May 27, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor v. Frank Ricci

Emily Bazelon writes in Slate:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is smart and sharp, and her formidable track record on the bench should put to rest any lingering doubts that she isn't. (Speaking of which: Why was the left, or at least the center, criticizing one of its own?) But there is a mystery in Sotomayor's recent history: a brief, unsigned opinion in the difficult race case now before the Supreme Court, Ricci v. DeStefano. Sotomayor punted when Ricci came before her, to such a degree that she raised more questions than she answered.

Ricci is a hard case with bad facts—a case that could do serious damage to Title VII, one of Congress' landmark civil rights laws.

Actually, Ricci is a easy race case with simple facts -- a representative example of how Title VII routinely works. It's only a hard case if your goal is to somehow, someway, preserve the dominant "disparate impact" concept.
In 2003, the city of New Haven, Conn., decided to base future promotions in its firefighting force—there were seven for captain and eight for lieutenant—primarily on a written test. The city paid an outside consultant to design the test so that it would be job-related. Firefighters studied for months. Of the 41 applicants who took the captain exam, eight were black; of the 77 who took the lieutenant exam, 19 were black. None of the African-American candidates scored high enough to be promoted. For both positions, only two of 29 Hispanics qualified for promotion.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is that the the liberal complaints about the 2003 test stem from innumeracy about the effects of a small sample size. In the 1999 New Haven firefighter's promotion exam, which didn't cause major protests by the black minister who is the white mayor of New Haven's chief vote-gatherer in the black community, the racial gap in average scores was the same as on the 2003 test. However, in 1999, two blacks scored far enough out toward the right edge of the distribution that they were promoted. In 2003, however, although the average distribution of scores by race was the same, there didn't happen to be any blacks who scored particularly highly relative to the black average. The difference in whether 2 blacks passed in 1999 or 0 in 2003 is just a matter of small sample sizes.

The politicians didn't raise a stink in 1999, but did in 2003, because their statistical sophistication is at the black and white level.
In other situations like this, minority candidates have successfully sued based on the long-recognized legal theory that a test that has a disparate impact—it affects one racial group more than others—must truly be job-related in order to be legal. You can see why New Haven's black firefighters might have done just that. Why promote firefighters based on a written test rather than their performance in the field? Why favor multiple-choice questions over evaluations of leadership and execution? It's like granting a driver's license based solely on the written test, only with much higher stakes. ...

First, the promotional exam wasn't "solely" written. Forty percent of the score was based on oral exam. And the city had attempted to rig the oral results by stacking the panels of out-of-state senior firefighters brought in to judge the oral results by putting two minorities to one white on almost every three man scoring panel.

However, the city's collective bargaining contract with the fireman's union mandated a 60% weighting for the written test? Why? Well, one reason is that the firemen wanted to be evaluated partly objectively. They didn't trust the politicians to be objective in whom they favored to give them orders in life or death situations, so they wanted at least a majority of the score on the promotional exam to be unbiased by racial prejudice.

The district court judge who heard Ricci's case ruled against him and his fellow plaintiffs. They appealed to the 2nd Circuit, the court on which Judge Sotomayor sits. In an unusual short and unsigned opinion, a panel of three judges, including Sotomayor, adopted the district court judge's ruling without adding their own analysis. As Judge Jose Cabranes put it, in protesting this ruling later in the appeals process, "Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case. … This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal."

If Sotomayor and her colleagues were trying to shield the case from Supreme Court review, her punt had the opposite effect. It drew Cabranes' ire, and he hung a big red flag on the case, which the Supreme Court grabbed. The court heard argument in Ricci in April. New Haven didn't fare well.

The high court's decision in the case will come in June, before Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. The problem for her will not be why she sided with New Haven over Frank Ricci. The four liberal-moderate justices currently on the court are likely to agree with her, in the name of preserving Title VII as a tool for fair hiring. There's even an outside chance that Justice Anthony Kennedy will follow along. The problem for Sotomayor, instead, is why she didn't grapple with the difficult constitutional issues, the ones Cabranes pointed to. Did she really have nothing to add to the district court opinion? In a case of this magnitude and intricacy, why would that be?


Well, Ms. Bazelon, I think you may find that you just answered your own question! Judge Sotomayor no doubt shares your goals on policy (preserve Disparate Impact) but is much more aware of the facts. If trying to hush up the Ricci case was the best she could come up with, then that's the best anybody on the left could come up with.

Very similarly, the Obama Administration doesn't want to make Ricci the Waterloo of Disparate Impact. The case is both so representative and so well prepared in details (e.g., notice choosing Ricci over his fellow plaintiffs as the lead plaintiff -- you know how the left loves to dig up personal scandal on sympathetic-sounding conservatives these days, so I suspect the firemen's lawyers carefully chose a guy with the few skeletons in the closet), that they would be happy if Anthony Kennedy just tersely sent it back to district court for retrial on the facts. (Years later, Frank Ricci would probably get his promotion, but the system would continue.) What Obama is terriffied of is the Supreme Court using Ricci as a precedent-setting case.

Hence, Sotomayor's attempt to bury the case is exactly in line with the Obama Administration's desires. Which is hardly surprising, since they nominated her for the Supreme Court.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

66 comments:

AMac said...

