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.

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(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.

April Fool

"They (US and Europe) resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering."
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, addressing the UN Conference on Racism (1)

Forty representatives of European countries (plus one Caribbean nation) walked out of the conference at this point, and it is not clear if they will return for other speeches and action on resolutions. The United States and eight other UN members had previously refused to participate in the racism confab because of the anti-Israel draft resolution that will be presented for adoption.

But were the delegates who walked out really so surprised to hear anti-Israel rhetoric? After all, what is a UN racism conference about, if not bashing Israel? This is like walking out of bar because people there are drinking liquor.

Actually, if Ahmadinejad had stuck to lambasting Israel for its actions in Gaza, as other speakers will no doubt do, I believe the 40 delegates would have sat through it. The President of Iran, unlike other critics of Israel, incurs the wrath of Europeans and Americans because he claims that the Holocaust was a Jewish hoax which spurred the UN to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Since the Holocaust has been documented as much as any other major event in recent history, Ahmadinejad exposes himself as either ignorant, dishonest, or both. His rhetoric, reeking of classical anti-Semitism, is an embarrassment to Iran, the UN and the Muslim world.

Holocaust denial plays an important role in the worldview of neo-Nazis, Muslim extremists and other adherents of the "Jewish Conspiracy Theory" because the truth that the Jews of Europe were innocent victims of an insane racism contravenes their contention that world Jewry is both powerful and evil. Open expression of this view is repugnant even to those who otherwise are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, such as European diplomats at the UN Racism Conference.

How should the US and the rest of the civilized world respond to Ahmadinejad? When former Austrian President (and previous Secretary General of the UN) Kurt Waldheim was exposed as a former Nazi officer, most of the world shunned him. The same should be done to Ahmadinejad.

In June the people of Iran will decide whether to re-elect this man as their President. The walkout at the UN Conference tells the Iranian people that keeping him in office will isolate Iran from Europe and the United States. Even the Guardian Council, the ayatollahs who wield the real power in the Islamic Republic, may be embarrassed by the President's rantings, and may pass the word that another candidate would be preferable. If Ahmadinejad loses, the chances of war in the Middle East in the near future will also be markedly reduced.

Ironically, this debacle (together with the imprisonment of an Iranian-American journalist) took place while the Obama Administration has been trying to re-open contacts with Iran. These diplomatic contacts, begun by the Bush Administration, should continue-----but should not involve Ahmadinejad. In the unlikely event that Iran proposes a summit meeting. Obama should insist on meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, his true counterpart in the Iranian regime. (2) Ahmadinejad, even if re-elected, should be persona non grata in every civilized country in the world.

I wonder why the leaders of African countries appear to have no objection to the agenda of every UN conference that might deal with their real problems getting hijacked by the anti-Israel crowd. Racism has nothing to do with the Arab-Israel conflict (which is based on differences in religion and culture, not race), but it has everything to do with the slaughter in Darfour, in which many more people have been killed than in all the Arab-Israel wars and intifadas combined. The black racism of Robert Mugabe has hurt the people of Zimbabwe for many years, but that is not on the agenda of the UN Conference either. Tribal conflicts in Rwanda have created enormous suffering, yet African leaders ignore the problem.

I suspect that African leaders know all this to be true, but dare not confront the Sudanese Arabs, let alone the black tyrants among them. The only consensus among them is that Israel is evil, so they take every opportunity to agree on that, and forget about the contentious problems faced by their people.

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(1) Associated Press, April 21, 2009.

(2) The armed forces and security services of Iran report to the Guardian Council, so its leader is the true counterpart of our commander-in-chief.