When anyone does something right, it deserves praise.  Ted Cruz singlehandedly led the fight against Obamacare, Scott Walker stood up against the unions, and Rand Paul probably doesn't vote the same as Mitch McConnell all the time.  But in this case, the subject is Jeb Bush.  The Washington Post had a hit piece on Jeb Bush's education record, claiming that when he abolished affirmative action admissions to Florida public colleges, he hurt black and Hispanic students.

But at Florida’s two premier universities, black enrollment is shrinking. At the University of Florida in Gainesville and at Florida State University in Tallahassee, administrators say they worry that the trend risks diminishing their standing as world-class universities and hurts the college experience.

How will having fewer students of any particular ethnic group – be it blacks, Hispanics, whites, or Asians – reduce the "world class" standing of these schools?  I thought the standing was based on academic performance of the students and the quality of the faculty.  What does race have to do with it?

And how is the college experience "hurt" when you have more or fewer of one ethnic group over another?  Why does it "hurt" the college experience to have more whites and fewer blacks, but help it to have more blacks and fewer whites?  Isn't the very assumption racist?  Shouldn't race be irrelevant to the "college experience"?

And note the careful language of the excerpt above.  Enrollment is shrinking only at the top two UF schools.  Minority enrollment is not shrinking at the other schools, but actually increasing.

“We ended up having a system where there were more African American and Hispanic kids attending our university system than prior to the system that was discriminatory,” the former governor and likely presidential contender said recently at a conference of conservative activists.

In fact, this is actually a better arrangement for many black and Hispanics who are unable to keep up with the rigors of the top school but are slotted instead to universities where they have a more realistic chance of keeping up with the work and graduating.  (Note that this isn't meant to be an entry into the subject of racial intelligence.  I am fully confident that if blacks and Hispanics had school choice and the government removed incentives for unprepared women to have children, blacks and Hispanics could do just as well as whites, and maybe even as well as Asians!)

Isn't it better to have more minority students graduating in the university system overall than having more minority students at UF and FTU for racial window dressing who eventually drop out?

Meanwhile, important work in the areas of superficiality and fomenting racial divisiveness are still being done at UF's Institute of Black Culture:

On the first floor on the March afternoon, students sat on a leather couch and watched Prince videos on VH1 Soul. Upstairs, female students pored over magazines and discussed body image. Surrounding them on red, yellow and green walls were framed newspaper clippings depicting the building’s history.

“67 blacks arrested” read a headline from April 15, 1971, when black students stormed the president’s office to demand better treatment.

On campus, this year’s Black History Month concert was canceled, a multicultural talent show might go away and an annual step show is losing sponsors because of low attendance.

Is it terrible to ask black students to enjoy the same history that whites, Hispanics, and Asians do?  And what is a "multicultural" talent show?  Are the other talent shows white-only?  As for the step show losing sponsors, that, admittedly, is a real problem that might justify affirmative action.

But the school administration is doing what it can:

Administrators also guarantee free tuition and mentorship to 300 first-generation students per class. About 30 percent of those students are black. A student union expansion, set to open later this year, will include office space for minority groups, including support services now housed at the Institute of Black Culture. Administrators said they hope the increased visibility will lead to more interactions between races, making the campus feel more diverse.

Instead of separatist studies and special scholarships that end up being based on race, why not simply treat students as individuals, and not part of groups, as if they are segregated in prison?

The schools benefited from the system Bush enacted to replace affirmative action, which guaranteed spots in the state’s 11 universities to the top 20 percent of graduates from every high school.

Now, while I think Jeb Bush's policy was an improvement, it was hardly ideal.  Why should the top 20% of every high school class be guaranteed admission to college?  It is likely that many schools had a bottom 20% that had better scores than some schools' top 20%.  This was basically Jeb Bush's way of preserving some affirmative action, so some students in primarily black and Hispanic high schools would automatically get into college, regardless of their grades.

But it still is a big improvement over the prior system, a step closer to a system based purely on merit.  For that, Jeb Bush should be commended, not slammed by the Washington Post.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.