Is Slate editor Emily Bazelon a participant in JournoList? Absence of results in a quick Google search suggests not. Her parsing of the facts of the Ricci case aligns with her stated support of "Disparate Impact", but shining a light in this direction helps neither the doctrine nor Sotomayor. I suppose we'll know the details of Ezra Klein's suggested talking points, soon enough.

bjdouble said...

They should rotate firefighters and police officers in and out of jobs, which would make firefighter/policeman a much less appealing job. Being a firefighter would be like a vacation for a police officer, and maybe the firefighters would have something to do other than play cards. Many qualified whites look at firefighter as a very appealing job . . . work with your hands, sit around most of the day, but similarly qualified black candidates may have more opportunities than firefighter.

Anonymous said...

A latina and female. If she were a lesbian, she'd hit the perfect New York Times trifecta!

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Sotomayor, am I seeing things, or is there something distinctly Asian-looking about her? I'm half convinced that one of her grandfathers was a Chinese immigrant shopkeeper in San Juan, or something to that effect.

Peter

Anonymous said...

"in 1999, two blacks scored far enough out toward the right edge of the distribution that they were promoted"

That's one of the funny parts about the case. If any black had passed the minimum threshold in this "race-blind" (or, apparently, "anti-black") process, he would have been GUARANTEED a promotion. If New Haven politicians and their puppetmasters hadn't been specifically trying to promote a black, the results wouldn't have been an issue.

By the way Steve, just to clear something up: when this writer says the case has "bad facts", she doesn't mean that the facts are wrong or convoluted. She means they are HateFacts that make her uncomfortable. I mean, if the test isn't racially biased (it quite clearly cannot be, and no one is arguing that it is), and the blacks scored poorly compared to the whites, that... might... imply... CRIMESTOP!

eh said...

Which is hardly surprising, since they nominated her for the Supreme Court.I have a hard time believing that Obama or anyone in his MOG are that conniving. (Besides, she alone could not bury Ricci if/when she gets on the court.) Or that smart. I think it's more about straight political correctness -- racial/ethnic bean counting. After all, wasn't his book all about race? Or perhaps politically correct vote buying. Look at it another way: if she had to take a test to serve on the Supreme Court, I don't think she'd score high enough to get the nomination. So Obama just appoints her, using who knows what criteria. I bet the bureaucrats in New Haven wish they'd done it that way. If they had, it would have been a lot harder for Whites who'd been passed over to sue.

RKU said...

I think this big fuss about Sotomayor's position in Ricci is pretty little silly.

From the big NYT article this morning, she seems perfectly competent and qualified as a Supreme---Summa from Princeton, top undergraduate award, lots of senior legal experience, etc.---Even discounting for AA factors, she clearly must be very solid. Put another way, she seems to have an academic/experience track record about 100x stronger than poor empty-suit Obama.

Now it is clear she supports racial AA to some extent, which I personally don't like. But she's a *liberal*---pretty much ALL liberals support racial AA! (Plus lots of "conservatives" these days). Does anyone really think Obama would have nominated a conservative to replace Souter on the Court?!

Soul Searcher said...

Virtually everyone I have read defending Ricci has been wrong on the 'solely written' issue and I never even knew about that the weighting was a relevant part of the collective bargaining agreement. I think you should prepare some sort of go-to FAQ on the case, sort of like the work you did on the Jena 6 that exposed the ignorance of those on the opposing side of the debate.

Anonymous said...

Ask not whether a story is true, ask why *that* particular truth was published. What I'm wondering is why Jeff Goldberg and the New York Times have published critical pieces on her.

My bet is that she's got some pro-Arab, anti-Israel, or "anti-Semitic" commentary in the past that is scaring the horses. Either on the record or at law school.

The other possibility is that they don't have anything against Sotomayor necessarily -- just that Obama is getting a bit out of line, by actually taking some of the "people of color" rhetoric too far by nominating Sotomayor over Kagan. Kind of like Stalin doublecrossed the guys who brought him to power.

Of course, the hardcore AJ leftists with the "double recessive" who are consistently anti-racist even in the context of Israel don't care about this -- they are loyal to Comrade Obama no matter what, even given the furtive pssts in their direction from the New Republic and the Forward.

Given the NYT hit piece and the Ricci case, my bet is that she doesn't make it through confirmation and everyone unites behind Elena Kagan, who is a shoo-in for obvious reasons.

Pepe Lucas said...

Steve, how about a piece on Sotomayor's economic credentials? How much of a high-flier is she?

Anonymous said...

GM is going bankrupt. The car industry may be dead in the US. The space program is slowly dying. Large portions of the Western world are inhabited by roving gangs of aggressive outsiders. We are facing grave environmental and energy challenges. The third world cannot control its population growth. Yet all race talk in the West comes down to how much more can be transferred from whitey to non-whitey. How many more fire-fighters in some small town somewhere should be black. And every year hundred of thousands of non-whites come into the western world whose children will make the exact same demands in the future. Is this really about logic and reason or is it about what it always has been about: a very human and often a very irrational desire to conquer the environment and to propagate one's genes in as wide of an area as possible at any cost? Why do these things have to be logical and reasonable? They are not! The delusions individuals, ethnic groups, and races hold about genes are greater than any logic applied to the problem. I admire Steve for trying though.

Anonymous said...

Will any Republican grill Sotomayor over the race issues? This is really an open question given the timidity of the GOP on race. A pity, given that Sotomayor is wide open for a grilling on her racial views, which would be repellent to most white Americans.

Bob said...

