The Weekly Standard has a transcript of a WSJ link to oral arguments in 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals hearing of the Ricci case:
Once again, I predict a narrowly drawn verdict for Ricci on the grounds that the city of New Haven refused to have done the validation study that they had already paid for.
But Sotomayor's question reveals the kind of disingenous intentional cluelessness that is the media conventional wisdom.
The unmentionable truth is that a fair test of a complicated subject will always tend -- on average -- to put NAMs at the bottom. Life is one long series of aptitude tests. Fire captains need to know a lot of stuff -- much of it that will never come up in their jobs ... until the day it does -- and studying for their promotions exams are times when they are motivated to really learn.
So, what should be done legally about the fact that fair and relevant tests will be tests that whites do better on average than blacks?
I don't really like the idea of burning to death because the less competent guy got the promotion due to his race, so I'd say: nothing.
On the other hand, if we must offer firey sacrifices to the goddess Diversity, then it's better to have explicit racial / ethnic quotas than to lower standards, as, say, Chicago has done to meet the EEOC's Four-Fifths Rule by passing 17,000 out of the 20,000 firefighter applicants who walked in off the street, then choosing randomly among the top 85% of the distribution. People are less likely to die horrible deaths if we have quotas that at least select the best whites, the best blacks, and so forth.
If any Supreme Court clerks are reading this, here's my suggestion: as the EEOC's "Four-Fifths Rule" that put's the legal burden of proof on hiring or promoting methods under which any group does less than four-fifths as well as the best-performing group should be abolished for the same reason that the "separate but equal" doctrine was no good. Sure, it sounds okay in theory, but in practice, separate but equal turns out to be largely a fraud. Similarly, as decades of social science (orders of magnitude more conclusive than the tentative social science confidently cited in Brown v. Board of Education) show, the Four-Fifths Rule institutionalizes fraudulence, as Judge Sotomayor's question demonstrates.
KAREN LEE TORRE (lawyer for Ricci et al): I think a fundamental failure is the application of these concepts to this job as if these men were garbage collectors. This is a command position of a First Responder agency. The books you see piled on my desk are fire science books. These men face life threatening circumstances every time they go out. ... Please look at the examinations. ... You need to know: this is not an aptitude test. This is a high-level command position in a post-9/11 era no less. They are tested for their knowledge of fire, behavior, combustion principles, building collapse, truss roofs, building construction, confined space rescue, dirty bomb response, anthrax, metallurgy, and I opened my district court brief with a plea to the court to not treat these men in this profession as if it were unskilled labor. We don't do this to lawyers or doctors or nurses or captains or even real estate brokers. But somehow they treat firefighters as if it doesn't require any knowledge to do the job. ...
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Counsel ... we're not suggesting that unqualified people be hired. The city's not suggesting that. All right? But there is a difference between where you score on the test and how many openings you have. And to the extent that there's an adverse impact on one group over the other, so that the first seven who are going to be hired only because of the vagrancies [sic] of the vacancies at that moment, not because you're unqualified--the pass rate is the pass rate--all right? But if your test is always going to put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate so they're never ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way, then why shouldn't the city have an opportunity to try and look and see if it can develop that?
KAREN LEE TORRE: Because they already developed it, your honor.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It assumes the answer. It assumes the answer which is that, um, the test is valid because we say it's valid.
KAREN LEE TORRE: The testing consultant said it was valid. He told them it was valid.... They had evidence that the test was job-related and valid for use under Title VII.
Once again, I predict a narrowly drawn verdict for Ricci on the grounds that the city of New Haven refused to have done the validation study that they had already paid for.
But Sotomayor's question reveals the kind of disingenous intentional cluelessness that is the media conventional wisdom.
The unmentionable truth is that a fair test of a complicated subject will always tend -- on average -- to put NAMs at the bottom. Life is one long series of aptitude tests. Fire captains need to know a lot of stuff -- much of it that will never come up in their jobs ... until the day it does -- and studying for their promotions exams are times when they are motivated to really learn.
