Supreme Court Poised to Review Civil Rights LawsJustices to hear cases challenging government efforts to ensure equality in voting, employment at time of national dialogue on race and diversity.
The Supreme Court has an opportunity to reaffirm or reshape the nation's civil rights laws as it faces a rare confluence of cases over the next two weeks, including a high-profile challenge brought by white firefighters who claim they lost out on promotions because of the "color of their skin."
The cases also touch on the Voting Rights Act, the need to provide English classes for immigrant children and, more tangentially, discriminatory mortgage lending. [Because minorities not getting enough mortgage money is a big problem in America in this decade.]
The most emotionally charged case is from the New Haven, Conn., firefighters, whose complaints define the real-life quandary that sometimes accompanies government efforts to ensure racial equality.
The firefighters accuse city officials of violating civil rights laws and the Constitution by throwing out a promotions test on which they performed well but no blacks scored high enough to be eligible. The city responds that relying on test results with such wide racial discrepancies could have violated federal law and left them open to being sued by minorities.
When the results of the 2003 exams came back, only white firefighters, including one who is Hispanic, scored high enough to be considered for the openings for lieutenants and captains. All 27 black firefighters who took the test were below the cutoff.
After tumultuous public hearings, with minority groups arguing that the tests were flawed and the white firefighters saying officials were caving to political pressure, the city's Civil Service Board voted not to certify the results. The promotions remain in limbo.
The city argues that the test it commissioned, in which 60 percent of the score came from a multiple-choice questionnaire and 40 percent from an interview, must have been biased, despite its best intentions. It is not specific about the problems with the test, though it says the exam did not measure "command presence" and should have given more weight to the interview.
At any rate, the city says it was bound by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers not to rely on hiring or promotional tests that have a "disparate impact" on minorities unless they can show a "business necessity."...
The Obama Justice Department mostly sides with New Haven officials.
Were the test results anomalous? Unlike everybody else commenting on the Ricci case, I've actually calculated the racial gap in standard deviations for the New Haven firefighters' promotion tests and compared them to the racial gap in the Law School Application Test used by a certain law school in New Haven.
More to come ...
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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23 comments:
Were the test results anomalous?
Doesn't really matter does it? Disparate impact is the test.
To get around that people would have to show that not using the results of the test results in more deaths or something. The voters would have to understand that.
"whose complaints define the real-life quandary that sometimes accompanies government efforts to ensure racial equality. "
Nice way to just brush aside massive discrimination of whites in favour of generally less competent blacks.
Stories like this and the attempts by Napolitano to intimidate conservatives are saddening, but one needs to remember that the US is ground zero of multiculturalism and the systematic disowning of the white man. All this crap was then foisted on otherwise traditional tribal societies like Germany, Japan, China, Rhodesia and South Africa. All these places were forced to open up and become free-trading, multicultural, accept Human Rights and all sorts of ethnically destructive policies.
America reshaped the world in its own image and now this is beginning to devour the originators. Obama and Napolitano are preparing the country for a huge racial makeover. The kind of societal destruction which faraway countries like German, Rhodesia and the Afrikaners have gone through in the last 50-100 years, caused mainly by US intervention, is now awaiting the Americans who up to now were dictating to others what their societies should look like, but did not want the results of those dictates in their own neighbourhoods. This storm is going to envelope you for good and leave the US weakened and not a place worth immigrating to. In fact I would never consider immigrating to the US even nowadays anymore.
I really would like to see the test. What's on it and how relevant to the actual work is it? Did the whites study more? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, a lower average IQ among the blacks, out of the 27 someone should be up to par, no?
It is not specific about the problems with the test, though it says the exam did not measure "command presence" and should have given more weight to the interview.What the hell is "command presence" in this case but a way of saying "that black dude's huge and has a deep voice and is good with the ladies."
In these cases I suspect that interviews (and "extracurricular activities", in the case of Ivy League admissions) are a way of enhancing discrimination, not removing it. In the case of extracurricular activities it's a way of saying that the guy who worked as a counselor at a Boy Scout Camp for three summers is less likely to get into Harvard than the guy who licked stamps for Ted Kennedy's re-election campaign.
Even assuming, for the sake of argument, a lower average IQ among the blacks, out of the 27 someone should be up to par, no?No. Remember that these promotions are into positions doing more than fighting fires - hiring, evaluations, and almost certainly paperwork galore. Abstract thinking skills matter.
All this crap was then foisted on otherwise traditional tribal societies like Germany, Japan, China, Rhodesia and South Africa.Except that 2 of those countries didn't buy into it at all, and 2 of them only bought into it to the extent it helped the majority.
Which country swallowed it completely? Why the country with the white majority - how shocking and unexpected.
I am Lugash.
So have any of these black groups pointed to anything specific on any of these tests that is racist? Or is test taking in general just racist?
Maybe the aggrieved backs should design the test themselves, then let everyone take it. My guess is the results would still be the same.
I am Lugash
Anon --
Support for Affirmative Action is based upon SWPL Yuppie (men) who benefit from keeping out upwardly mobile working-middle Class White men from posing competitive threats, and women.