The full truth of the matter is that firemen in urban areas are grossly overpaid and don't do much work.

Over the past 20 years:

1. firefighting equipment has improved

2. fewer fires start from smoking because of all the people who have quit, or only smoke outside

3. fewer fires are started by drunks because binge drinking has declined

4. fewer fires from cooking because people cook at home less often and use their microwaves more

5. buildings have more sprinklers, more reliable electrical systems, more fire-proofing, etc

6. smoke detectors and home fire extinguishers are more common

Yet the number of firemen keeps going up, because they have powerful unions that politicians cow down to, and such a warm reputation with the public. The result is they work so little and get paid so much that these jobs are very desirable and hard to get, resulting in patronage fights like this.

I'd like to see Ricci win his case, but let's not pretend like these guys are the victims of some great injustice rather than overpaid municipal employees.

Richard Hoste said...

From purely a statistical point of you the odds of a Latino female being qualified is almost nill. See my review of a book on affirmative action.

Read this about blacks in law school and know that everything there applies to Hispanics, only to a lesser extent.

The distribution of the bell curve means that because of the difference in average intelligence between the races when it comes to law schools the proportion of qualified whites to qualified blacks is enormous. That’s why a defender of affirmative action admits that if law schools simply went by undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores statistics from one year show that almost 4/5 of blacks, 2/3 of Puerto Ricans and 1/2 of Mexicans and Native Americans admitted to law school wouldn’t have been accepted. Even Asians get a slight edge. Of those blacks who ended up going to law school only 8.9 percent belonged there. At the top sixth of law schools 17.5 times more blacks were admitted than would’ve been based on UGPA and SAT. That’s another reason why mentioning that there are smart blacks in discussions about affirmative action misses the point. It’s not just that a few are getting a break; if you meet a high status black and you assume that he got his position at the expense of a more qualified white or Asian the vast majority of the time you’ll be right. The further he’s gotten in life, the less likely he is to have earned it by merit. And when it comes to grading...

Affirmative Action grading doesn’t have to be official policy or even conscious. Ken Harber wrote an essay filled with grammatical and content errors and gave it to 92 white college students to grade. They were given different biographies of the author and some indirectly revealed that he was black. On a scale of 7, papers that the white students thought were written by a black person got a grade of 3.5 and papers they thought were written by a white person got 2.7. On the essays supposedly written by a white some students wrote things like “when I read college work this bad I want to lay my head down on the table and cry.” The comments written on the essays supposedly written by a black were overwhelmingly positive. The mystery of how Michelle Obama could graduate from Stanford while not mastering basic English is solved.Grading in law is so subjective and liberal law school professors so enamored with the right victims slobbering the right platitudes that anything achieved by a Sonia Sotomayor needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you make some good points, but the reason for Sotomayor's appointment is obvious:

NAMs cannot compete for high-IQ jobs, so society dumbs down the criteria for them.

Simple. Ugly. Bad.

OneSTDV said...

It's unbelievable that the dept stopped promoting people in the first place.

But for a second, just imagine we lived in an HBD utopia. The results of the test would be as mundane as traffic during rush hour. It would be yet another piece of evidence, adding to the already huge amount out there, reaffirming the presence of average racial differences.

Jack Burton said...

I'm sure you're right, Steve, but there's also the careerist angle: I'm sure it would just tickle Sotomayor to slap Ricci down, but she's also smart enough to know that this case is a potential bombshell, and that showing her true colors in a case that winds up being a major supreme court case runs the risk of holding her back from a lifetime of sticking it to guys like Frank Ricci.

Besides, this is one case where an appeals judge doesn't make policy, because our constitution has wisely bequeathed that responsibility to Anthony Kennedy.

Svigor said...

a test that has a disparate impact—it affects one racial group more than others

But is that really the case? I'd long thought so, but I did a bit of reading, prompted by the Ricci case, and now I'm not so sure. From what I was reading, it seemed like "disparate impact" falls under Orwell's "some are more equal than others" bit and only matters legally if it hurts protected groups.

Can anyone clarify?

testing99 said...

I'm not sure that the Supremes won't uphold Ricci and Disparate Impact.

Fox News Megyn Kelly defended Sotomoayor on the "Wise Latina woman" comment and also Ricci itself.

There's a LOT of money/power/patronage tied up in Disparate Impact and the "need" to keep Straight White Guys out of government hiring. Particularly by women.

Little noticed is that most of Obama's spending is for what Steve termed "the nice White ladies" in social work, education, and other make-work "studies" that create various patronage positions, and the desire ala Robert Reich to keep "Straight White Men" out of spendulus or other government spending.

Politically, Obama has already found considerable support among the female dominated media and even female conservative legal personalities, for the view that Disparate Impact and racial set-asides must be preserved ... and expanded.

Because the principal beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are White Women.

I don't think long-term this is politically sustainable, but in the short term I do think that the Supremes will probably uphold Ricci and Disparate Impact. That's where "fashionable opinion" comes in and the social pressure to conform in the Media/Elite hothouse is enormous. Someone wrote about how most Justices merely parrot the opinions of their young, mostly female law clerks, and this seems tailor made for another 5-4 decision.

Of course, with nearly all employment now GOVERNMENT directed, that means that White Men get frozen out. Not sustainable in the long run but then Obama is not very smart.

OT: Steve you've seen Ace of Spades posting on how Ayers wrote Obama's "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" correct? Folks have run the same lexical analysis that uncovered Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors.