So, what should be done legally about the fact that fair and relevant tests will be tests that whites do better on average than blacks?
I don't really like the idea of burning to death because the less competent guy got the promotion due to his race, so I'd say: nothing.
On the other hand, if we must offer firey sacrifices to the goddess Diversity, then it's better to have explicit racial / ethnic quotas than to lower standards, as, say, Chicago has done to meet the EEOC's Four-Fifths Rule by passing 17,000 out of the 20,000 firefighter applicants who walked in off the street, then choosing randomly among the top 85% of the distribution. People are less likely to die horrible deaths if we have quotas that at least select the best whites, the best blacks, and so forth.
If any Supreme Court clerks are reading this, here's my suggestion: as the EEOC's "Four-Fifths Rule" that put's the legal burden of proof on hiring or promoting methods under which any group does less than four-fifths as well as the best-performing group should be abolished for the same reason that the "separate but equal" doctrine was no good. Sure, it sounds okay in theory, but in practice, separate but equal turns out to be largely a fraud. Similarly, as decades of social science (orders of magnitude more conclusive than the tentative social science confidently cited in Brown v. Board of Education) show, the Four-Fifths Rule institutionalizes fraudulence, as Judge Sotomayor's question demonstrates.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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40 comments:
"But Sotomayor's question reveals the kind of disingenous intentional cluelessness that is the media conventional wisdom."
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JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It assumes the answer. It assumes the answer which is that, um, the test is valid because we say it's valid."
Mmm. I don't agree Steve. I think Sotomayer knows the score, but does not want it to be true. Her opinion is that you should keep trying until you achieve the desired result (nudge, nudge). It’s a common tactic in our multiculturalist, centralised world.
In South Africa AA has been routinely challenged in court in that it discriminates against the minority there, which is white. The judges basically said, “OK, maybe its true but we don't care, AA is here to stay, Basta!". This is the kind of attitude which Sotomayer. and Obama also have.
It was even worse that you discussed, Steve. Look again at what Sotomayor said (I emphasize the fatal words):
"JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Counsel ... we're not suggesting that unqualified people be hired. The city's not suggesting that. All right?"
She violated her judicial oath. She decided the case before hearing the arguments and said so from the bench. "We're not suggesting..." Sotomayor was arguing the city's case for it!
(Coming on top of such reprehensible behavior, the fact that her argument was a lie, that the city was manifestly suggesting that unqualified people be hired, seems almost irrelevant.)
HBD-denialism disgusts me as much as anyone, but any of thousands of high-IQ liberals might have said the same stuff as Sotomayor.
again, why not just point out that monoethnic east asian nations excel?
do diversicrats honestly believe that toyota and honda produce inferior, unreliable vehicles, and that it is mainly due to the shocking dearth of africans, mexicans, and muslims designing the automobiles and factories?
that japan and south korea do not manufacture high quality electronics on a large scale that are superior to american electronics, again due to a woeful lack of african, mexican, and muslim engineers?
that japanese and chinese researchers will never win a nobel science prize until the words "japanese" and "chinese" mean the same thing as "french" and "canadian" mean today - IE any random human from anyplace on earth.
this forced, 1984 style doublethink is getting old.
"I think Sotomayer knows the score, but does not want it to be true."
Notice how she states "if your test is always going to put a certain group at the bottom". This implies that she knows that NAMs will always (not just in this one particular year, on this one particular test) score at the bottom. There is no allowance for the possibility that, given time, the NAMs will figure the test out.
Nevertheless, I think that it's irrelevant whether "she's aware of it and doesn't want to believe it" or "she believes it but doesn't want to admit it". Even if she were to believe it and admit it, would she support repealing anti-discrimination laws?
