimination. Under affirmative action, the rich and highly advantaged son of a prominent minority family will be given hiring preference over the more-gifted, underprivileged son of a poor majority family. That corrects nothing and ignores what the applicants themselves have worked to earn.
Veterans' preference is precisely the opposite. It awards a small hiring credit to applicants for a federal job to all who served honorably or were physically disabled while in military service.
Since most of the people who have ever served in the military are male, it has in the past been mostly men who have received the preference.
Is this another class-based discrimination? No, it is not. Why not? Because no one is born into military service. It is not a matter of genetics or gender. A man who did not serve is no better off than a woman who did not serve.
Those not eligible for the preference chose to follow some other career path. In making that choice, the nonveteran chose to forgo both the many hardships and the benefits of military service.
One major reason more men have received the preference is that during periods of national crisis, these same men were drafted into the service. It would be painfully ironic that a woman who was not subject to being drafted to serve and perhaps die in Vietnam would now declare that in reality she was victimized by being left out of the draft because she would not now claim eligibility to a few points on a job rating.
The veterans' preference is not by class; it is an opportunity open to everyone willing to earn it.
STEVEN L. SEATON
Commander, U.S. Navy
Norfolk, June 21, 1995 by CNB