It appears you got that one completely wrong. [You've also no doubt seen Doug Ross from ABC's investigation into the Chrysler Dealership terminations: all of them Republican big time donors except one $200 Obama donor, the BET exec and crony of Obama got his Chrysler competitor's axed. Yes, Obama is that stupid. The axed dealers are suing.]

John Seiler said...

Red Sonia said we need "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences" on the court. She isn't wise, so the Senate should reject her.

But I know several wise Latina ladies who would fit the bill. One is Rosie Avila, formerly a longtime school board member in Santa Ana. She lost a bid for the U.S. House. She's pro-life, backs English First, and favors securing our borders. Although not a lawyer, that's not actually a requirement for the Supreme Court. And maybe we'd be better off with a non-lawyer for once.

Here's her platform: http://www.voterosie.com/?q=issues

Victoria said...

Now it is clear she supports racial AA to some extent, which I personally don't like. But she's a *liberal*---pretty much ALL liberals support racial AA! (Plus lots of "conservatives" these days).========

The point you make in your entire post is sensible, but I don't think we've arrived at the place where an important official can bluntly claim that it's acceptable to stifle a deserving employee's career because he is a symbol of white men -- so, therefore, it doesn't matter. We all know that this is so, but I'm not sure that most of the public, as brainwashed as it is, can stomach such a blatant and ugly acknowledgment of this truth. You're right that on this subject "conservatives" are as supportive as the liberals they supposedly revile. But I think that this Sotomayor decision will strike even these chicken-hearted souls as indefensible.

dearieme said...

Mr iSteve, can you explain to me why you chaps indoctrinate your children with yarns of the Founding Fathers and their determination to have a society without privilege of rank, while you are busily constructing a web of privilege based on race?

jack strocchi said...

Bazelon writes in Slate>:

Why promote firefighters based on a written test rather than their performance in the field? Why favor multiple-choice questions over evaluations of leadership and execution? It's like granting a driver's license based solely on the written test, only with much higher stakes.Bazelon seems to be clueless about the duties of a field officer. Commanding an engine is not like driving a car. They dont just have to run around playing hoses onto fires.

Most importantly, captains must grasp logistics. You have to juggle multiple activities in real time to get the best use of resourcec. The situation is analagous to the military where junior officers are selected partly on their IQ performance.

That requires intellectual facility. For which g-loaded tests are designed to measure.

From duties of a fire captain:

- Responds with personnel, equipment, and apparatus to fire, rescue, emergency medical and hazardous materials incidents;

- maintains discipline,

- supervises, and evaluates the performance of firefighting personnel and

- makes recommendations for disciplinary action within department and city policies, rules and guidelines,

- inspects, tests, and assures readiness of equipment and apparatus.
And why make the assumption that intellectual skill has no positive correlation with practical skill? There are many professions where intellectual facility and practical dexterity go together (surgeons, electronic technicians, engineers).

Its just bizarre that intellectual bars are being raised for all sorts of occupations of dubious value (such as lawyering). Whereas for a job which is really important and requires a fair bit of intellectual skill (fire captain) it seems Left-liberals are prepared to drop the bar for political reasons.

ben tillman said...

The "disparate impact" doctrine might as well be called the non-whites-win/whites-lose doctrine.

Every possible job application criterion will hurt either whites or non-whites, depending on whether it is used.

If use of a written test has a negative disparate impact on non-whites, then the non-use of the written test has a negative disparate impact on whites.

For this reason, no meaningful employment criterion can ever satisfy a true disparate-impact test, so it should be obvious that the "disparate impact" doctrine is utterly bogus.

It's simply a ludicrous double standard inimical to the notion of "equal protection" of the law.

ben tillman said...

Speaking of Sotomayor, am I seeing things, or is there something distinctly Asian-looking about her?Her ancestry is largely Jewish. Southwest Asia is still part of Asia.

ben tillman said...

From purely a statistical point of you the odds of a Latino female being qualified is almost nill.Large numbers of "Latinos", including Sotomayor, are genetically Jewish. Yes, we're talking about Sephardim rather than Ashkemazim, but the baseline average IQ for this group of "Latinos" is still 100+. Her IQ could well be high enough for her to be qualified by your standards. There is another reason, however, why she can't be qualified.

She's not one of us.

She doesn't recognize whites as part of her moral community (i.e., she enforces double standards to the detriments of whites). She's not even a "citizenist". That means she can't (and won't) interpret and synthesize the law.

Instead, she'll construct outrageous double standards.

ben tillman said...

Mr iSteve, can you explain to me why you chaps indoctrinate your children with yarns of the Founding Fathers and their determination to have a society without privilege of rank, while you are busily constructing a web of privilege based on race?You misspelled "de-constructing".

Anonymous said...

Grading in law is so subjective and liberal law school professors so enamored with the right victims slobbering the right platitudes that anything achieved by a Sonia Sotomayor needs to be taken with a grain of salt.But she also aced Princeton undergrad (summa cum laude), not just law school.

Most likely, she is very smart and totally qualified, but also prejudiced against whites and males.

B322 said...

dearieme, will you please rephrase for slower folks like me? Is "you chaps" Americans, making privilege based on race via affirmative action, or iSteve readers, making privilege based on race by trying to tear down affirmative action?