As an aside, I have softened my stance on Sotomayor. She was an obvious quota pick with a mediocre intellect and an anti-white chip on her shoulder, but it's not as if rejecting her will get us a conservative justice. In fact, I kind of see her as a possible liberal version of Souter. She could turn out to be fairly conservative on a lot of issues. I recommend this post on Lawrence Auster's blog for an explanation of why we should let her slide:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/013324.html
This transcript reminds me of Obama's arrogance and wanton stupidity when he came to work at a law firm in his summer off from Harvard Law - "Oh don't expect me to do any actual work - I'm working on a book". Vagrancies does not equal vagaries. You have to wonder how Sotomayor would be thinking if a loved one of hers died because a fireman couldn't deal with emergency conditions. Would she ever admit, even to herself, that the failure could have been traceable to a lack of ability that could have been picked up by a test like the one she threw out?
I read Sotomayor's remarks four times and still found them unintelligible. How sad.
What 'headache' said about AA being "here to stay" in South Africa despite white people being a minority there is a very real possibility for America. Judges just won't think logically about race. Consider that Kenneth Clark's famous doll experiments presented as evidence in Brown v. Board of Education showed that black children who studied in segregated classrooms were MORE likely to select a black doll than a black students who studied in integrated classrooms. Overall, however, black children more frequently chose (how frequently I don't recall and I've looked for a cite but did not find one) white dolls, presumably because of the influence of white actors and models in the media. The court just saw what it wanted to see and ruled against the interests of both black and white children. Look at it this way: if black children, and black people in general, have lower self esteem because they are surrounded by images of white people in the media, how is it that black children will have higher self esteem if they are surrounded by white children everyday in class? I recall my Constitutional Law professor, the most cited in the United States at the time, pondering the question of how it was possible that the court saw fit to use the doll experiments as evidence that school segregation lowered black children's self esteem. He didn't really have an answer except something along the lines of what Sotomayor might say - it must have just FELT right. And they were 9 white guys.
Wow, I was hoping I'd feel better about Sotomayor after reading the transcript of this case. I hope Scalia writes the decision and annihilates her.
Smith
I like counsel's valiant attempt to persuade Her Honor to equate firefighters with lawyers etc
raises the question about the discriminatory nature of LSAT, law courses, and the bar exam
how can we restructure them to get fair outcomes/
As a grand compromise, the EEOC should adopt a three fifths rule. It's less stringent and has a bit of history behind it.
Separate but equal a fraud?
No no no! Separate but equal, in opportunities, was no fraud.
Separate but equal, in outcomes, is not what they meant, so how could it be a fraud?
All the major employment testing firms offer validation studies to their clients. They have to in order to get the business from private firms, which do not want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on testing job candidates unless the test helps them pick likely successes.
And the major testers are able to offer solid validation studies because they have tested hundreds of thousand of candidates over decades and have worked with their clients to ‘test the test,’ that is, correlate performance on the test with performance on the job. The testers and their clients are constantly reviewing the effectiveness of the test in order to tweak and adjust the test, to give clients confidence in their results and to help clients interpret results of the tests.
This review and adjustment is an essential part of the testers’ business model and a major element of their value proposition to clients. Some testers even offer limited guarantees against liability in the case of discrimination lawsuits.
Testing firms that work for government clients are under even more pressure to validate their tests, because government agencies are under intense pressure to buy services that can be shown to be effective. And the testers have long learned to work under EEOC rules, being forced to develop especially strong justifications for any test that may yield non-proportional results for demographic sub-groups.
Of course, it is impossible to prove that another test, non-existent at present, might also have help select the best candidates, while not failing the four-fifths rule. This is a bit like chasing the ever-receding dream of the complete and perfect Environmental Impact Statement, which will consider all possible consequences of, and alternatives to, a development plan. As long as litigants can raise more possibilities and objections, the perfect EIS, like the entirely satisfactory employment test, will never be seen in this imperfect world.
Don't worry, Felix, the law schools themselves are on the case!
