One Florida Initiative Having Divisive Effect on State

TALLAHASSEE — Dexter Stallworth is just one among thousands of Floridians fearful that their children won't be able to follow their paths through college.
Stallworth, his wife and his three young children were part of some 11,000 protesters who marched on the state Capitol on the opening day of the Florida Legislature's annual session.
The protest — the largest ever in Tallahassee history — was in opposition to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's controversial plan to end affirmative action in state purchasing and college admissions.
Stallworth, who stood listening intently as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other politicians, labor and civil rights leaders blasted the proposal, remembers how the University of Florida recruited him in 1984 to attend the state's most prestigious university as an undergraduate. He used that foundation as a springboard to medical school and a career at the University of South Florida's College of Medicine.
 "If it wasn't for affirmative action, I'm not sure what would have happened to me,'' Stallworth says. "I've got three kids. I'd love them to get what I got…I want them to be able to go to college."
But Bush remains steadfast that his One Florida Initiative is a "third way" to help provide opportunities for minorities while at the same time ending race and gender preferences he calls "legally suspect."
"Fairness and diversity are achieved without pitting one group against another,'' Bush declared in the State of the State speech he gave to legislators while protesters stood outside on the steps of the Old Capitol. "There is a new energy for minority outreach that is unprecedented in state government…
 "We will not take one step back in the struggle against racism and discrimination,'' Bush said. "The place we are heading is a place where opportunity is real and lasting, not false and forced by government."
A recent poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., indicates that 54 percent of Florida voters support Bush's plan, while 37 percent are opposed and 9 percent are undecided.
Bush has acknowledged that he is taking "the path of most resistance."
For sure, that resistance is political, legal and even bureaucratic.
 Florida's efforts to become the first state to drop preferences in college admissions before putting forth a ballot measure has been clouded by the fact that Bush pursued his policies in an effort to minimize an anti-affirmative action campaign launched by California businessman Ward Connerly. Connerly, an African American, has led successful efforts in his home state and in Washington.
"A snake is a snake, whether it's a White snake or a Black snake,'' said U.S. Rep Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, one of Bush's most caustic critics.
Brown is one of a large group of African-American politicians who have roundly criticized the One Florida Initiative. But other African-American leaders here have endorsed the initiative, including Dr. Adam Herbert, the chancellor of the state university system; James Corbin, the lone Black member of the state Board of Regents and Dr. Fred Humphries, president of Florida A&M University, the only publicly funded historically Black college in the state.
Presidents of Florida's three private HBCUs have refused to take a stand on the proposal, though they could benefit if growing numbers of African-American students seek alternatives to public universities.
The proposed changes are being watched closely by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. Florida is still working under a two-decade old consent agreement to desegregate its universities.
Plus, state university officials delayed by one year a plan to end the use of racial preferences in graduate admissions. The One Florida Initiative also does not end the use of race-based scholarships used to send Blacks and Hispanics to graduate school.
But Bush's desire to push forward his plan this year is in jeopardy. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has filed a legal challenge in a state court that says that Florida's Board of Regents lacked authority under existing law to carry out Bush's proposal.
 "We are concerned about the content of the One Florida Initiative,'' says Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of Branches NAACP. "We think it does more damage to Black and minority students in this state than helps them."