According to the September 6 issue of Psychiatric News, APA recently announced a position of support for affirmative action in medical schools. Affirmative action makes skin color or gender a criterion for selecting individuals for employment at or admission to medical school programs.

Shouldn't APA support evaluating candidates for admission or employment on a color-blind basis, without reference to either race or gender? To argue for racial or gender preferences of any sort is to argue for the same kind of discrimination that existed in the past, only on a reverse basis.

Any psychiatrist who considers the issue thoughtfully must concede that reverse discrimination can heal the past hurts of one group only by injuring the aspirations of another. It is a formula for continued polarization and resentment, not for healing. So, let us, if we must take a political position as an association, take a stand against all discrimination. Let us publicly advertise that APA does not endorse any racial or gender preferences whatsoever. And let candidates to medical school programs be accepted or rejected solely on the basis of individual capacity and merit.

Paul D. Lidstrom, M.D.

Littleton, N.H.

(Psychiatric News, November 1, 1996)