I have a liberal lawyer friend solidly in favor of AA. His son was applying to law schools, and voila, he didn't get in to a local school he was counting on attending. After some digging, my friend found that this particular school is in the top 10 nationally for the number of law school places set aside for NAM applicants.
This is going to be happening more and more to good liberal parents, hopefully causing a critical mass of them to realize the steps needed to protect their young from second-class status imposed by the very people they support with their votes.
Brutus
HBD-denialism disgusts me as much as anyone, but any of thousands of high-IQ liberals might have said the same stuff as Sotomayor.
Ha, Ha! I'd even go further than that---how many prominent liberals are there in America who would NOT have taken Sotomayer's position and said the same silly things?
People who take a contrary view are called "conservatives", or maybe "ultra-conservatives".
I'm shocked, shocked that Obama has refused to replace Souter with an "ultra-conservative" on the Supreme Court. His voters will never forgive him for that sort of dastardly betrayal...
I wonder what would happen if a conservative judge just can't take it anymore and shouts out, "It's HBD you morons! The fact that blacks can't pass it and whites can is solid evidence for it being a fair test!"
I can't imagine what the firestorm would be, especially if it's a high level/famous judge. It would be Watson to the tenth degree.
I find it humorous that everyone sees the consistent data from year to year with whites at the top and blacks unable to pass. They've been informed that the test is fair by an independent organization. But they sit there puzzled, unable to rationalize the pass rate disparity. Hilarious if we didn't waste so much money on this.
And Sotomayor accuses the lawyer of "assuming": Isn't racial egalitarianism, which shouldn't even be the null hypothesis, an assumption she's basing her decision on?
"Judges just won't think logically about race."
Sotomayor does think logically about race. That should be clear.
What is so outrageous are the presumptions by Sotomayor and the pundits in the media that any kind of test will do, that no particulars are required for any job, if everybody can't pass. And those who claim to the contrary are simply not people of good will. If they were, they would find a way to construct a test that would include everybody. ====
She says:
But if your test is always going to put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate so they're never ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way, ====
Who is she to claim that this test isn't fair or "substantive?" I would never have been able to pass a test to become a ballerina or a concert pianist. What that tells me is that I should take myself off to other forms of employment, not that the ballet company or philharmonic orchestra should construct tests that would favor my limited talents.
as, say, Chicago has done to meet the EEOC's Four-Fifths Rule by passing 17,000 out of the 20,000 firefighter applicants who walked in off the street, then choosing randomly among the top 85% of the distribution.
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If you believe it is random, I have a GM to sell you.
Sotomayor is much ado about nothing. She ruled in the same way as 5 other judges on the panel, who were all white males. So the problem, if it exists, is not intrinsic to her as an individual.
The allegation that she lacks intellectual qualifications is pretty empty. She graduated summa from Princeton. Even if she got in under some AA scheme, she would still have to prove herself, which she did. She went to the best law school in the country, and again, even if she got in under AA, to make Law Review requires real substance. It's a stupid argument.
On a more fundamental level, SC appointments are largely political. No one here will be happy with most Obama appointments. Conversely, no liberal will be happy with most Republican appointments. To the victor go the spoils.
On the whole subject of testing, has any research been done to try and pinpoint which questions in particular have racial bias in them? Does that even happen, or is it just a holistic sort of thing?
I really wish we could see more comparisons between sports and academics. Why do people think sports tryouts in school are meritorious, but academic tests must be somehow biased? This situation is ironic, because being academically gifted and intelligent is not something that's generally portrayed as desirable in the media (compared to sports achievement). Why is it ok for one race to be better than another physically, but not intellectually?
"again, why not just point out that monoethnic east asian nations excel?"
Makes one wish that several Asian or Indian firemen (I know--not too many of those but indulge me) had taken the test. When they or they and whites were the top test scorers, what would the city have said/done then? What would the black firemen and their lawyers have said/done? Anything? Nothing?
"Notice how she states "if your test is always going to put a certain group at the bottom". This implies that she knows that NAMs will always (not just in this one particular year, on this one particular test) score at the bottom."
