In response to a column I wrote, titled "Skin color is not relevant on a diverse campus" in the Jan. 14 issue, two letters were written that challenge my position against affirmative action and, in doing so, raised many interesting points to which I'd like to respond.Ana Yoselin Bugallo and Ebone Bishop wrote a joint letter entitled, "Affirmative action is a policy of inclusion, " published on Jan. 21.

"...Affirmative action is a policy of inclusion-, not exclusion... affirmative action has help 5 million minority members and 6 million white and minority women move up in the workforce ... the reality is that affirmative action has placed women and people of color into formerly all-white institutions. This is inclusion, not exclusion."

This distinction between inclusion and exclusion is silly. If a university has 100 spots, let's say, the only way to "include " more people is to exclude others. Unless you are advocating a tremendous increase in the size of universities, inclusion is exclusion.

"The unfortunate reality of American society," the letter continues, "is that race and socioeconomic status are inextricably linked ... race and socioeconomic class are weaved together so closely that it is often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins."

That's simply not true. While the two may have a lot in common, there is certainly a way to account for certain disadvantages in the college admissions process without succumbing to racism. I support universities accounting for past injustices in their admissions process as long as it is done so on an individual basis. If an applicant comes from an underprivileged background and, as a result, received an inferior education, for instance, an admissions committee should by all means take that into consideration.

"Brandeis was built because there was no affirmative action -- not for people of color, not for Jewish people, not for women," the letter states.

Not exactly. I think that this university was created because Jewish students and professors were not given a fair chance in the admissions process. I'm advocating giving everybody an equally fair chance.

Noah Browne also wrote a letter published Jan. 21, titled "Fryman had right premise, no solution."

"I have a hard time believing that a student from Boise has any more character than a student from Long Island," he wrote.

Me too. Reread my column.

"Affirmative action is a post-facto policy, one that seeks to redress imbalances -- usually in the name of diversity -- that have already been created," he continues.

I agree with Browne that many proponents of affirmative action have noble intentions. Perhaps they do not realize that such policies highly resemble the very racism they claim to be fighting.

For instance, consider the following definition of racial profiling taken from the United States Department of Justice's racial profiling study guide: "We define 'racial profiling' as any police-initiated action that relies upon: (a) the race, ethnicity or national origin of an individual, rather than (b) the behavior of that individual " (http://www.mnclu.org/nr_racial_profiling.html) If you change the phrase "racial profiling " to "affirmative action " and "police-initiated " to "university-sponsored ", the striking similarity between the two programs becomes obvious. Both programs tap into racial stereotypes in a decision-making process.

I want to be very clear on this point: The solution is to judge all applicants as individuals and not as members of racial groups. As Bugallo and Bishop correctly point out in their letter, racism is built on the idea that people with different skin color are genuinely different from one another. Well, so are affirmative action and racial profiling. The answer to racism is to stop categorizing individuals based on such an arbitrary physical feature as skin color.