X-Percent Plans

After preferences, more race games

We are a society exhausted and polarized by the affirmative action impasse. So it was not surprising to see excitement over Florida governor Jeb Bush’s new best-of-both-worlds plan to have diversity in Florida’s state universities without racial preferences. In place of the usual preferences, Bush proposes to make the top 20 percent of graduates in each Florida high school eligible for university admission. This, he argues, may bring in even more minorities than the current regime of preferences. In Texas, where racial preferences were eliminated by court decision, the University of Texas already claims some success with a 10 percent plan implemented last year. In California, despite a system-wide increase in minority enrollments after Proposition 209 ended preferences in that state, the University of California still hopes an upcoming 4 percent plan will bring more minorities into its two most selective campuses, Berkeley and UCLA. So, do “X-percent” plans, with their promise of minority inclusion without racial preferences, offer the longed-for relief from our withering affirmative-action debate?

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Shelby Steele

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After preferences, more race games

We are a society exhausted and polarized by the affirmative action impasse. So it was not surprising to see excitement over Florida governor Jeb Bush’s new best-of-both-worlds plan to have diversity in Florida’s state universities without racial preferences. In place of the usual preferences, Bush proposes to make the top 20 percent of graduates in each Florida high school eligible for university admission. This, he argues, may bring in even more minorities than the current regime of preferences. In Texas, where racial preferences were eliminated by court decision, the University of Texas already claims some success with a 10 percent plan implemented last year. In California, despite a system-wide increase in minority enrollments after Proposition 209 ended preferences in that state, the University of California still hopes an upcoming 4 percent plan will bring more minorities into its two most selective campuses, Berkeley and UCLA. So, do “X-percent” plans, with their promise of minority inclusion without racial preferences, offer the longed-for relief from our withering affirmative-action debate?