White-out in New Haven
Imagine that you won a skill-based contest, and then were told that you were not supposed to win, so the contest will be done over with new rules more favorable to other contestants.
You would probably be as angry as New Haven, Connecticut, firefighter Frank Ricci, who scored among the top ten in a 2003 promotional examination. When white firefighters garnered all the top ten spots in the exam, the city refused to use the results, claiming that the exam must have been racially discriminatory. Ricci and some of his white co-applicants challenged that decision in federal court, and took their case all the way to the US Supreme Court, which heard the case on April 22. The case resembles that of Milwaukee policemen who successfully sued for promotion in 2005. (1)
In the early Twentieth Century most American cities replaced the old political patronage system of awarding municipal jobs with a "civil service system", in which examinations were used to select candidates for hiring and promotion. In 1964 the federal government banned discrimination (2) in employment, in both government and business. This law permitted testing of applicants, provided that the tests were job-related and did not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. For example, a requirement that applicants for a garbage-collection job pass an exam in French would be illegal. The rationale for this and similar legislation was the contention that all Americans should have an equal opportunity to obtain education, housing and employment.
Over the past forty five years since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial discrimination in public employment has been virtually eliminated. The election of President Obama is a sign that African-Americans today can reasonably aspire to even the highest positions in our society and government. But civil rights organizations today are not satisfied with mere equal opportunity; they demand that the rules provide for equal outcomes, even if that would require quotas or other forms of preferential treatment for minorities. This contention is at the heart of the Ricci case.
Since the exam in question was written on a tenth-grade level (3), the claim that it discriminated against black applicants is not credible. Since the qualities required for a position of leadership (lieutenant and captain) in the New Haven Fire Department are not readily measurable through an objective examination, the test might not be of much value in selecting applicants for promotion anyway. But the relevant point is that the applicants for promotion took the exam with the reasonable expectation that it would be the criterion for promotion, and that the city betrayed them by dumping the results because of the racial disparity in the scores.
I predict that the Court will decide that the city had the right to abolish the exam for future applicants for promotion, but that it could not legally ignore the implicit contractual rights of employees who had already taken and passed that exam . This would be a narrow ruling, since it would evade the larger question of whether "affirmative action" policies that adversely affect whites are a denial of the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Even if the Court rules that the actions of New Haven officials were legal, I contend that they were still reprehensible. The people of New Haven deserve the best possible fire department command officers, and that considerations of race and political correctness should play no role in selecting them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) See the Glazerbeam of April 12, 2005.
(2)The 1964 Act banned discrimination based upon race, religion and national origin. Discrimination based on sex and age were prohibited by subsequent laws.
(3) Michael Doyle for McClatchy News Service, April 23, 2009.
You would probably be as angry as New Haven, Connecticut, firefighter Frank Ricci, who scored among the top ten in a 2003 promotional examination. When white firefighters garnered all the top ten spots in the exam, the city refused to use the results, claiming that the exam must have been racially discriminatory. Ricci and some of his white co-applicants challenged that decision in federal court, and took their case all the way to the US Supreme Court, which heard the case on April 22. The case resembles that of Milwaukee policemen who successfully sued for promotion in 2005. (1)
In the early Twentieth Century most American cities replaced the old political patronage system of awarding municipal jobs with a "civil service system", in which examinations were used to select candidates for hiring and promotion. In 1964 the federal government banned discrimination (2) in employment, in both government and business. This law permitted testing of applicants, provided that the tests were job-related and did not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. For example, a requirement that applicants for a garbage-collection job pass an exam in French would be illegal. The rationale for this and similar legislation was the contention that all Americans should have an equal opportunity to obtain education, housing and employment.
Over the past forty five years since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial discrimination in public employment has been virtually eliminated. The election of President Obama is a sign that African-Americans today can reasonably aspire to even the highest positions in our society and government. But civil rights organizations today are not satisfied with mere equal opportunity; they demand that the rules provide for equal outcomes, even if that would require quotas or other forms of preferential treatment for minorities. This contention is at the heart of the Ricci case.
Since the exam in question was written on a tenth-grade level (3), the claim that it discriminated against black applicants is not credible. Since the qualities required for a position of leadership (lieutenant and captain) in the New Haven Fire Department are not readily measurable through an objective examination, the test might not be of much value in selecting applicants for promotion anyway. But the relevant point is that the applicants for promotion took the exam with the reasonable expectation that it would be the criterion for promotion, and that the city betrayed them by dumping the results because of the racial disparity in the scores.
I predict that the Court will decide that the city had the right to abolish the exam for future applicants for promotion, but that it could not legally ignore the implicit contractual rights of employees who had already taken and passed that exam . This would be a narrow ruling, since it would evade the larger question of whether "affirmative action" policies that adversely affect whites are a denial of the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Even if the Court rules that the actions of New Haven officials were legal, I contend that they were still reprehensible. The people of New Haven deserve the best possible fire department command officers, and that considerations of race and political correctness should play no role in selecting them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) See the Glazerbeam of April 12, 2005.
(2)The 1964 Act banned discrimination based upon race, religion and national origin. Discrimination based on sex and age were prohibited by subsequent laws.
(3) Michael Doyle for McClatchy News Service, April 23, 2009.
Labels: affirmative action, New Haven
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 9:55 AM
2 Comments:
Well argued, Gerry!!
Bravo, indeed!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you.
Post a Comment
<< Home