USA Today DeWayne Wickham Thousands of demonstrators are expected to converge today in Tallahassee to protest Gov. Jeb Bush's proposal to replace Florida's affirmative action program with a race-neutral plan that he says will produce similar results. The demonstrators' timing is bad - and so, too, is their aim. Their rally takes place on Super Tuesday, the busiest day on the presidential primary calendar. As a result, the protest march through the streets of Tallahassee will get about as much attention as a naked man in a nudist camp.
Faulty strategy compounds their timing error.
Instead of trying to shoot down that portion of Bush's proposal that revamps the way disadvantaged minorities gain entry into the state's higher-education institutions, the activists should set their sights on Florida's dismal record of educating black and Hispanic kids in its elementary and secondary schools. Like many other states whose constitutions offer similar guarantees, Florida has failed to make good on this promise. Rather than march on the legislature, the demonstrators should storm the courts to sue Florida for the failure of many schools to educate black and Hispanic students. Four years ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Hartford's public schools were violating the state's constitutional guarantee of equal educational opportunity. It ordered state officials to give priority to remedying these problems.