The Supreme Court has ruled 5 to 4, on the case of Ricci v. DeStefano today. The ruling is in favor of the firefighters. This is a ferocious issue: The rights of White people to stack the decks in their favor via " oral testing" vs the rights of anyone else to go anywhere in Firefighting.
Look. America will never be color blind. America is racist. As long as America can get away with "subjective" components to testing, there will be lower scores for non White's who test. That's why there IS an oral component to testing. It allows much crookedness.
In the case of the New Haven firefighters, 40 percent of the test score was entrusted to an "oral exam" where the results are based on decisions that are about as subjective as you can get. The oral exam was to be the more powerful component of the test.
New Haven wanted to cancel the test and come up with a more fair test.
The passing score was 70! That's right. You can get a lucrative Captain's or Lieutenant's job with a "C" grade. To compare, If I had gotten less than an 80 on any of my exams in Air Force schools, it would have been the end of my career. That's it. Pack your bags and go. But don't expect to be a New Haven Firefighter. Only White guys get those jobs.
Under the contract between the City and the New Haven firefighters' union, the written exam result counted for 60% of an applicant's score and the oral exam for 40%. But the "oral" component held more weight, somehow. Those with a total score above 70% on the exam would pass.1
- The passage rate for the Captain exam was: 16 (64%) of the 25 whites; 3 (38%) of the 8 blacks; 3 (38%) of the 8 Hispanics[6]. The top 9 scorers included 7 whites and 2 Hispanics; given that there were 7 Captain vacancies when the tests were administered, and that the "Rule of Three" in the City Charter mandates that a civil service position be filled from among the three individuals with the highest scores on the exam, it appeared that no blacks and at most two Hispanics would be eligible for promotion.
- The passage rate for the Lieutenant exam was: 25 (58%) of the 43 whites; 6 (32%) of the 19 blacks; 3 (20%) of the 15 Hispanics. All the top 10 scorers were white; given that there were 8 vacancies, under the "Rule of Three" it appeared that no blacks or Hispanics would be eligible for promotion. 2
By the way. The first "smoke jumpers" were Black men. That is, until the White guys wanted the jobs. These days, there's "oral testing" to keep the White guys employed and everyone else out.
Kind of like religion on the home page of OS: To get there on Sundays, you have to be an agnostic or really find something nasty to report about nut case churches.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano
2. Ibid
3. http://www.thedropzone.org/training/smokejm2.htmlTIP:
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Dan Brekke
Jesse Mitchell
garfish
C.K. Dexter Haven
ronnierayjenkins
Robin Sneed
Salon.com
Comments
The tests were fair. Get over it.
"America is racist"...........you don't speak for me.
I'm glad that I don't speak for you. I work hard at that.
Rated
I knew this decision [wrong] would turn out this way.
Fear drove the reconsideration. Fear of allegations like you make here.
Unions negotiated the rules for those tests.
Everyone took the same test. All guidelines were followed.
This is just another excuse to keep the race pimps active.
That's interesting, because in their dissent the justices noted that "Relying heavily on written tests to select fire officers is a questionable practice, to say the least." Written tests measure a person's ability to memorize and recall information, whereas the oral component, in which applicants were asked to respond to real-world situations, better measure those qualities that are most important for people in command situations.
So I guess New Haven can't win either way. You criticize the exam because the oral component was given too much weight. The dissenting justices criticize the exam because the oral component wasn't given enough weight. You and your friends on the Supreme Court need to get together to get your story straight.
From what I've read the city of New Haven bent over backwards in developing a test that was both racially unbiased and that measured relevant job skills. They didn't end up with a perfect test, but then again there is no such thing as a perfect test.
Zuma: "New Haven wanted to cancel the test and come up with a more fair test."
Fair in what way? Is that idea that you just keep testing over and over until you end up with the "correct" racial results? If so, the test is nothing more than a pretext for racial quotas.
The city, through its contractor, developed the test questions and the questions were heavily vetted. The city and firefighter's union agreed on the relative weighting of the test components. Everyone knew what the process was, and firefighters seeking promotion to command positions bought their own reference materials and spent a lot of time studying for the exam. The test results should have been certified.
People have a right to a reasonable process and a reasonable exam. They don't have a right to a perfect process and a perfect exam. They don't have a right to an exam that generates perfect results in terms of racial makeup.
New Haven's fire department has a bad reputation, and apparently will still have a bad reputation. New Haven will lose it's best and brightest hopes for the future and keep the good ole boys. Good luck with that.
The next time you lose a friend or family member in circumstances where a firefighter failed to get them out of a burning building, you might want to regret that the firefighter was chosen for ethnicity and "oral competence" or by some other "test' that excluded certain competent people.
