LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN'
Posted on 08/26/2003 3:54:26 AM PDT by kattracks
BOSTON, Aug 26, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Four white men passed over for firefighting jobs in favor of minority candidates who scored lower on civil service tests must be hired as soon as possible, a federal judge has ruled.
The men had sued the Boston Fire Department for discrimination. They must also be awarded back pay and seniority they would have earned since October 2000, the date they were denied employment, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns ordered Monday.
A fifth plaintiff who was hired last October also will get a pay raise under the ruling.
"I think hopefully we're just going back to normal, the way it was meant to be, so that now they are just hiring the best person, regardless of race or color," said Harold Lichten, the attorney for all five men.
The city is exploring its options, officials said.
"The city has just received this decision," said Seth Gitell, a spokesman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "The city's lawyers are reviewing it and considering its implications for future hiring."
The judge's decision applies only to the men who sued and was not intended to establish a precedent for other white applicants who were passed over in October 2000. Joseph Quinn already has been hired; the other plaintiffs were Sean O'Brien; Robert Dillon; Joseph Sullivan, and C. Roger Kendrick Jr.
An NAACP lawyer questioned the decision.
"If a return to normal means a return to the way the Boston Fire Department conducted its hiring prior to the mid-1970s, it will be a disaster for any applicants of color in this city," Toni Wolfman said.
The judge at first rejected the civil rights suit filed in April 2001, the first to challenge the department's affirmative action hiring policy since 1989, when it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Stearns, ruling in March that the city has achieved its goal of racial parity among entry-level firefighters, and no longer needed to abide by a nearly 30-year-old court order that departments across the state have used as a model to correct racial imbalance.
I guess that means finding a different judge with no regard for the law.
Hiring and/or promoting people by skin color? That's Racism w/ a capital R!
The same type of Big Brothers who banned swiss knives on airplanes.
When was the last time a terrorist hijacked a plane with a swiss knife?
All modern humans are descended from ancestors in Africa.
Therefore, aren't we all African-Americans?
LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN'
****Warning this is a joke**** Improves language skills. This is an average conversation between firefighter after racial diversity.
Firefighter 1: Ferreal beeyotch, dat fire was off the chain.
Firefighter 2: Shoulda seen da bling-bling on dat sick holmes who got whacked by da smoke.
Firefighter 1: Nigga, thas was suttin'
No MR. NAACP. That was 30 years ago. The people doing the hiring back then are now retired and/or dead. Its now 2003, not the 1800's, not the mid-1970's. Get a clue. The race baiting and scare tactics will not get your "constituency" hired. Getting a good education and being the best qualified candidate for the job will. So instead of teaching your "constituency" to learn how to race bait their way through life and how to use white guilt to their advantage, maybe, just maybe, we'll see you hold the teacher's union accountable for the quality of education delivered to the inner cities (either that, or support vouchers).
Read between the lines; it really takes away from a post when when you have to use a < /sarcasm>, IMHO.
I question the need for the outdated and discriminatory NAACP.
Are you kidding me??? I dont want some white boy saving me, I want an under-qualified black guy to save me from this fire....be off with you cracka and get me a soul brutha.
Check out #3, Laz
No, no, no. Implicit in AA and PC in general is an unwritten sense of how long history is. For example if you are Black, it only counts if you were still in Africa at the commencement of the slave trade. Blacks who had already gone to the middle east or asia by then don't count.
Similarly, palestinian statehood only goes back to 1948 when (undesirable) Jordanians were forcably relocated to Palestine (a British colonial administrative district) in order to try to halt the reformation of Israel. The fact that all that area is historically Israel and existed as Israel for several thousand years before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD doesn't count.
It also doesn't count that white Afrikaaners, many whose families have lived in Africa for 200 - 300 years, aren't Africans either. In this country, native americans are obviously pure whereas I am not, since my anscestors have only lived on this continent since ~1580, obviously 500 years is not enough to make me a native-american.
So, if you are palestinian, history began 55 years ago, if you are caucasian of European descent, history became immutable about 10,000 years ago. If you are black history began about 400 years ago. And if you are Jewish, well, history does not apply to you at all.
It's easy, fellows. You don't discriminate.
I never have, even when it wasn't against the law.
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