Recently, South Africa ended its long-standing quota policy for sports, and that is a good thing. There had been a minimum required number of non-white members on South Sfrican sports teams, not unlike Affirmative Action in the U.S. Despite any good intentions behind the policy, it was an example of government-backed racial discrimination.

According to the BBC Sports website, the quota system had been a major source of controversy in sports. Some prominent white South African athletes went so far as to emigrate from the country to get away from the policy.

Now, those athletes may or may not have left because they didn't want blacks on their teams, but they were right to object to the issue in at least one respect: the quota system was simply unfair. Apartheid was a terrible policy, and its abolishment was intended to lead to equality between South Africans, ending the favoring of any race over another. A quota system would be making whites legally inferior to people of any other race. It would only be a reversal of the previous situation, not a solution or an end to it. Discrimination is wrong, no matter who the subjects are.

I am not personally a racist, I have nothin against the black people of South Africa and I certainly realize the gravity of what has been done to them. However, their past oppression was no reason to impose the quota system in that country. I agree completely with the end of the policy.