Supreme Court backs New Haven Firefighters

[starang21]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

The test results were thrown out because (again, as UGAalum94 says) no black firefighters and only one latino fire fighters scored well enough to be promoted to begin with

Originally Posted by me

no black firefighters and only one latino fire fighter

good grief. talk about majoring in minors. that was the geist of my post.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by starang21

good grief. talk about majoring in minors. that was the geist of my post.

Sue me -- I'm a lawyer and I pick the nits like crazy when it comes to court opinions.

And here, it is a distinction with a legal difference -- or at least a difference that matters in understanding the opinion -- I think.

[UGAalum94]

The sequence of how it went down is what actually matters in the case, I think.

The actual suit resolved today depends entirely on the promotions being canceled.

The city claims that the reason they canceled the results was that they expected Black and Hispanic firefighters to sue if they went through with the promotion. Today, the Supreme Court said that being afraid you'd get sued alone wasn't a good enough reason to discriminate against a different racial group.

It's hard not to feel bad for the dyslexic guy who said he studied for like 10 hours a day and scored well enough for a promotion and then didn't get one based on the performance of other racial/ethnic subgroups on the test, over which, of course, he had absolutely no control.

[starang21]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

The city claims that the reason they canceled the results was that they expected Black and Hispanic firefighters to sue if they went through with the promotion.

where'd you read this at? just want to know the source.

that's a very poor reason to throw out results.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by starang21

where'd you read this at? just want to know the source.

that's a very poor reason to throw out results.

I found this on MSN:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31609275...s-white_house/

At the end of the article, the author points out that the test results were thrown out to avoid a lawsuit.

It looks like they avoided one lawsuit but walked right into another. Awesome.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

It looks like they avoided one lawsuit but walked right into another. Awesome.

It is better to be sued by a group of angry whites than to be considered as having practices that discriminate against any kind of minority groups.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

It is better to be sued by a group of angry whites than to be considered as having practices that discriminate against any kind of minority groups.

I imagine that most municipalities and public institutions feel that way. But, wouldn't they expect the rejected whites to file a lawsuit? I mean, we're in the post-Hopwood world here. Reverse discrimination lawsuits don't seem to be as popular as they used to be 5-15 years ago, but they still happen.

There are a ton of questions I have about this whole to-do, but it's a moot point at this juncture.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by starang21

where'd you read this at? just want to know the source.

that's a very poor reason to throw out results.

"The 19 white and one Hispanic firefighter who sued the city in Ricci v. DeStefano argued that their civil rights were violated under Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They say that the Civil Service Board failed to certify the exams in a 2-2 vote on the recommendation of then-City Attorney Thomas Ude because no blacks or Hispanics scored high enough to be promoted.

Ude had warned that if the tests were approved, the city could be sued by minority firefighters under the same Title 7, since the scores resulted in a "disparate impact" against non-white firefighters."

These two paragraphs are from the http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news...e=1&cat=&more= article I added to a post above.

[UGAalum94]

Personally, when the firefighters come to put out a fire at my house, I don't think that a standardized written test or an oral exam or interviews will have measured the skill set I'm going to want them to have.

However, when it comes to promotion to leadership roles and training of other firefighters, I think the tests probably have some merit.

The article I linked above goes over the tests and other tests that can be used.

The white firefighters in the suit claim that every question on the test came from the readily available study guide. If that's true, it's hard to figure out, why the test would be particularly racially or ethnically biased, except as the results shook out, which is the heart of a disparate impact claim.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

The white firefighters in the suit claim that every question on the test came from the readily available study guide. If that's true, it's hard to figure out, why the test would be particularly racially or ethnically biased, except as the results shook out, which is the heart of a disparate impact claim.

Hence, the test is not necessarily deemed discriminatory by intent. It isn't like the SAT where people say the items are geared toward a particularly social class and so forth.

The issue becomes what is it about the preparation for the test, recruiting (?) of firefighters who will take the test, etc. that may result in racial disparities in test results. They could always conclude that the Black and Hispanic test takers were just ill prepared for the test or sucky test takers. That's a weighty assumption and claim.

[madmax]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Personally, when the firefighters come to put out a fire at my house, I don't think that a standardized written test or an oral exam or interviews will have measured the skill set I'm going to want them to have.

However, when it comes to promotion to leadership roles and training of other firefighters, I think the tests probably have some merit.

The article I linked above goes over the tests and other tests that can be used.

The white firefighters in the suit claim that every question on the test came from the readily available study guide. If that's true, it's hard to figure out, why the test would be particularly racially or ethnically biased, except as the results shook out, which is the heart of a disparate impact claim.

STUDYING to become an engineer, accountant, doctor, lawyer or in this case a firefighter is not a high priority for most minorites.