I ask because I've classed you informally on the right for quite a while, implying the former, but I'm pretty sure enforced diversity / positive crimination / singing Kumbaya with the Stasi was pretty much an international thing nowadays, implying the latter.

gordon-bennett said...

@dearime:

If race and ability correlate, which is what HBD says, how did you determine that Steve is "busily constructing a web of privilege based on race" rather than based on ability?

Truth said...

"From purely a statistical point of you the odds of a Latino female being qualified is almost nill...

Yes, and of course this makes use of the totally logical supposition that the best evidence for qualification of a Supreme Court Justice comes from a 2 hour test taken at age 21.

"Not sustainable in the long run but then Obama is not very smart...Yes, Obama is that stupid..."

Yes, this is great evidence that the president of the United States is stupid. And the evidence of your intellect is evidenced by you doing; what exactly for a living?

Richard Hoste said...

"Most likely, she is very smart and totally qualified, but also prejudiced against whites and males."

If you read what I wrote you would see it's most likely that that is not the case. At the highest levels of society the proportion of unqualified to qualified NAMs is very large. The more cognitively demanding the position the more likely the NAM is a fraud.

Anonymous said...

A latina and female. If she were a lesbian, she'd hit the perfect New York Times trifecta!Come now, lets not deny ourselves - if she were a lesbian, and disabled.

Anonymous said...

I think you chaps need to realise that dearime was being ironic - or I too have seriously misunderstood the tenor of his comments over...well, a long time.

Richard Hoste said...

"Because the principal beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are White Women."

No, they're not. Not even close.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Most likely, she is very smart and totally qualified,..."

Academic qualifications are not the most important criteria for selecting a supreme court justice. The primary qualifications ought to be: 1.) That they have read the constitution, 2.) that they understand the constitution, and 3.) that they agree with the constitution.

All of Obama's nominees will meet the first criterion. A few may be able to meet the second. None will meet the third.

jody said...

the united states is becoming brazil, but with politics from south africa.

a recipe for an empire's decline.

sj071 said...

'...if she were a lesbian, and disabled.'

Diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 8. For triple minority winner this ailment, according to the media, is 'one of her strenghts', 'Our Teachable Moment', and ' She Overcomes It Every Day'.

One could reasonably expect a frank debate in MSM on high levels of obesity in the Latino community will follow (not).

eh said...

@Svigor:

...and only matters legally if it hurts protected groups.

It's reasonable to wonder. Taking an example I've used before (not to run it into the ground), UCLA is a prestigious university that gets lots of applications, and there Asians outnumber Whites, which looking at California demographics would seem to indicate that UC/UCLA admissions policies have a 'disparate impact' on Whites. But you don't hear any public concern about that.

Anonymous said...

"A latina and female. If she were a lesbian, she'd hit the perfect New York Times trifecta!"

Or a 'Marrano'.

Anonymous said...

"3. fewer fires are started by drunks because binge drinking has declined"

Unfortunately, when I'm drunk, I have a tendency to knock over drinks which puts the fire out before it even gets going or to simply pass out and roll over the flames, thus extinguishing them. But I'm working on it, Bob! I do however keep the local PD busy with my drunken gunfire. Just doing my part...

-12 Stepper

El Caudillo said...

the united states is becoming brazil, but with politics from south africa.

a recipe for an empire's decline.

-----

Jeesh, how completely true!!!!!

Yeah, I noticed when I was in Brazil a few years ago the utter lack of explicit anti-White racial antipathy,

...either toward the Whites from the 'coloreds',

...or from the Whites toward eachother -- like in the US of A :-(.

Talk about inverted values!

Lucius Vorenus said...

RKU: From the big NYT article this morning, she seems perfectly competent and qualified as a Supreme---Summa from Princeton, top undergraduate award, lots of senior legal experience, etc.---Even discounting for AA factors, she clearly must be very solid...

If she had majored in math at Princeton or in physics at Princeton, and had been graduated summa, in 1976, then I might be impressed.

But dude, she wrote her undergraduate on some <EDITED> named Luis Muñoz Marín [whoever the hell he was]:

Early life and education
When she entered Princeton University, there were few women students and fewer Latinos. She later described the experience as like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year there, but put in long hours in the library and gained skill and confidence. She became a non-radical student activist, being co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students. The organization filed a formal letter of complaint with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices, and she wrote opinion pieces for The Daily Princetonian along the same theme. She also volunteered with Latino patients in a Trenton psychiatric hospital. A history major, she wrote her senior thesis on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and the island's struggles for economic and political self-determination. She won the Pyne Prize, the top award for undergraduates, which reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her A.B. from Princeton, graduating summa cum laude in 1976.

In other words, she was already a semi-professional racial shakedown artist as an undergraduate at Princeton, in the early- to mid-1970s, and was actively involved in a lawsuit against Princeton while an undergraduate. The tragedy is that TPTB at Princeton lacked the spine to stand up to her blackmail, and instead caved, awarding her both Summa & the Pyne Prize, as well as caving on the question of the Deanship.

BTW, The Daily Princetonian has been re-printing some old pieces which recount her time as an undergraduate:

Anti-Latino discrimination at Princeton
By Sonia Sotomayor
May 10, 1974
dailyprincetonian.com

Latin student groups assail University hiring performance
By David Liemer
April 22, 1974
dailyprincetonian.com

The making of a dean
By Sonia Sotomayor et al
September 12, 1974
dailyprincetonian.com

Back for Pyne Prize luncheon, Chicanos find 'changed' campus
By Tom Streithorst
March 1, 1976
dailyprincetonian.com

Sigh.

