The New Haven, CT Fire Department created the most racially unbiased test they could with the intention of identifying the best qualified candidates for promotion based solely on merit. Only whites scored well enough to earn the promotion so what did the city do? In a move that defies logic and justification, they decided to not promote anyone.
Background: This racially-charged reverse discrimination case is the first significant affirmative action case to reach the high court in several years. It is also highlights the new Obama Administration’s view of the subject and exposes to criticism the decision reached by appellate court judge Sonia Sotomayor, one of the people often mentioned as someone President Obama could select for a seat on the Supreme Court.
2003 was promotions time for the New Haven, Conn. Fire Department. The city hired an outside agency to fairly administer a test to the firefighters looking for advancement. The test was designed to identify the best candidates in a manner that was as racially unbiased as possible. When the results were calculated, no African-American firefighters scored well enough on the test to earn the bump in title or salary. City leaders concerned over lawsuits that could come from acting on the test’s racially disparate results scuttled them and promoted no one.
These firefighters were deliberately denied a promotion SOLELY because of their race!!! That is supposed to be illegal in this country yet for some reason it’s had to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
I’m getting fed up. We might as well just pass a law that says white people cannot be promoted or hired until after all minorities have been promoted or hired ahead of them. That’s seems to be the way things are going.
I tell my son, who is latin, do not allow anyone to give you any special consideration simply because of your ethnicity. Earn what is yours because you deserve it more than anyone else. Giving him an artificial advantage will not help him in life. It will just teach him that he does not need to work as hard to attain the same result. Just as when my son was struggling in spelling one year, the school wanted to give him an “accommodation” and lower the number of spelling words he needed to learn each week from 15 to 10. I went through the roof objecting. I told them if anything, they need to give him more words than anyone else instead of less if indeed the goal is to improve his spelling. I demanded to know how learning 33% less words than other students will make him a better speller. Of course the school was more interested in his self esteem. The school eventually saw it my way and I can assure you that my son has gotten all A’s in spelling since that day.
Let’s just say that two of these firefighters, one black and one white, achieve the same score on the exam. That job is automatically given to the minority. Fine. White people pretty much expect that these days. But what message does that send to the white person? It tells him, not only do you have to compete at a higher level than a minority candidate, you have to achieve a level where there can be no dispute that you are so exceptionally qualified that you get the job. Most people put in that position will rise to the challenge as was demonstrated in New Haven CT. The only problem is that no one was rewarded for their exceptional performance in this case.
Instead of lowering the bar for certain groups in this country, why can’t we raise the bar for everyone? When will we ever achieve a merit based, color blind society as New Haven CT so feebly and fleetingly attempted to?
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