Category Archives: Affirmative Action

'Wise Latina' Loses

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Race, Racism, The Courts

Sonia Sotomayor’s Latina wisdom has come back to hurt and haunt her in the case of the New Haven Honkies, whose discrimination case she dismissed. So too is the Supreme Court’s blah blah Bader Ginsburg’s dissent noteworthy for its unwise quality. At least neither one of these Delphic ditzes carried the day. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

“The US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the Connecticut city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by using race as the key criterion in refusing to certify a group of white and Hispanic firefighters for promotion.

City officials said they were afraid that if they promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters but no African-American firefighters, the city would be subject to a lawsuit by black firefighters. The high court disagreed.

“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 Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The high court’s action overturns the 2008 decision of a three-judge appeals-court panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

The New Haven firefighters case – and the Supreme Court’s view of it – are expected to play an important role in Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings next month.

The judge is believed to be a strong supporter of New Haven’s legal position in the case. In addition, it is unclear why her three-judge panel initially handed down a brief, unpublished, unsigned summary order disposing of the case without offering even cursory legal analysis.

Beyond the Sotomayor nomination, the decision is important because it provides guidance to employers that they may continue to rely on objective, work-related exams without facing a discrimination lawsuit from those who do not pass the test.

At the heart of the case were two competing provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. One section bars discriminatory treatment based on race or ethnicity. A different section urges employers to avoid making job-related decisions that create a disparate impact on minority workers.

If, for example, a city conducts an exam to determine which workers will be promoted and then no African-Americans are identified for promotion – that disparate impact on black workers is presumed to be illegal. The city is expected to correct the situation.

But the law also forbids employers from using race as the sole or primary criterion for hiring or promotions – including decisions that disfavor white employees because of their race.

In this way, New Haven found itself in a Catch-22.

Justice Kennedy and the other majority justices resolved this dilemma by ruling that New Haven needed a “strong basis in evidence” to justify its discrimination against white and Hispanic firefighters. He said a mere statistical disparity alone could not amount to the strong evidence necessary.

Kennedy added that once a fair test procedure is set, employers may not invalidate the results based on race or ethnicity. “Doing so … is antithetical to the notion of a workplace where individuals are guaranteed equal opportunity regardless of race,” he wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said New Haven had not engaged in illegal discrimination against the white firefighters because they had no vested right to a promotion.

She wrote that the majority justices ignored “substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used.” She added that the court failed to acknowledge better tests used in other cities.

“The court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power,” she said.

[SNIP]

From “Beware of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy”: “By petitioning the courts, when they should go gentle into that good night, white men like Ricci are seeking equality of results much as blacks do through coercive civil rights laws. … Ricci was wronged for excelling. He is not petitioning for special favors; he’s petitioning against them. If anything, Ricci is asking only that the city accept inequality of outcomes; accept that not all are created equal—and that he, more so than his less-qualified colleagues, is most suited to fighting fires and dousing departmental flames.”

‘Wise Latina’ Loses

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Race, Racism, The Courts

Sonia Sotomayor’s Latina wisdom has come back to hurt and haunt her in the case of the New Haven Honkies, whose discrimination case she dismissed. So too is the Supreme Court’s blah blah Bader Ginsburg’s dissent noteworthy for its unwise quality. At least neither one of these Delphic ditzes carried the day. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

“The US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the Connecticut city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by using race as the key criterion in refusing to certify a group of white and Hispanic firefighters for promotion.

City officials said they were afraid that if they promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters but no African-American firefighters, the city would be subject to a lawsuit by black firefighters. The high court disagreed.

“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 Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The high court’s action overturns the 2008 decision of a three-judge appeals-court panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

The New Haven firefighters case – and the Supreme Court’s view of it – are expected to play an important role in Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings next month.

The judge is believed to be a strong supporter of New Haven’s legal position in the case. In addition, it is unclear why her three-judge panel initially handed down a brief, unpublished, unsigned summary order disposing of the case without offering even cursory legal analysis.

Beyond the Sotomayor nomination, the decision is important because it provides guidance to employers that they may continue to rely on objective, work-related exams without facing a discrimination lawsuit from those who do not pass the test.

At the heart of the case were two competing provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. One section bars discriminatory treatment based on race or ethnicity. A different section urges employers to avoid making job-related decisions that create a disparate impact on minority workers.

