Another Nail in the Coffin of Affirmative Action?

While George W. is out corralling votes in South Carolina, his brother is making his own headlines in Florida. On Thursday, Governor Jeb Bush won his battle to eliminate conventional affirmative action in the state's public university system and in the awarding of contracts. Bush's plan would abolish race and gender as factors in the college-admission process, and automatically grant the top 20 percent of all high school seniors admittance to state schools. The Florida State Board of Regents approved the governor's proposal by a vote of 12-0, a vote that sparked protest across the state.

"This is a part of a trend to replace traditional race-based affirmative action with forms of inclusion that are not expressly based on race," says TIME senior writer Adam Cohen. Like similar legislation enacted in California, Texas and Washington State, Florida's new guidelines mean minorities would be considered in the same way as any other applicants, although new measures will be taken to increase minorities' involvement in recruiting programs. But Bush's plan, while ostensibly democratic, raises the ire of some black and minority leaders, in part because it's unclear how the 'diversity outreach' and '20 percent' plan will actually work. "The 20 percent rule is an attempt to be inclusive, to open doors without outwardly using race as a guideline," says Cohen. "But a lot of people believe racism still exists — and that the legacy of discrimination has not been erased." Many Floridians also wonder whether the 20 percent rule will be entirely fair. "The person in the 25th percentile at a better high school is a better candidate than the kid at the 15th percentile of a not-so-good school," says Cohen. And so the battle rages on: The intricacies of the affirmative action issue — which ignites deep-seated passions about race, gender and socioeconomics — ensure that even if Bush's plan passes next week's review by the independently elected state cabinet, this story is far from over.