BNGO. That jumped out at me too. She knows that a meaningful test could be administered over and over, and likely as not, the results would be the same or very close to the same.
As for Sotomayor allowing her prejudice to be so easily seen through her words...I can't figure out if it's her "I don't give a damn" attitude or if she is simply not all that bright.
She violated her judicial oath. She decided the case before hearing the arguments and said so from the bench. "We're not suggesting..." Sotomayor was arguing the city's case for it!That's a tendentious reading of her statement. It was a three-judge panel, and those three judges (or the two judges who ultimately sided against Ricci) could be the antecedent of "we".
As an aside, I have softened my stance on Sotomayor. She was an obvious quota pick with a mediocre intellect and an anti-white chip on her shoulder,
When did "Puerto Rican" become a race??.......
Firefighting is not rocket science. Because of the pay and benefits of the job most firefighters are over qualified. It may be unfair to use race to promote but it is probably not dangerous. Also there may be a benefit in that blacks and Hispanics might respect the firefighters more if they have blacks and Hispanics among the leadership.
Anonymous said...
Firefighting is not rocket science. Because of the pay and benefits of the job most firefighters are over qualified. It may be unfair to use race to promote but it is probably not dangerous. Also there may be a benefit in that blacks and Hispanics might respect the firefighters more if they have blacks and Hispanics among the leadership.
6/02/2009
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You are fool. Nobody cares what color your skin is when ur a$$ is on fire. They just want someone to put you out. Preferably the best and quickest someone possible.
The question is not Ricci.
IT is everything else in Obama's Government run economy.
Mandatory, overt discrimination against White Men in a deep, lasting recession with no other employment but Government, is not politically sustainable.
This may be Obama's March to Moscow.
When did "Puerto Rican" become a race??.......
I dunno, kind of like a "Jet" and "Shark" thing?
"Mandatory, overt discrimination against White Men in a deep, lasting recession with no other employment but Government, is not politically sustainable."
Recession? We're headed for a DEPRESSION, boyo.
"This may be Obama's March to Moscow."
And we all know what happened to that place, don't we? This nation is a tinderbox.
"People who take a contrary view are called "conservatives", or maybe "ultra-conservatives".
Actually back in the civil rights days, I believed and affirmed that people should be treated as individuals and not discriminated against because of their race in employment, housing, schooling, etc. For my beliefs, I was called a "N-word loving communist" by people who disagreed with me. Forty years later I still believe the same thing and am called a "racist" by people who disagree with me. Don't times change!
The only thing that should matter is that this test has questions that are practical and relevant to firefighting. I can understand doubting what questions like "Green is to yellow as X is to red" might have to do with the job; but the only question that I have seen aired had to do with what combination of various lengths of firehose you needed to reach a certain height.
That's a very relevant question if you have to fight fires in buildings over a certain height, like apartment buildings.
It should stand.
Okay, so now we find out the DOJ has decided that the state of Georgia cannot implement its verification of citizenship for voter registration. Did you see that? The Georgia law allowed the secretary of state to use drivers' license and social security databases and the DOJ ruled it was a "no no"--it supposedly is unfair to certain people.
How the hell can the DOJ argue this is discriminatory?
Had I not abandoned my fatuous, vacuous liberal ideas a decade ago, I surely would upon reading this. I now understand why people have been working to preserve the second amendment.
This all makes me long for Tony Soprano. Where are the real men, the alphas, when you need them? (Apologies to Steve, whom I do see as an alpha male--wish there were more like him.)
--Firefighting is not rocket science. Because of the pay and benefits of the job most firefighters are over qualified. It may be unfair to use race to promote but it is probably not dangerous. Also there may be a benefit in that blacks and Hispanics might respect the firefighters more if they have blacks and Hispanics among the leadership.--
Playing basketball in the NBA is not rocket science. Because of the pay and benefits of the job most of the players are over qualified. It may be unfair to use race to promote but it is probably not dangerous. Also there may be a benefit in that whites and Asians might respect professional basketball teams more if they have white and Asians among the lead players.
put's?
