Opposition to “One Florida” Plan: Process or Substance? – In a long front-page article today on Jeb Bush, David von Drehle writes in the Washington Post that
Jeb Bush and his brother have acted to replace affirmative action programs with open admission policies at state universities. The “One Florida” policy guarantees a place at a Florida college to every student in the top 20 percent of his or her class. But Jeb’s brusque implementation of the program helped energize an enormous backlash among black voters against his brother’s presidential campaign in 2000.
On the contrary, my strong impression is that blacks opposed the “One Florida” plan primarily for substantive reasons, not because they were angry about its “brusque implementation.” They object to its abandoning overt racial preferences in favor of a plan that is color-blind.
(For evidence that the “One Florida” plan has not undermined minority enrollments, see here, here, here, and here.)
