print“We’re looking at the test because they don’t like the results,” fumed Pat Buchanan over the latest affirmative action case to wend its way to the Supreme Court, “Ricci v. DeStefano. The issue: reverse discrimination against white firemen.”
Fiery Pat: “All these white guys won. Just as all the black athletes win the trial heats for the 100 or 200 meter dash. Did they discriminate against white guys? Of course not. Maybe Frank Ricci should not have the job because he’s the wrong color. Maybe new sins of discrimination are fine if they’re done to undo old ones.”
Steve Sailer: “[o]ur society needs to hire and promote competent firemen, because they keep buildings from burning down and citizens from dying horrible deaths. And firefighting now requires not just bravery but also a wide variety of technical expertise—that is, ultimately, intelligence.”
In the Ricci v. DeStefano case, however, the Obama Administration is intervening on the side of incompetence. As David G. Savage reported in the Los Angeles Times:
‘The Obama administration, taking its first stand on race and civil rights, sided with the city officials and said they were justified in dropping the test if it had ‘gross exclusionary effects on minorities.’
The test New Haven city officials didn’t like?
“The promotion exam Ricci aced was no off-the-rack quiz. New Haven paid a reported $100,000 to I/O Solutions to devise a nondiscriminatory test. It wound up being 60 percent written, 40 percent oral. To judge the candidates’ oral responses, New Haven paid to bring in 30 veteran fire department managers from around the country, two-thirds of them minority.”
The solution? Void the test and the promotion.
Update: “The Winning Issue for GOP”:
“How does it win back the Reagan Democrats who went home disgusted?
Become again the party of Frank Ricci.
And who is Frank Ricci?
He is a fireman in New Haven, Conn., with 11 years in the department, who suffers from dyslexia, but nonetheless has pursued his dream of becoming a lieutenant and a captain.
Six months before the promotion test, Ricci quit his second job. He bought $1,000 worth of the textbooks he was told to study, had a friend read them onto tapes to compensate for his dyslexia, studied every spare hour he got, and sat for the test, to compete for one of eight lieutenant slots open.
Frank made it. Frank Ricci came in sixth.
It was after the results of the test were made known that the problems arose. For, of the officers who had made the cut, all were white, except for one Latino.
Concluding the test results would, if used by the department, have an “adverse impact” on the black community, New Haven tossed out the results and called for new exams to ensure a “fair” outcome.
Thus, because he is a white man whose people came from Italy, Frank Ricci is to be denied a promotion he worked for and won, and be robbed of his American dream by the liberal bigots who run New Haven.”
Pat Buchanan, who else?
There ain’t no “reverse discrimination.”
Discrimination is discrimination.
Pure and simple.
There was de facto and de jure racial discrimination in this country for generations.
But in all instances it was tolerated by the State or enforced by the State.
It was wrong then.
It is wrong now.
They all talk of “fairness”, but is it really fair to let a family burn to death in the name of “racial equality”?
And secondly, what would happen in a math exam if you consistently equated things which are not equal? Yep, you fail.
Is it really racism, or is it fear and loathing of competence and intelligence?
To the mini-tyrant, evidence of injustice is a badge to be worn as a status symbol, demonstrating his power over the laws of nature and of man. Reason and logic serve only to concoct paradoxical explanations for policies to mislead the gullible, who will gladly defend injustice based on any palpable absurdity. The end result is a big food fight over who gets to serve the tyrant in a favored position. I’m sure he enjoys watching it all.
Mr. Ricci is learning a lesson about being in the employ of Leviathan; do not expect justice, any more than if you get caught up in its criminal system. He will be better off putting his skills to work in a small town far from any big city or finding another line of work entirely.
The GOP takes the white male vote – but it is everyone else that they get tanked on so this is not going to be a winner for them. Sadly, I looked at some of the firefighter’s exams. Some of the reading portions were not even correct grammatically – such is the pathetic state of this country. I think I could have passed the test in 4th grade so one wonders about our firemen. Of course, if Americans want randomly chosen illiterates to lead firefighters, that is NOT discrimination. If ignorant illiterates make good firefighters, Obama and the Affirmative Action folk have a valid point. Well, those jobs pay $ 75,000 + pensions to people age 50 so they are highly competitive. The big joke is that if some city or parts of the city burns down, it is likely minorities who will be the most adversely impacted. Hmmm, come to think of it, I work in a city (DC) with an overpriced “bad” school system and other junky “services” that voted 93% for Obama – well, the inhabitants get what they ask for. Mr. Ricci should take a job for lower pay saving the lives of white suburbanites.
To John Danforth: Sounds like you watched Ellsworth Toohey in the Fountainhead (e.g. elevate mediocrity and denounce greatness).