"This may be Obama's March to Moscow."
And we all know what happened to that place, don't we? This nation is a tinderbox.
6/02/2009
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Ya, but the Russinas don't want him either.
Are there any other white males who would feel uncomfortable having Sotomayer adjudicate their case from the bench?
Sotomayer might be the first *openly* prejudiced member of the Supreme Court. At some point in the future, if present trends dont cease, white males will cease being such good productive citizens in light of state-sacntioned-contempt towards them. Civilization will be poorer for it. M
"The allegation that she lacks intellectual qualifications is pretty empty. She graduated summa from Princeton. Even if she got in under some AA scheme, she would still have to prove herself, which she did. She went to the best law school in the country, and again, even if she got in under AA, to make Law Review requires real substance. It's a stupid argument."
Uh, did you see her major and thesis at Princeton? She was basically doing 'ethnic studies,' which is a totally meaningless major, while not engaging in Latino activism. Also, Law Reviews at prestigious law schools, like Yale and Harvard, have affirmative action slots, so all we can say about her selection to law review is that she did well compared to other NAMs.
"On the whole subject of testing, has any research been done to try and pinpoint which questions in particular have racial bias in them? Does that even happen, or is it just a holistic sort of thing?"
Yes, psychometricians have been looking into this for a long time. See e.g., A. R. Jensen's "Bias in Mental Testing." Also see anything by Linda Gottfredson (all her papers are open-access on her site). Basically, bias (in the sense of inaccurate prediction of performance) has been virtually eliminated from psychometric tests for a long time now.
"Uh, did you see her major and thesis at Princeton? She was basically doing 'ethnic studies,' which is a totally meaningless major, while not engaging in Latino activism."
Correction, that should be: , when she wasn't busy engaging in Latino activism.
Also there may be a benefit in that blacks and Hispanics might respect the firefighters more if they have blacks and Hispanics among the leadership.-- quote
Thanks for admitting that blacks and hispanics are anti-white racists.
She would inevitably know that historically, NAMs do worse on standardized tests than whites and Asians. The interesting policy question, IMO, is between:
a. Believing that the tests don't really measure what matters. In this case, you have a pretty arbitrary way of selecting people to be promoted that happens to favor whites. The only issue is balancing fairness to whites who won the arbitrary selections (and ought not to have their win taken away lightly) vs. fairness to blacks who were subjected to an arbitrary selection process that was biased against them. In this case, it's 100% sensible to rule against the plaintiffs.
b. Believing that the tests really do measure what matters. In this case, you have to balance wa more diverse workforce at the fire department with an effective fire department. In this case, the situation is way harder to deal with, and depends on how you weigh those competing concerns.
I suspect Sotomayor believes (a), but it's obviously impossible to know for sure. Similarly, most of the decisionmakers in our society seem to believe (a) or some near variant of it. That explains their support for continuing various forms of AA.
Fighting that is hard, because disbelieving (a) translates into racism by many definitions of that word, and hardly anyone wants to be called a racist. Also, the issue is somewhat complex, which allows arguments that are full of holes (like Gould's book) to reassure doubters.
Also there may be a benefit in that blacks and Hispanics might respect the firefighters more if they have blacks and Hispanics among the leadership.-- quote
I have no problem with this line or argument per se. However organisations making parallel arguments have historically been denounced in the most vicious terms imaginable when white males are the group designated for favouritism. Just recall the clothing store chain with its "frat boy" (I cannot recall its name) image being accused of purposefully staffing its stores with young white male employees. It was not permitted to argue (either morally or legally) that it wanted to hire employees matching its intended customer base. Under contemporary politically correct morality, if we switch white with non-white in our arguments, right becomes wrong and vice versa, although this is seldom spelled out.
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