The latter are more important, since they are the largest demographic group and because most women are now Single, and have no ties to men, they support Affirmative Action by HUGE margins.
Women gain from keeping White Men out of high-paying government jobs and other opportunities, and also gain preferences from Affirmative Action as well. Not just in government hiring but contracting preferences, and so on.
Moreover, the Scandinavian nations have gone much further than the US in Affirmative Action. Norway for example mandates that 50% of all corporate board members and company executives be women, regardless of qualification, or havoc wreaked by unqualified execs/directors.
Married women have to consider their husband's interests in competition with their own, and married women with sons have the double whammy of considerations regarding Affirmative Action. Since most women are now single, and few have kids, neither really applies.
Single women, or what we are talking about, Single White Women, are ground zero for PC and Multiculturalism because it pumps up employment in female-friendly fields such as education, welfare, government offices, law, and so on, and makes it harder for White Men to gain economic and cultural advantages through merit based advancement particularly in male-dominated fields such as Law Enforcement, Firefighting, and the Military and military related production/services.
Power is a zero-sum game, and Affirmative Action's enthusiastic backing by the Elite did not just happen by some conspiracy. Rather, it's seen clearly as an advantage for big demographic groups, the largest of which is Women.
Might the influence of a lieutenant's "command presence" be diminished for those under his command by the knowledge that he enjoys his position and authority at the expense of others more qualified than him?
Many of the twenty-seven blacks who failed the exam, if not all of them, probably enjoy their current jobs to affirmative action—that is, they did worse on the entry-level exam than whites who were hired (and many who were not hired).
So, in exams for promotion, the blacks are competing against smarter, better qualified officers.
The only black officers who might be expected to hold their own on exams against white officers would be those who earned their position without the crutch of affirmative action, in fair competition to the same standards.
Is there really any affirmative action favoring hiring and promoting women over men in fields that are already female-dominated? It seems to me it's always race, race, race. I am skeptical that white women really ever win much from AA and I know that they certainly lose a lot to blacks and Hispanics.
Anonymous: Remember that these promotions are into positions doing more than fighting fires - hiring, evaluations, and almost certainly paperwork galore. Abstract thinking skills matter.Heck, have you watched any actual rank-and-file firefighters respond to a fire alarm in the last decade or two?
Nowadays, those dude dress up like f***ing astronauts before they enter a building - I'd think that you'd need an IQ of about 110 just to figure out how to put on the dadgum uniform. [BTW, Arthur Hu calculates that you'd need an IQ of about 108 just to drive the firetruck.]
testing99: Single women, or what we are talking about, Single White Women, are ground zero for PC and Multiculturalism
Single White NIHILISTIC Women.
Not all white people are nihilists.
Abstract thinking skills matter.Yeah. That's why they should test the employees - to see which honkey can do all Mr. "Command Presence's" homework.
Maybe the aggrieved backs should design the test themselves, then let everyone take it. My guess is the results would still be the same.Ole Lugash puts his finger directly on exhibit A regarding why I suspect liberals aren't simply useful idiots on this matter.
Useful idiots would be proposing "black-friendly" tests left and right. But nobody does, which is consistent with people willfully ignoring those feet poking out from beneath the curtain.
Bring on the "black-friendly" tests, I says.
Might the influence of a lieutenant's "command presence" be diminished for those under his command by the knowledge that he enjoys his position and authority at the expense of others more qualified than him?I've experienced my fair share of "command presence" sans competence (manifested in white male nepotism sinecures, as it happens), and it ain't pretty. I've come close to blows with such morons more than once.
AA & multi-culturism is a process not and endpoint.
Women even now and ever more so are going to find their cozy office positions invaded by black and hispanic women who are holding all the diversity poker cards. Bye bye white single childless lady, surely you understand that black, single lady with three kids is a more deserving case than you.
On bell curves alone, a couple of the blacks should have done as well as at least half or so of the whites. That suggests another variable, this: The blacks taking the test are on average not the smartest blacks. The smart blacks don't particularly want to be firefighters. Those to whom it appeals see it as a cushy job spent mostly in the firehouse, rather than the fire calls where they may have to do incredibly dangerous and difficult physical work.
Most white applicants are not far up the right half of the white bell curve either. They see themselves as not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer but someone who can lead a productive and socially beneficial life anyway. They have a high sense of duty, something deficient on average in the black community.
tevil neocon:
"SWPL Yuppie (men)" are "upwardly mobile working-middle Class White men" in the vast majority of cases. No comment on the remaining recycled garbage in your comment.
The phrase "women and minorities" always rubbed me the wrong way. It tries to convey the notion that White women have more in common with Blacks and Hispanics than with their own White husbands, brothers, fathers and sons.
For what it's worth, I've known
quite a few software developers (some of the better ones I've known) drawn to volunteer firefighting and EMT work.
In New England the volunteer
stuff is still very important.
These folks in my opinion have a confluence of intelligence + duty that seems to yield service.
"The phrase "women and minorities" always rubbed me the wrong way. It tries to convey the notion that White women have more in common with Blacks and Hispanics than with their own White husbands, brothers, fathers and sons.
absolutely correct. I am sick of this pc babble-speak. And i can't believe it once made sense to me.
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