The New Haven Fire Department administers a written test to evaluate, in part, which firefighters should be promoted. Blacks and Hispanics taking the test performed about half as well as their white counterparts. Gee, you say, was the test about golf and tea? No, it was an intelligence test that tries to figure out who the most qualified firefighters are.
Now, you might say, why would a person's race affect how they do on a test? Wouldn't the people who studied the hardest do the best? How would skin color ever cause you to do poorly on a test?
Apparently, New Haven politicians think that being black or Hispanic made those people do badly, so they threw out the test results. Pretty racist if you ask me. But maybe the test was really that hard and unfair. Maybe they didn't have a chance.
Meet Frank Ricci. Ricci has dyslexia. He studied as much as 13 hours in a day for the exam. He hired someone to record the textbooks onto audio tapes so he could listen to them. He is very bad at taking written tests.
Still, Ricci managed to work hard enough to do well and qualify for a promotion. He beat a lot of black and Hispanic and white people who don't have dyslexia. He simply worked harder.
But all of that hard work will go to waste if the Supreme Court does not rule in favor of the firefighters who want the test to count. In fact, Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the court to replace Justice Souter, ruled against the firefighters on the Appeals level, saying the city was right to throw out the results because it was discrimation.
Obama said he wanted to appoint a judge who would be empathetic to ordinary Americans. There are no Americans more oridnary than firefighters working hard for a promotion. What Obama meant to say was that he wanted a judge who would be empathetic towards minorities, even at the expense of other hard-working Americans who just happen to be white.
Hopefully, the John Roberts-led court will rule in favor of the hard-working firefighters, especially Mr. Ricci, and they will get their well-deserved promotion.
I have less confidence that Ms. Sotomayor will show any empathy for anyone who's skin isn't brown.
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2 comments:
golf and tea... your two favorite things. luckily, your skin is brown so she will protect you. but really, i don't think a lot of racial cases come before the S.C., do they? maybe he's talking about a different kind of empathy.
So I just took about a half hour to write a long, involved, and fairly scathing response to this post. Then my internet lost signal and I lost my work. Totally lame.
In a shorthand version, I think its important to look at this issue, but I think you are very wrong, and you entertaining rhetoric ripped off from Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly sadly ignore the actual issues and focus on emotional yet tangential aspects of the case. Your right, Ricci probably deserves a promotion, but that has nothing to do with the tests fairness.
The courts rule against the firefighters, not because they hate white people, but because the test is actually unconstitutional. Whether the test is overtly discriminatory, or merely excluding minorities in practice makes no difference. It is absurd to call the courts racist for their decissions, and in fact rather racist of you to imply that minorities dont care enough or work hard enough to past the test. Its more likely that these results are caused by structural violence, which is rampant in our society. The problem could be as easy as modifying the lexicon of the test to be more inclusive of diverse upbringings.
I hope the Supreme Court affirms the lower courts and rules against the firefighters. I hope New Haven writes a better test, and I hope Ricci gets a promotion.
Nice blog. Give me a call some time.
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