Summa?

Racial-spoils "Summa" wrestler, maybe.

Lucius Vorenus said...

Anonymous: A latina and female. If she were a lesbian, she'd hit the perfect New York Times trifecta!

sj071: Diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 8. For triple minority winner this ailment, according to the media, is 'one of her strenghts', 'Our Teachable Moment', and ' She Overcomes It Every Day'. One could reasonably expect a frank debate in MSM on high levels of obesity in the Latino community will follow (not).

Dudes, I wouldn't be so quick to rule out the possibility that she is indeed a lesbian:

Early life and education
On August 14, 1976, just after graduating from Princeton, Sotomayor married Kevin Edward Noonan, whom she had dated since high school. He became a biologist and a patent lawyer. (She and Noonan divorced in 1983; they did not have children.)

To my Gaydar, that sounds like a fairly typical profile for a PowerDyke, of her age [born mid-1950s], in elitist America. [If she had been born ten or fifteen years later, then she could have dispensed with the pretense of the beard altogether.]

PS: If you think that Obama isn't obsessed with questions of sodomy, then you should have a gander at his Chicago Law school final exams:

Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart
nytimes.com

The exams themselves are utterly undreadable [since he didn't have Bill Ayers around to clean them up], but in glancing through them, it doesn't take long to realize that Obama is just completely fixated on using to judiciary to mainstream various sodomite lifestyles [sodomite marriage, child adoption by sodomites, etc].

My guess is that Obama is at least bisexual, and that his first participation in acts of male homosexuality came no later than his tutelage under the pedophile Stalinist, Frank Davis Wright.

[I'm inclined to give poor Lolo Soetoro a pass, since it seems like he might have been one of the few decent people who ever entered Obama's life, although anyone who tries to pretend that there isn't a massive undercurrent of male homosexuality in the Muslim world is just a fool.]

Victoria said...

The full truth of the matter is that firemen in urban areas are grossly overpaid and don't do much work. ======


Putting down the skills of firemen? This has got to be one of the strangest posts. As one who was once literally rescued off the fire escape of a burning building, I don't care what these magnificent men do in their spare time. They can sleep and eat all day, or have sex in the fire house for all I care. What they do when they are on duty makes up for whatever they're into in their down time.

Anonymous said...

I feel the same way, Victoria. The same goes for search and rescue, military, a lot of cops, certain safety/response technicians for companies - they can sit around and watch daytime TV (their reactions to feminism must be a hoot) for all I care, if they're ready when they need to be ready.

Maximilian said...

Is there any actual evidence for the multiple suggestions of Sephardic Jewish origin?

DAJ said...

If she had majored in math at Princeton or in physics at Princeton, and had been graduated summa, in 1976, then I might be impressed.With all due respect, Lucius, I highly doubt that you would be impressed if such were the case. You have consistently demonstrated something approaching refusal to acknowledge the intelligence of smart non-Asian minorities.

For instance, you eagerly disqualified Debi Thomas' intelligence, even though she actually earned a hard science degree in engineering from the nearly Ivy League school of Stanford. She also graduated from Northwestern University's medical school and passed an objective surgical licensing examination. You claimed that she sounded stupid in an interview taken during her teenage years. Does George W. Bush's verbal ineptness nullify his high scores on aptitude tests?

You, if I remember correctly, used Obama's supposedly unremarkable undergraduate tenure at Columbia University as evidence for his mediocre brains. Yet, you are now pooh-poohing Sotomayor for achieving a highly remarkable record at Princeton University!

It seems that non-Asian minorities just cannot win with you.

Oddly, you happily assigned high acumen to pretty white ladies who exhibit little to no comparable, concrete, intelletual accomplishment such as Katarina Witt (Playboy bunny) and Sarah Palin (former junior college student, multiple transfers to mediocre colleges, former business major who switched to an easier degree in journalism, etc.).

You should do a better job with concealing your bias. Some of your posts are indeed quite cogent.

Anonymous said...

DAJ, I agree with you that sometimes Lucius (who otherwise often makes excellent points) has a tendancy to discount any intellectual achievement by a NAM.

However, I have also noticed how our society tends to shower academic and other honors on them that on their face look quite impressive, but, often, when you dig a little deeper and look a little closer, their records often look a lot less impressive. For instance, Lucius does raise interesting questions about what Sotomayor did at Princeton. Also, look at Obama. On its face, his record at Harvard appears to be excellent, but, since it is sealed, we can't really get a look at it. I would be interested to see what exactly he took after 1st year and how he did in his various courses. Was he just racking up As in a slew of CritRace Theory courses? I don't know, but it would tell us a lot about the man, and not just about his intellect, but also about his character.

Anonymous said...

"The "smart fraction" in Puerto Rico, as in much of Latin America, is largely of Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Sephardic Jews are not a low-IQ group."

The Chinese merchant grandfather theory is also plausible. She grew up in a part of San Juan that had a "Shanghai" neighborhood.

Anonymous said...

"You have consistently demonstrated something approaching refusal to acknowledge the intelligence of smart non-Asian minorities."


You can thank AA and liberals/leftists for that.

Paranoid Bitchy Incessant Whiner said...

A little off topic, but what is with this new 4096-character upper bound on submissions?

