Bush steps into race quota row

US President George Bush, has stepped into the most politically-charged positive discrimination case in a generation, declaring that a programme of racial preferences for minority applicants at the University of Michigan was ”divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution”.

Democrats and civil rights leaders swiftly attacked Bush’s position in a Supreme Court case that could overturn a 1978 affirmative action ruling and jeopardise 25 years of race-based programmes.

But the White House said a brief being filed today on Bush’s behalf was narrowly tailored to oppose the Michigan race quota programme and did not address the critical question of whether race could play any role in selecting a student body.

The Supreme Court is hearing the case in March.