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During his appearance at last month's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Jeb Bush spoke of his pride in barring state universities from considering race in admissions. "I eliminated affirmative action by executive order -- trust me, there were a lot of people upset about this," Bush said. "But through hard work 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."
Politifact fact-checked the claim. From pure numbers, Bush is correct -- there are more black and Latino students now than before he abolished the consideration of race in admissions. But Florida's population has skyrocketed during that time, as has enrollment in colleges and universities. When Politifact looked at the share of the college population, it found that the black share was slightly down, and that while the Latino share is up, that is likely more influenced by changing demographics in the state and new scholarships. Politifact's verdict on Bush's claim: "mostly false."
