Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.

Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

After Idi Amin’s 1972 ultimatum, my family left Uganda in the Indian exodus with $500, two suitcases and a plane ticket. Purged in an overt act of discrimination and escaping with our lives, we ran from the country we had helped build for generations. Now discrimination against Asians will again affect my family. William McGurn’s “A PTA Purge of Asians” (Main Street, July 13) presents clear evidence of discrimination in the name of equity.

I grew up in tenement housing and attended public schools of less-than-high standing, but I had two parents with strong family values, a work ethic ingrained by the examples of the adults around me and a cultural ethos that education was essential. By living wholesome lives, with the benefit of Western liberty and with hard work in the pursuit of happiness, we endured. This cannot be considered privilege.

The purging of high-achieving Asian students at Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School, at the top high schools in New York, even at the acclaimed test-in public high school here in Buffalo, N.Y., as well as the highly nebulous practices at Harvard, Yale and other elite universities, is not the grace that this country extended to us Asians 50 years ago. Equity cannot be achieved with discrimination. Justice is empty without basic fairness. America and the American dream are unsustainable platitudes without meritocracy.

The irony is that my children, who have worked hard and attended elite universities, have four generations of African ancestors—but they are not black. For this reason, they and their children will have to endure new purges. For them and America, I am heartbroken.

Saurin R. Popat, M.D.

Buffalo, N.Y.

School systems should try to understand why Asian-Americans are so successful and encourage similar practices among all parents, as opposed to trying to paint Asians as racist when they aim for excellence. I’m tired of high-achieving children being blamed and held back because a school system cannot educate everyone adequately.

Bethany Wagner Heim

Fairfax, Va.

As an assistant principal for 10 years at Stuyvesant High School, the nation’s premier public secondary school (with apologies to Thomas Jefferson), I observed the overwhelming desire, hard work and brilliant insights of thousands of students, a majority of whom were Asian-American. They earned their way into Stuyvesant the old-fashioned way—on merit.

At Thomas Jefferson as at Stuyvesant, a small but vocal minority of politicians, citizens and pressure groups is trying to equalize enrollment at the expense of students who deserve to be there by dint of academic achievement.

At Stuyvesant I often heard the refrain: “Black and Latino students are at a disadvantage when they apply for admission because they are at the bottom of the income scale.” This is a canard. I did considerable research and found that students living in Chinatown came from lower-income families than the students in the central Bronx and East New York, yet they excelled far more than students from the higher income levels. Many students from Chinatown came from families where English was not even spoken.

Many of us old-timers in education still believe in the fairness of meritocracy. Let’s retain the race-neutral standardized admissions tests for high-quality institutions.

Gary S. Laveman

New York