Posted on 06/29/2009 9:19:32 PM PDT by Steelfish
JUNE 30, 2009
Firefighter Justice The Supremes, Sotomayor, and racial jurisprudence.
The Supreme Court closed an otherwise unremarkable term on a high note yesterday, rejecting the notion that one kind of racial bias can be remedied by another.
On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination. The effect was to take an important step away from the practice of divvying up jobs by race.
Writing for a 5-4 majority in Ricci v. deStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the city of New Haven violated civil-rights law when it threw out firefighter promotional exams because more whites than blacks or Hispanics had passed the tests.
New Haven claimed it had to junk the tests because certifying the results would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits by black candidates who hadn't passed.
In other words, the city claimed it had to intentionally discriminate against white candidates out of fear that the tests unintentionally had a "disparate impact" against minorities.
But the Court found no evidence that the tests were flawed or that better alternatives for promotion existed. On the contrary, employment tests are an important tool against the very kind of racial discrimination that civil-rights laws were designed to prevent. "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Kennedy wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
>> On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination.
Ha ha! Ha ha hahahahaha! Take THAT, you marxist er, you know what!
I’ll sleep a little better tonight. Sorry it was 5-4. Should have been 8-1. But I’ll take what I can get.
Very strange; they would not allow Bork on the court and they will allow Sotomayor on the court.
The elephant in the room is that blacks do not “test” as well as Whites—or whites as well as some Asians. It is also true that white southerners historically don’t test as well as northern whites. This is true even of those with comparable levels of formal education. Maybe some cultures penalize their members.
The elephant in the room is that blacks do not “test” as well as Whites—or whites as well as some Asians.
***
Could it be because blacks (generally) don’t put in the time or effort required to get the passing grade???
I live in Montgomery County Maryland - very affluent county and they keep pouring money into education ...
The black kids (and hispanics) have pulled almost even in testing at the elementary school level - but then drop way back starting in about 8th grade ...
Do these kids start to think that they are 2 kewl fer skool ???
And does it carry over into their professional lives as adults - thinking that they are going to get by on affirmative action ???
This case will be a mere footnote on her resume after she is sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice.
I never got the “racially discriminatory” deal with tests.
Why is an algebraic equation a racially charged question?
How are the laws of Physics affected by race?
Do fires burn differently for black people than Caucasians?
I guess,growing up in Detroit,as a lower-middle class, white male,I just can’t get it.
How are the laws of Physics affected by race?
***
Same way blacks cannot pronounce the word “ask” without it coming out as ... “ax”.
Divine intervention ...
Ah,good one.
Read Thomas Sowell’s book (if you haven’t already), “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, where he discusses that “aks” was a low-class colloquial term from Scotland that came over here centuries ago.
The blacks picked it up from them, and it’s here to stay now, no matter what the educational level.
Maybe some people are just plain morons!
Oh...I thought that was “Axe”!
Neither have I.
Why is an algebraic equation a racially charged question?
It's not.
How are the laws of Physics affected by race?
They're not affected at all by race, or any other thing.
Do fires burn differently for black people than Caucasians?
No, they don't.
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
Oh, dear...
Actually, blacks don’t even test as well as Hispanic whites, who often have a language problem. One of the white firefighters was Hispanic, although I don’t know if he was first or second generation.
Personally, I think it’s simply because they don’t work as hard. I worked for a law firm once where we were desperate to make offers to blacks, but the problem was that they couldn’t pass the bar exam (and this was a top firm, so our young would-be lawyers came from Harvard and Princeton). The firm finally had to put in a limit to the number of times the candidate could take and fail the bar exam.
The interesting thing was black women did not, in general, have as much of a problem. It was black men who could never pass it, no matter how many review courses they took. But if you looked closely, this was because they skipped a lot of the classes, never studied, and spent all day on the phone talking with their friends or hitting on the secretaries or even other associates. They also refused the usual first year or summer associate tasks they were assigned (generally, sorting through piles of material in a case) because they regarded it as beneath them. And their writing skills were abysmal.
But it was really all a matter of attitude. They had an entitlement mentality, they thought they were very special and shouldn’t be subject to ordinary standards, and they did virtually nothing to help themselves. (As I said, the women usually did not have this problem.)
I was really disappointed in Brit Hume & Krauthammer yesterday. They both said this ruling will have no effect on hearings.
On this question of the Second Circuit's mishandling, the Justices agreed unanimously yesterday. In footnote 10 of her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that while she disagreed with the decision to reverse the lower court ruling, there were questions about how it was decided. Based on the lower court's mistaken focus on intent, she wrote, "ordinarily a remand for fresh consideration would be in order."
In other words, the Magic Latina did a lousy job of judging by not carefully evaluating the District Court's decision and writing a well reasoned opinion sustainting it or denying it. Legal sloppiness like that is the way to attack her nomination, because it shows she's not intgellectually fit to serve on the Court.
Achieving with one's brain is 'acting white' and physical labor is reminiscent of slavery.
If blacks won't do work of any stripe, how on earth do they hope to succeed?
They did miss important points. Well, Krauthammer did say a couple of weeks ago that the Letterman/Palin brouhaha would be a win for Letterman and we know how that turned out. So he is often wrong about these things.
It is part of the “Black Red Neck,” syndrome. The black subculture takes a lot from the old southern culture, where hard work was not highly appreciated. Or maybe, I should call it the “Dogpatch” syndrome. If you are old enough to remember L’ll Abner, the women did all the work while the men spent their time hunting and fishing, or fighting! Some people say THAT was taken from the Indians, but others say it came from the British Isles. Whatever, it was it is not the Puritan ethic. BTW, both black and white rednecks down in the southger have been pushed aside by the Mexicans and Central Americans. The old image of the Mexican taking a siesta is now a false one.
Krauthammer is a fanatic for one issue, the ME, if Sotamayor had been imprudent enough to have wrote nice things about Edward Said Chuck would be calling her a Nazi.
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