Jesus T-F-ing Christ, what with the LIFO bug and the "eats carriage returns after closing tags" bug and all the rest of the nonsense in this code, it's as though someone is determined to turn "Blogger/Blogspot" into f-ing Twitter and chase away anyone who writes in complete sentences.

Dadgummit this is frustrating.

PS: And it just dawned on me that if I break the posts up to fall within the 4096 upper bound, then, because of the LIFO bug, they are going to get approved out of order [assuming Komment Kontrol even approves all of them in the first place], which is going to make them look hopelessly unintelligible.

GOD D*MN IT.

Lucius Vorenus said...

4096, PART 1

DAJ: For instance, you eagerly disqualified Debi Thomas' intelligence, even though she actually earned a hard science degree in engineering from the nearly Ivy League school of Stanford. She also graduated from Northwestern University's medical school and passed an objective surgical licensing examination. You claimed that she sounded stupid in an interview taken during her teenage years.No, I watched a Bud Greenspan interview with Thomas about 15 or 20 years after the fact, in which it was immediately obvious that she was an idiot - and that Katarina Witt [in the same Bud Greenspan piece] had a much higher IQ than Thomas [I would go so far as to say that, if you assume they were both speaking extemporaneously (which is not necessarily a good assumption), then Witt actually speaks better English than does Thomas (even though German is Witt's native tongue)] - and my hypothesis was that the reason Thomas got the "dear in the headlights" look and panicked and froze in the 1988 games [but Witt did not] was probably because of an IQ disparity.

[Again, for the record: Extemporaneousness on the part of both interviewees is not necessarily a good assumption to be making. Also, it is possible that Greenspan selectively edited the piece to make Witt look good and to make Thomas look bad - but if you think there's any realistic possiblity that a fellow with a name like "Greenspan" would go out of his way to make a German look good at the expense of making an African-American look bad, then, well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn which I'd like to talk to you about. It seems to me that the much more likely explanation was that Greenspan didn't have the foresight to write Thomas's lines for her in advance (à la David Axelrod), so that Thomas was forced to speak extemporaneously, and to reveal what a moron she really was, and when Greenspan went back to the cutting room, he couldn't find any footage from Thomas in which she spoke coherently, and he was forced to go with what he had, which was Thomas babbling like (or as) an idiot.]

DAJ: You, if I remember correctly, used Obama's supposedly unremarkable undergraduate tenure at Columbia University as evidence for his mediocre brains.

I [along with Jack Cashill and a handful of other people in the entire world, but NOT, apparently, Steve Sailer, author of The Half-Blood Prince] have actually read the known non-Ayers pieces in the "Obama" corpus [the 1990 Illinois Issues article, the 1990 HLR abortion piece, the Chicago law exams, etc], and I can tell you with 100% certainty that not only did Ayers write Dreams, but that Obama is a certified quota-hire moron & buffoon.

[And, BTW, I don't mean to be rude, but if, in watching him when he goes off-prompter, it's not transparently obvious to you that there's something wrong with Obama's gray matter, then you're not really the kind of person with whom I could have an intelligent conversation about this - no offense intended.]

DAJ said...

However, I have also noticed how our society tends to shower academic and other honors on them that on their face look quite impressive, but, often, when you dig a little deeper and look a little closer, their records often look a lot less impressive.Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I have no problem with heavily scrutinizing public figures like the President (no publications at Harvard Law Review), the First Lady (horribly written college senior thesis), Mrs. Clinton (failed the bar on first attempt), McCain (low ranking at Annapolis), Bush the Younger (mediocre grades at Yale), and so forth. My main concern is the failure to apply this microscope of scrutiny evenly. Why perform a most impressive job at detailing the jots and tittles of the academic and professional history of a publicized NAM or white liberal, but become silent when the subject, say, shifts to an attractive, conservative, fertile white woman?

Anonymous said...

DAJ said:

"Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I have no problem with heavily scrutinizing public figures like the President (no publications at Harvard Law Review), the First Lady (horribly written college senior thesis), Mrs. Clinton (failed the bar on first attempt), McCain (low ranking at Annapolis), Bush the Younger (mediocre grades at Yale), and so forth. My main concern is the failure to apply this microscope of scrutiny evenly. Why perform a most impressive job at detailing the jots and tittles of the academic and professional history of a publicized NAM or white liberal, but become silent when the subject, say, shifts to an attractive, conservative, fertile white woman?"

I agree with you that we sould more closely scrutinize all candidates records. However, McCain, W., and Palin are not really relavent to my point. Their academic records or intellectual prowess have never been advertised to the public as one of their key qualifications for office and the latter two have often been mocked by the media as stupid. (The current trend towards anti-intellectualism in the Republican party is a problem BTW, but separate from this discussion.) By contrast, Obama and Sotomayor are widely being proclaimed as 'brilliant' by the media and this is supposed to be a major qualification. However, I think that when evaluating their records, it would be helpful to know if their apparently impressive academic records were acquired in Crit Race Theory and ethnic studies courses. This is pertinent not to just to their intellect, but to their ideologies. Being white, while I'd prefer a smart, competent, politican that I agree with, I'd rather have an incompetent bumbler that bears no animus towards my group than a smart, competent politican trying to 'stick it to whitey.' If fact, that would be much worse than a Sharptonesque bumbler trying to 'stick it to whitey' because the latter is unlikely to be effective.

Truth said...

"You can thank AA and liberals/leftists for that."

