Don't go unnoticed: VOTE!

As many of you may be aware. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has indicated that he intends to put an end to racial preferences in college admissions and state contracting by executive order. Though his plans may be LIMITED to state dollars, his plan has not gone unnoticed by more than a few members of Congress. Following is an editorial by US Rep Carrie Meek.

One Florida Plan: One Giant Step Backwards

By U.S. Rep. Carrie P. Meek

While Governor Jeb Bush's "One Florida Plan" has some attractive features, I am concerned that it is too dependent upon the goodwill of an elected Governor and a handful of political appointees. The future of minorities in this state is too important to entrust to the whims of changing administrations. I appreciate Governor Bush's personal commitment to diversity and inclusion in his administration. However, as a long-time member of the Florida Legislature and the Congress, I have seen Governors come and go. Despite present good intentions, I see little future protection for minorities in Florida in the unfettered discretion or hopeful goodwill of the Executive Branch. When you are born with a silver spoon in your hand, you forget that there are others who don't have anything to eat. Or, when you can get easy capital to start up a business and have connections to get the licenses and the bonding and the equipment you need, you forget that banks have redlined entire neighborhoods, equated race and nationality with risk, treated Blacks as pigmentally disqualified, and Hispanics as linguistically disabled. Perhaps, when all you see is the outside of all the prisons that Florida has been building, you forget who is on the inside, about 90% are Hispanic or Black.

If Governor Bush really wants to eliminate affirmative action, maybe he should start with the prisons who seem to have their quotas, or with police departments who have their own affirmative action program - "Driving While Black." I believe the Governor and his advisors suffer from glaring cognitive gaps. Florida has a long history of blatant, legal, and official racism. In 1947, by state law, I had to leave the State of Florida to get a post-graduate education. The state paid my way to the University of Michigan, to keep me out of the University of Florida or Florida State University. In the late 1960s, the City of Miami's building codes still required separate bathroom and fountain facilities for Blacks. In the late 1980's, I had to sue Republican Governor Bob Martinez for invoking what he called racially neutral criteria to take senior citizen services money away from Black and Hispanic elderly and shifting it all to predominantly white districts. Even today, while it may be true that 35% of college students in Florida are minority, better than 90% of those go to only twoschools: Florida A&M & Florida International University.

I agree with the Governor that the law doesn't work in a lot of places that it has been circumvented or simply not enforced. But look at what he does not eliminate, and look at what he leaves us. The Governor's Plan doesn't eliminate Florida's Good Old Boy system, which is still alive and well. The Affirmative Action law was all we had for a chance at equality of opportunity. Poor as it was, it was something, and something is better than nothing when you are dealing with a club that has no rules and that only takes care of its own. Look what Governor Bush leaves us with: Executive Discretion. The Governor is simply saying "trust me." "Trust me" - may be is how you sell used cars-, but it's not how you deliver equal rights.

Let's look at what could go wrong. First, it sounds great to say that the top 20% will be admitted to state colleges. That seems to guarantee a shot at a college education. He has gone Texas one better. When the Hopwood decision came down, they did the same thing - and it did yield an increase in minority enrollment. So there may be some real gains here. But do you believe for a second that every college is going to treat the top 20% of all high school students alike. No Is Governor Bush prepared to provide the resources to those colleges who get stuck with the bottom 50% of the top 20%? What will a college degree mean for those students -other than more debt? The rhetoric is great. Everything depends upon implementation. If that is missing, then all he will have done is shift the segregation from the high school level to the college level. Unless he is prepared to tackle that one, I can't say what we have gained. What about the 40% of our people who never get to graduate high school. If he guaranteed 20% of all those who entered elementary school, we might be some place.

Second, he says he is going to invest in D and F public schools. But everyone knows that seniority is how you get out of teaching at a D and F school. We know where teachers with experience tend to go. I don't see the Governor solving the elementary and high school inequity -just bumping it up. Third, the Governor is pushing targeted use of the Florida Online High School. But what is he doing to make sure our people have access to computers, the Internet, or even phone lines? Until he deals with the digital divide, the target means nothing. Putting more computers in schools won't do it. We know where people use computers - in their homes. Until he finds a way to get computers into students homes, pushing on-line education for all Floridians is stab in the dark. If the Governor were really serious he would both retain Affirmative Action and implement the "improvements" he outlines in his "One Florida Plan." Lacking that, a better name might be the "One Florida Dream." I don't want to prejudge the Governor's chances of success. I just wish he were in touch with some of the realities that Blacks and Hispanics have been living with and continue to live with in present day Florida.