If, for example, a city conducts an exam to determine which workers will be promoted and then no African-Americans are identified for promotion – that disparate impact on black workers is presumed to be illegal. The city is expected to correct the situation.

But the law also forbids employers from using race as the sole or primary criterion for hiring or promotions – including decisions that disfavor white employees because of their race.

In this way, New Haven found itself in a Catch-22.

Justice Kennedy and the other majority justices resolved this dilemma by ruling that New Haven needed a “strong basis in evidence” to justify its discrimination against white and Hispanic firefighters. He said a mere statistical disparity alone could not amount to the strong evidence necessary.

Kennedy added that once a fair test procedure is set, employers may not invalidate the results based on race or ethnicity. “Doing so … is antithetical to the notion of a workplace where individuals are guaranteed equal opportunity regardless of race,” he wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said New Haven had not engaged in illegal discrimination against the white firefighters because they had no vested right to a promotion.

She wrote that the majority justices ignored “substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used.” She added that the court failed to acknowledge better tests used in other cities.

“The court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power,” she said.

[SNIP]

From “Beware of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy”: “By petitioning the courts, when they should go gentle into that good night, white men like Ricci are seeking equality of results much as blacks do through coercive civil rights laws. … Ricci was wronged for excelling. He is not petitioning for special favors; he’s petitioning against them. If anything, Ricci is asking only that the city accept inequality of outcomes; accept that not all are created equal—and that he, more so than his less-qualified colleagues, is most suited to fighting fires and dousing departmental flames.”

Update II: The Gall Of The Media Ghouls (Arrested Development?)

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Criminal Injustice, Healthcare, Intelligence, Justice, Law, Media, Music

Following the death notice are a few apropos excerpts from my “Mad Dog Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” one of the few trenchant defenses of Michael Jackson, written at the time of his trial. Michael J. was accused of molesting a big hairy “child,” three times the size of the frail singer.*

“Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Now Keith Olbermann eulogizes Jackson, but back in 2005, “Olbermann, expecting a prosecutorial touchdown, aired a rather cruel segment on his consistently cruel ‘Countdown With Keith O.’ The segment was called ‘Prepping for the Pokey.’ In that bit of “comedy,” the awful Olbermann “pondered how Jackson would fit his prosthetic proboscis in jail.”

“The only man (Jon Stewart disappointed),” other than yours truly, “to have distinguished himself from the pack was Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News reporter conceded Jackson’s conduct was creepy and said as much (as did I). But he understood that creepy is not necessarily criminal.”

* “Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” was rejected for publication by a leading libertarian website. Much to the proprietor’s disgrace, the rejection was based on a dislike for the column’s author.
Speaking of whom, if you appreciate her work, please support it. And do visit WND on Fridays for the weekly column. If not for those courageous evangelicals, the cultists in mainstream media and among my own ideological faction would have seen me banished from larger audiences for good.

Update I: “Thriller” was undoubtedly a musical triumph, Jackson’s only one, perhaps. The Jackson of that era had achieved a good look in his life-long plastic-surgery odyssey. The songs were very tight, accompanied by enormous talent: Eddie Van Halen played guitar on the song “Beat It,” and Steve Lukather, studio musician from Toto, did guitars on the remainder. It was an exciting, polished effort, with a hard-core manly sound, attributable to the guitar greats cited. (Here is another one worth a listen.)

Update II (June 27): ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. At the time a 911 call was placed from the Jackson home, Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s cardiologist, had been performing CPR on the already dead MJ for the better part of an hour. If that doesn’t strike the medical profession (the media is even less inclined to think critically) as odd, perhaps the position chosen to administer the life-saving procedure will: the singer was splayed on a bed.

Now, a CPR recipient has to be lain on a hard surface — “because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface.” How can you deliver an awakening thump to the heart on a surface that gives?

Yet it was the 911 operator that had to tell “the staffer to ‘get him on the floor,'” a message the latter presumably conveyed to the inept doctor.

What is it about these celebrities that makes them seek out such incompetence in their care-givers? If you recall, Anna Nicole Smith too was surrounded by an incompetent team of husband and wife nurses at the time she died.

