Posted on 04/10/2009 5:30:06 AM PDT by reaganaut1
NEW HAVEN — Frank Ricci has been a firefighter here for 11 years, and he would do just about anything to advance to lieutenant.
The last time the city offered a promotional exam, he said in a sworn statement, he gave up a second job and studied up to 13 hours a day. Mr. Ricci, who is dyslexic, paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes. He made flashcards, took practice tests, worked with a study group and participated in mock interviews.
Mr. Ricci did well, he said, coming in sixth among the 77 candidates who took the exam. But the city threw out the test, because none of the 19 African-American firefighters who took it qualified for promotion. That decision prompted Mr. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters, including one Hispanic, to sue the city, alleging racial discrimination.
Their case, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on April 22, is the Roberts court’s first major confrontation with claims of racial discrimination in employment and will require the justices to choose between conflicting conceptions of the government’s role in ensuring fair treatment regardless of race.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly noted his hostility to what he has called the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race.” In 2007, diverging from an important Rehnquist court decision that allowed public universities to consider race in admissions decisions, the Roberts court forbade public school systems to take race explicitly into account to achieve or maintain integration.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There is a general problem. Whites score higher than blacks on IQ tests by about one standard deviation, and the scores on most standardized tests, including the SAT, are highly correlated with IQ tests. Studies have found that standardized tests do not underpredict the performance of minorities, but Obama and other black and Hispanic Democratic politicians demand equal results, not equal opportunities.
>> Obama and other black and Hispanic Democratic politicians demand equal results, not equal opportunities
In a nutshell, that’s the difference between conservatism and communism. And “socialism” and “liberalism” are just shades of red.
The commies want uniform mediocrity. Those of merit need not apply. How depressing!
This decision will be 5 to 4. Impossible to predict which way. It depends on how Kennedy votes, I think.
Sometimes the most simple, self-evident statement is the most difficult for dingbats and losers to understand.
Amen! This whole affirmative action business giving preference to racial groups regardless of qualification has always been reverse discrimination. You would think after the court's ruling in the Bakke case this all would have ended.
How could any test on firefighting have anything exclusionary for minorities? They're going to have a hard time convincing SCOTUS of this.
There is no such thing as ‘reverse discrimination.’ Except that when you say it, it implies that all ‘true’ discrimination originates with Whites/The West/America/etc. It is as silly as saying that anyone fighting a war against the USA is engaging in ‘reverse war,’ which implies that only America stoops to fighting wars, while everyone else just responds to our ‘regular war.’
Besides, I don’t understand why discrimination gets such a bad rap, I personally like to discriminate. It’s how I picked the 4 vehicles I own. It’s how I select music I like. It helps me choose where I go on the internet. It’s how I decide what/where to eat. It’s why I’ve owned 2 Camaros, 2 Toyota trucks, 3 Ford trucks and only one Dodge truck, although to be fair I have owned 2 Dodge Chargers. Good ole discrimination, lets hear it for it.
This sentence illustrates the scam of the "Hispanic" classification. Many Hispanic people are white, some are black, some are of pre-columbian ancestry, and many are a mixed. They are not a monolithic group, racially or ethnically.
I am sorry there is no such thing as reverse discrimination. There is only discrimination. If you give credence to the "reverse discrimination" phrase then you are admitting that the only ones who can discriminate are whites.
This is discrimination based on race pure and simple. The leftist fail to see that if you weigh things in favor of one race, regardless of which race, then it is discrimination, period, and wrong in its conception and execution.
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