Last week, when President Bush denounced direct preferences for racial minorities in state university admissions, he recommended programs such as the one in Texas, which guarantees acceptance to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of each high-school class. In 1999, Bruce Gottlieb argued that it’s deceptive to pretend that such programs are anything other than affirmative action. They only work because America’s high schools are still severely segregated, and their purpose is “explicitly racial.”
This may amount to afirmative action now, but in the long run, it sounds more like those programs crafted to bring more white students into minority schools, like bussing and magnet schools.
Think about it, why wouldn’t parents of non-minority kids send their kids to minority high schools if they thought it would improve their chance of getting acceptance to a good public college?