The Dade County School Board regretfully informed a computer-consulting firm that it was ineligible as a vendor because the business was not minority-owned. A business can qualify as minority-owned only if one minority group controls 51 percent of its assets. The company in question, Data Industries, is owned as a 50/50 partnership between a black man and a hispanic. A spokesman for the school board said he sympathized with Data Industries, but insisted that “a rule is a rule, and our rule says that there must be 51 percent ownership by one principal minority group.” He went on to justify by saying, “We’re just trying to preserve the integrity of the system,” explaining that the county wants a “clear-cut” owner to avoid having minority businesses “sell out to white males.”
You can’t have those minorities cooperating, because then they might not be minorities.