Bush Ignores Race
A program actually based on merit.

By Ward Connerly & Edward Blum
February 22, 2002 9:20 a.m.

henever a Republican gets an enthusiastic round of applause from a mostly black audience it pays to take notice what was said, especially if the Republican is President George W. Bush.

The applause in this case was prompted by the president's announcement last month on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's 73rd birthday of a new federal initiative to be called the Martin Luther King Scholars Program. With Coretta Scott King at his side, the president said he intended to create a program to establish twelve-week internships at the U.S. Department of Education for "promising students all across America."

In the past, especially during the Clinton years, whenever an educational initiative like this was proposed it was usually laden with racial and ethnic requirements and set-asides. Although the Bush administration has had a somewhat better record on racial preferences, it was unclear from the announcement if this program would be race conscious as well.

Good news: It's completely colorblind. This was confirmed after a half dozens calls were placed to the Department of Education.

Although DOE officials have not finalized the specifics, they have reported on the general outline of the program. The interns they select will be assigned to the office of the secretary. They will receive hands-on experience in educational public-policy issues. And the eligibility requirements that will be used — -full-time enrollment, good academic standing, and faculty recommendations — -are fairly standard throughout the federal government. The final selection of the interns will be based on a student's overall merit.

Yes, that's right, merit. The real McCoy. The stuff that matters. Not preferences, not "goals," not even race used as a "tie-breaker." Just merit.

Unlike so many judicial and academic internships throughout various levels of government, the MLK Scholars Program won't select students based on their membership in an "underrepresented" group, or even select students who have come from "socially disadvantaged" backgrounds. Any student can apply and know that his or her race won't be a consideration.

There is an important lesson in this for the Congress and the other branches of government. Regardless of whether the students who are selected for the program "look like America," each will know that they competed for these positions on a level playing field and won them based upon their individual unique qualifications, not the arbitrariness of their skin color or ethnic lineage. This is what the original civil-rights movement was all about.

Moreover, these "colorblind" policies make good political sense for the White House also. According to a poll released by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Company, the popularity of Florida Governor Jeb Bush among blacks is climbing. The poll revealed that 35 percent of black voters rate his performance "excellent" or "good," compared with 27 percent six months ago. This comes in spite of Jeb Bush's "One Florida" plan that replaced overtly race-based university admissions to Florida's top schools with a plan that admitted the top 20 percent of all high school graduates.

Even though he was pilloried at the time by a handful of minoritylegislators for "One Florida" — to say nothing of the beating he took from the NAACP — Jeb's poll numbers should give the Bush administration additional incentive for making future legislation and policies race neutral.

This lesson should guide the administration later this year when it will likely confront the issue of race-based admissions to colleges and universities, after the 6th U. S. Court of Appeals delivers its much-anticipated opinion in the University of Michigan admissions lawsuit. In that case, the Univ. of Michigan has admitted to using racial preferences in order to ensure a freshman class with the right mix of "diversity."

President Bush, his current White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and others in the administration confronted a nearly identical situation back in 1996 when a similar lawsuit was brought against the Univ. of Texas Law School. After a panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down this racial-preference-to-achieve-diversity rationale, then-Governor Bush concurred with the opinion. He began work to make sure every qualified Texas high-school graduate — regardless of skin color or ancestry — had the opportunity to attend college.

When the Bush administration faces the Michigan case, it should use the standards of its own Martin Luther King Scholars Program — merit-based and colorblind — -as a guide. Those are the principles that Dr. King championed. What better way to celebrate his life's mission?