Kanye West’s mother died under the knife of a trendy plastic surgeon. West was celebrated as a woman of some intelligence, yet she appeared to have chosen a surgeon based on his celebrity. “Dr. Jan Adams, who is being investigated by the state medical board, has been the target of malpractice lawsuits and has paid out nearly $500,000 in civil settlements.”

The fact that Adams happened to also be an Oprah-endorsed Brother might have contributed to his appeal to the late Mrs. West.

Dare I suggest the following? The common thread in the specter of wealthy celebrities choosing manifestly incompetent care givers is their own patently low intelligence.

Updated: Big Daddy's Watching You (BAB's Best Dad)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Family, Feminism, Gender, Government

My thanks to the brilliant Dr. Thomas Szasz for alerting me to the sickening specter of Obama talking treacle in PARADE magazine. As the president vaporizes about his vision of fatherhood and his hopes for his girls, you get the sense that these kids must think they are at the center of the universe. In that, the president resembles most American parents.

“Too often, especially during tough economic times like these,” writes the country’s chief Idiocrat, “we are emotionally absent: distracted, consumed by what’s happening in our own lives, worried about keeping our jobs and paying our bills, unsure if we’ll be able to give our kids the same opportunities we had. Our children can tell. They know when we’re not fully there.”

In better times, before we began breeding self-absorbed brats, mom would say to the cherubs: “Kids, your father is worried. Let him relax a bit before you go in … ”

A world of wisdom was conveyed in the message Mr. Mindless urges against. Yes, children matter a great deal, but so does dad; he is not an extension of the kids, roped into making their world perfect at a cost to himself. (As we have established that mother is an entity entitled to her own fulfillment, why not father?) And yes, he bears a far greater burden than they can fathom. There is nothing wrong with a child having a sense of the weight of that fatherly responsibility.

Here’s Überdad, again:

“I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill.”

What does government have to do with fatherhood and family? In a better America nothing. In Obama’s America everything. The man starts from the premise that government can do pretty much everything. His own experience of state largess has not taught him to question his premise. Rather, Obama seems to have concluded that, affirmative action and racial privilege; the best jobs and career track the pigment burden can buy—these are all well and good, but not as good as being blessed with the love of a dad.

Its hackneyed message aside, Obama’s prose, which seems to thrill the low and high-brow alike, is uninspiring and mundane.

Update (June 22): Myron, a single dad, is BAB’s Daddy of the Year. I’ve seen a photo of the apple of Myron’s jaded eye, and she’s an absolute doll. Her daddy, moreover, is nothing like the country’s papa Stalin. Myron’s cherub looks truly happy.
Myron, you’ll be disqualified, though, if the young lady begins to paint her pretty face and talk in a mixture of Valley Girl and ungrammatical grunts (that’s a botched quote from “Idiocracy“). Also, do not deprive her of your unique humor and wit out of some sense of propriety. I inflicted mine on my daughter. The result: she’s the funniest girl I know. For your own sanity, you can’t cultivate a dull, deadpan kid, which is what the schools churn out.

For example: At my daughter’s primary school, back in South Africa, the women were in the habit of running what we called a tuck shop, “Brit for a shop in or near a school, where cakes and sweets are sold,” mainly to raise money. At least so I think. My girl, then only 7 or 8, wanted to know why I never made any cookies. I told her right away that I did, only my cookies were invisible. She was too small to appreciate the joke, and big enough to get furious at my poking fun at her. You should have seen the little Rumpelstiltskin stomp her little feet. Obama would disapprove of her mother big time.

You know how parents are always telling kids, “You are so cute I can eat you”? Well, in my home the well-worn expression got a bit of a twist. After telling her how cute she was, I’d get this serious look on my face, while looking her over, and say, “Hmmm… Juicy adorable kid. Maybe I should eat you, what do you say? Do you know how much time and money it’ll save me. Think about it….” Then I’d chase her all over the house trying to catch her. She’ll deny it today, but initially she was a bit nervous. Good fun.

Abuse in Obama’s book.

The joking had the tendency to backfire. When I read her Roald Dahl’s Enormous Crocodile, who sounded a lot like her mother as he discussed what kind of child was tastiest, she began to scold me, “Stop joking mommy; read the book.” I promised her that the text was real, but by that time I had lost all credibility. Each time the Enormous Croc expatiated on the hazards of eating children (“they give you tummy rot”), my child recoiled; she could not believe another character was as wacky as her mother. Good times.