No, he can thank Lucius V; if, that is he is a grown man and capable of his own opinions.

Truth said...

"so that Thomas was forced to speak extemporaneously, and to reveal what a moron she really was, and when Greenspan went back to the cutting room, he couldn't find any footage from Thomas in which she spoke coherently, and he was forced to go with what he had, which was Thomas babbling like (or as) an idiot.]"

Again, one of the world's all-too-numerous morons with a Stanford engineering degree, a medical degree from Northwestern and medical bar card.

"I can tell you with 100% certainty that not only did Ayers write Dreams, but that Obama is a

Yes, and with 100% certainty, you consider a woman with a Stanford engineering degree, a medical degree from Northwestern and medical bar card a "certified quota-hire moron & buffoon" as well.

"[And, BTW, I don't mean to be rude, but if, in watching him when he goes off-prompter, it's not transparently obvious to you that there's something wrong with Obama's gray matter, then you're not really the kind of person with whom I could have an intelligent conversation about this..."

And BTW to you Luc, from what I've read over the last 2 years, I don't know if having "intelligent conversation" is exactly your métier in life - so that's probably a good thing.

No, if I were you Buddy, I'd stick to playing basketball (by the rules of course!) I get the feeling, you're an All-American.

". However, McCain, W., and Palin are not really relavent to my point. Their academic records or intellectual prowess have never been advertised to the public as one of their key qualifications for office"

Well, now, that would be fairly difficult with a man who graduated third from the bottom of his class, and a woman who attended FIVE mediocre colleges, (I think one was an actual "University") now wouldn't it?

I for one, however never tired of hearing bout Dollar Bill's Rhodes Scholarship!

Gustav said...

I agree with the post that said Sotomayor and that Kagan skates in as the replacement.

Anonymous said...

Why perform a most impressive job at detailing the jots and tittles of the academic and professional history of a publicized NAM or white liberal, but become silent when the subject, say, shifts to an attractive, conservative, fertile white woman?


Your memory is defective. We not only had "scrutiny" of Plain, we have had the crack reporters of the media crawling through her garbage looking for dirt. I'm not sure how you managed to miss this.

It would have been nice if Obama had received, lets say, even one tenth of the scrutiny she got. If he had, he would not be currently running the country into the ground.

Svigor said...

By contrast, Obama and Sotomayor are widely being proclaimed as 'brilliant' by the media and this is supposed to be a major qualification.

The probability that this is Liberal White Supremacist code seems high.

A few days ago I read about a study* that showed whites assume blacks are dumber and have essentially no standards when it comes to blacks.

So the media's trumpeting of Obama and Sotomayor are probably whitespeak for "they're almost as smart as white folks, no bumbling AA types here we promise!"

Does the media go on and on about Asians who are smart?

*(I found it via a relatively recent KMac piece, I thought it was at Occidental Observer but I'm not finding it via multiple searches; an Ivy study where the researcher typed up a dismally bad essay and asked white TAs to grade the paper, but accompanied them with varying author bios - some said the author was white, some said black. The "black" author received an average of 3.5 and no negative comments, the "white" author received an average of 2.5 and negative comments)

DAJ said...

Your memory is defective. We not only had "scrutiny" of Plain, we have had the crack reporters of the media crawling through her garbage looking for dirt. I'm not sure how you managed to miss this.

My questioning was chiefly directed towards Lucius, who examines the intelligence of Obama and now Sotomayor with utmost scrutiny and skepticism, but glaringly gives the mentally less impressive Sarah Palin a pass. Why does he?

Lucius Vorenus said...

Well, I guess Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of my reply didn't make it through Komment Kontrol.

Richard Hoste said...

"*(I found it via a relatively recent KMac piece, I thought it was at Occidental Observer but I'm not finding it via multiple searches; an Ivy study where the researcher typed up a dismally bad essay and asked white TAs to grade the paper, but accompanied them with varying author bios - some said the author was white, some said black. The "black" author received an average of 3.5 and no negative comments, the "white" author received an average of 2.5 and negative comments)"

Actually, that's from my book review of the The Affirmative Action Hoax.

"Affirmative Action grading doesn’t have to be official policy or even conscious. Ken Harber wrote an essay filled with grammatical and content errors and gave it to 92 white college students to grade. They were given different biographies of the author and some indirectly revealed that he was black. On a scale of 7, papers that the white students thought were written by a black person got a grade of 3.5 and papers they thought were written by a white person got 2.7. On the essays supposedly written by a white some students wrote things like 'when I read college work this bad I want to lay my head down on the table and cry.' The comments written on the essays supposedly written by a black were overwhelmingly positive. The mystery of how Michelle Obama could graduate from Stanford while not mastering basic English is solved."

I don't think I've been cited by Kevin MacDonald.

Anybody who has discussed issues relating to blacks with liberal elites (basically any college graduate with a liberal arts degree) won't find the results of that study hard to believe.

Anonymous said...

The Israeli water engineer says firefighting doesn't require a particularly high IQ, and Sotomayor was right (only for the wrong reasons).

Svigor said...

I don't think I've been cited by Kevin MacDonald.

Thank you very much! No, not cited by MacDonald - add a degree of separation. He linked to a piece, author of which quoted you.

Svigor said...

The Israeli water engineer says firefighting doesn't require a particularly high IQ, and Sotomayor was right (only for the wrong reasons).

Does he say higher IQ isn't better? If not, not really interested.