Regarding the letter in Friday’s Daily from Ms. Vankinscott (“Democrats should back privatization,” Feb. 18), it is a shame you were unable to precede the opportunistic recitation of Republican talking-points from a blatantly anti-governmental organization like The Heartland Institute with a warning label.

Although it is true that the statistical life expectancy of black Americans is lower than that of whites, the argument that blacks therefore receive fewer returns from their investments in Social Security does not follow. As detailed by Paul Krugman in his Jan. 28 New York Times column and by Farhad Manjoo on Feb. 4 in a Salon.com article, blacks also earn less, statistically, than whites, and thus get a higher rate of return on their investment than whites do.

According to Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “African-American children are almost four times as likely to be lifted out of poverty by Social Security benefits than our white counterparts.” He continues, “[W]ithout the guaranteed Social Security benefits they receive today, the poverty rate among older African Americans would more than double.”

The ingrained complacency of the Bush administration with racial inequality in this country is evident in the primary assumption underlying its argument that Social Security shortchanges blacks: that the average life span of whites and blacks in this country will never approach a common mean.

Any possible benefit from a switch to private accounts will not go to current retirees or to those who will be retiring in the near future; the accounts are being sold as a long-term fix for those of us retiring in 30 to 40 years.

It is deeply pessimistic to assume in that amount of time there will not be any improvement in the fundamental social issues that lead blacks to have a shorter life expectancy in the first place. Better to spend our energy on attempts to create true equality in this country than to cripple a program that has successfully safeguarded retired Americans from abject poverty for 70 years.

Brent Eaton

Graduate Student

Electrical Engineering