Acting White: Supreme Court New Haven Firefighting Dilemma

The caption is wrong. It's about race.

The White firefighters who scored high in New Haven are right. They got screwed. The blacks who underperformed the test for promotion did not earn promotion. The high court is stupid if they cannot find their you-know-whats on this issue. The city of New Haven is allowing their desire for race proportionality to pollute the merit process, resulting in nothing good. Let’s examine this, minus all the rhetoric.

Firefighting is a dangerous job, and firehouses across America have never been the most welcoming or friendly work environments for blacks, therefore the high-order of qualified black firefighters and candidates go elsewhere for better pay and/or safer/better work conditions, leaving the gap we currently see in test performance in places like New Haven. I wonder if the Beverly Hills, CA FD has a similar problem, assuming desirability?

Looking inside, there are two contorted demand scenarios that arise, one for the qualified blacks and another for the under qualified. We have covered the over qualified. Alternately, the under qualified must either become the beneficiaries of arbitrary ‘bonus points’, so that they may now appear competitive (promotable), or authorities must disqualify the test until they get the results they want – the behavior the court is considering.

Long after white firefighters stopped routinely cheating to keep their ranks white, affirmative action is still being used to fix a problem of proportionality that has nothing to do with equal opportunity. As long as blacks drop out of school in disproportion, or gain diplomas on lesser skill sets, these last-ditch AA fixes are going to challenge merit based promotion and reward systems, and keep us at odds. It is ludicrous to expect race proportional results from disproportionate inputs. Recognizing this is the biggest challenge of race/ethnicity in America. I take that back, accepting it and moving forward is the biggest challenge.

James C. Collier

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