Breaking the Silence
By HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

Published: August 1, 2004


Go into any inner-city neighborhood," Barack Obama said in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, "and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In a speech filled with rousing applause lines, it was a line that many black Democratic delegates found especially galvanizing. Not just because they agreed, but because it was a home truth they'd seldom heard a politician say out loud.

Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for "blaming the victim"? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.

"If our people studied calculus like we studied basketball," my father, age 91, once remarked as we drove past a packed inner-city basketball court at midnight, "we'd be running M.I.T." When my brother and I were growing up in the 50's, our parents convinced us that the "blackest" thing that we could be was a doctor or a lawyer. We admired Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, but our real heroes were people like Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Yet in too many black neighborhoods today, academic achievement has actually come to be stigmatized. "We are just not the same people anymore," says the mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie W. Herenton. "We are worse off than we were before Brown v. Board," says Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at Yale. "And a large part of the reason for this is that we have abandoned our own black traditional core values, values that sustained us through slavery and Jim Crow segregation."

Making it, as Mr. Obama told me, "requires diligent effort and deferred gratification. Everybody sitting around their kitchen table knows that."

"Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House," Mr. Obama went on. "Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual." Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. "We talk about leaving no child behind," says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. "The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind." Nearly a third of black children are born into poverty. The question is: why?

Scholars such as my Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson say that the causes of black poverty are both structural and behavioral. Think of structural causes as "the devil made me do it," and behavioral causes as "the devil is in me." Structural causes are faceless systemic forces, like the disappearance of jobs. Behavioral causes are self-destructive life choices and personal habits. To break the conspiracy of silence, we have to address both of these factors.

"A lot of us," Mr. Obama argues, "hesitate to discuss these things in public because we think that if we do so it lets the larger society off the hook. We're stuck in an either/or mentality - that the problem is either societal or it's cultural."

It's important to talk about life chances - about the constricted set of opportunities that poverty brings. But to treat black people as if they're helpless rag dolls swept up and buffeted by vast social trends - as if they had no say in the shaping of their lives - is a supreme act of condescension. Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant. (Black children raised by female "householders" are five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by married couples.) Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?

Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular - a marvelously rich and inventive tongue - to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities.

These issues can be ticklish, no question, but they're badly served by silence or squeamishness. Mr. Obama showed how to get the balance right. We've got to create as many opportunities as we can for the worst-off - and "make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life." But values matter, too. We can't talk about the choices people have without talking about the choices people make.

Reaad the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/op...1gates.html?hp

[sigmadiva]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94;1821100

These two paragraphs are from the [url

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?idx=158735&page=1&cat=&more=[/url] article I added to a post above.

Thanks everyone for the explanation!

After reading through the article above, I am left wondering how much time / effort did the Black candidates put in to be successful. The article mentioned that other professions have standardized exams that everyone must pass, so why is this exam / case different?

I've taken one professional exam in my life(http://www.ascp.org/FunctionalNaviga...ification.aspx) and my class at my particular school consited of 8 people: 2 Iranians, 1 Indian (from India), 1 African and 4 Black Americans. 6 of us passed and two didn't. The two who did not pass were Black Americans. So no one can say that the exam was biased based on race.

I knew I had to study, I did and I passed on my first try.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by sigmadiva

I've taken one professional exam in my life(http://www.ascp.org/FunctionalNaviga...ification.aspx) and my class at my particular school consited of 8 people: 2 Iranians, 1 Indian (from India), 1 African and 4 Black Americans. 6 of us passed and two didn't. The two who did not pass were Black Americans. So no one can say that the exam was biased based on race.

I knew I had to study, I did and I passed on my first try.

The racialized comparison doesn't work as well when the pool of test takers are all immigrants and/or racial and ethnic minorities.

I think that people need to remember the implications of assuming "oh...the minorities just didn't prepare well enough" whenever there's a disparity in outcome. Probability statistics aside, it is not uncommon for organizations concerned with equal opportunity to look at the distribution of test results.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

It's hard not to feel bad for the dyslexic guy who said he studied for like 10 hours a day and scored well enough for a promotion and then didn't get one based on the performance of other racial/ethnic subgroups on the test, over which, of course, he had absolutely no control.

Thank you for mentioning this. This guy probably studied and worked ten times as hard as everyone else, and he was still turned down because he was white.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

Thank you for mentioning this. This guy probably studied and worked ten times as hard as everyone else, and he was still turned down because he was white.

Welp, poor dyslexic guy. Life's a party.

And there goes the semantics of reverse discrimination. They weren't turned down because they were white. Organizations, in general, haven't gotten to the point where they discriminate against whites in the manner that nonwhites have been discriminated against for generations. The test results were thrown out because of the poor performance of the nonwhites, which they feared would lead to a questioning of the test and perhaps of organizational practices.