If he is president, a Republican Congress will outlaw affirmative action, and slash the civil rights enforcement budgets in Justice, the Equal Opportunity Commission and elsewhere. Bush opposed minority set-asides in Texas, thus abandoning the tool that allows minority entrepreneurs the chance to break into what are contracting circles dominated by good old boy networks. Bush refused to support Hate Crimes legislation in Texas, even after James Byrd was tortured to death. When Byrd's family asked Bush personally to support the Byrd act, he wouldn't say yes. And, of course, when he was in trouble in South Carolina, Bush didn't hesitate to speak at racist Bob Jones University and treat the confederate flag as a state's rights issue.
Minorities are disproportionately low wage workers.
But Republicans in the Congress block increases in the minimum wage, and Bush has said that he favors allowing states to opt out of the national wage. Minorities are disproportionately without health care. But Bush offers no plan to extend health care to the 43 million Americans that have no insurance. But when the federal government offered the states the Children's Health Insurance Program, Bush failed to push it. He waited a year for the Texas legislature to set up a program, and then pushed for lower eligibility standard than his fellow Republican governors.