Yeah, the bottom line is that you shouldn't have to be White to get ahead in this country. The bottom line is that they had to cheat in order to favor Whites. Fine. Maybe the layoffs and budget cuts will take care of it.
this was a bad decision because it disregarded the law and decades of precedent in civil rights litigation, but you could see it coming a mile away with the current makeup of the Supreme Court
one of the ironies of this is that the majority ruled for the white firefighters based on "empathy" and not on settled law, but they'll beat Sotomayor over the head with it for the next two months
You throw out the IRA and the Mafia rather glibly to suggest the whites are corrupt and violent. Imagine the furor were I to reciprocate with such allegations about the black firefighters who all flunked this test.
The bottom line is that racism exists. Similarly, as we make advancements, it could also be that the slate of black applicants this time around were not that good. Other disadvantaged minorities -- hispanics -- passed.
I am not sitting here jumping up and down disparaging the black applicants. I am not impugning their integrity. I am saying we do not know enough. I am saying it was evenly administered across all ethnicities.
You want to assume racism when perhaps it just happens to be that in this slate of applicants, the black ones weren't that strong.
A black person *can* fall short of the mark for reasons other than racism or ties to the IRA or the Mafia, can't they?
Based on what do you say that?? Please, I know this is a radical idea on OS, but can we look at the actual facts?
From the Supreme Court's decision:
"At every stage of the job analyses, IOS [the contractor], by deliberate choice, oversampled minority firefighters to ensure that the results—which IOS would use to develop the examinations—would not unintentionally favor white candidates."
"IOS assembled a pool of 30 assessors who were superior in rank to the positions being tested. At the City’s insistence (because of controversy surrounding previous examinations), all the assessors came from outside Connecticut. IOS submitted the assessors’ resumes to City officials for approval. They were battalion chiefs, assistant chiefs, and chiefs from departments of similar sizes to New Haven’s throughout the country. Sixty-six percent of the panelists were minorities, and each of the nine three-member assessment panels contained two minority members."
This is racism? This is discrimination? For Christ's sake, what does it take? You bitch about the oral exam when two-thirds of the evaluators are minorities themselves. I don't think you want a fair exam. I think you want a specific outcome based on race -- known in other contexts as racism.
Zuma, I think you will know from our communications in public blogs and in pm's that I am not happy with anyhing that is intended to be racially biased, but in this particular situation I am interested to see what the motivation may be in the wider scene.
1. In this country, there have been occassions where an option for an oral exam has taken place to assist people who have abilities but are not able to present themselves adequately in written form. Is it possible that the intention is to assist people who are not so able with the written English? That may well be beneficial to include races who have a background that was not from an English speaking situation. IF that was the case, and I am not in a position to say for sure, could it be possible that it would be a means of breaking down the racial divide?
2. One of the concerns some people may have, for example in the health professions, is that there is not adequate means of oral communication with local people it could cost lives because of misunderstandings. That could be a position of people who have good relations with other racial groups, but are seeking to balance that with the needs of the people being served. Is it possible that in the fire service it is thought to be imperative for the same reason to have an oral exam to ensure that firemen/women are able to communicate adequately when saving lives in any emergency?
What would be your thoughts on this?
I will bet that when you compare on the job accomplishment, off duty education, certifications and re-certifications, and performance, the outcome would have been vastly different.
Firefighting is not rocket science, and firefighters are notoriously not rocket scientists, bless their hearts. I have a few of them for very good friends, and they are not happy with this,either. California and a whole lot of other states manage to have one of the finest, most diverse and most advanced fire departments in the world without the affirmative action.
It's New Haven that's the rotten apple. Rotten to the core.
Again: Why only New Haven?
Have you read anything I've posted here? Permit me to summarize:
1) in the opinion of the dissenting Supreme Court justices, the oral part of the exam was not given ENOUGH weight, since it is that part of the exam that best tests leadership and command ability. The written exam basically tests ability to memorize information.
2) the consulting firm hired by the city to develop the test oversampled minority input on the test questions to ensure that there was no bias against minority candidates.
3) each of the three-person committees evaluating the oral answers consisted of two minority members.
4) the evaluators of the oral answers were brought in from outside the city fire department; they were fire officials from other cities.
Question: how is any of this evidence of bias?
I see it as the city did everything they could to make it so that black firefighters could pass the test. Yes there was an oral part to it but everybody got the same oral exam. Now if you can prove that a black firefighter gave the same answer as the white firefighter but was marked differently then I'll give your argument some credit. Until then, you are just being a racist because you are making assumptions based solely on race.
If you want to pass an exam, put in the effort to study the material the test was taken from. I just gave the same speech to my wife who didn't pass a certification exam at her work. Did she study, no. Is she complaining because a lot of the people who pasted are white, no.
I liked a comment somewhere I read by a law school prof who was willing to bet he could get 80% on the written test if he was allowed to study. He's never been a firefighter, and would never claim to be qualified to lead a crew into smoke...
Didn't all the people take the same written test? You made the point that a non firefighter could get an 80% just by studying. So why didn't those who didn't pass the test just study and get an 80%?
There is only 2 reasons. First they are stupid. Well we can throw that one out because the got the job to start with. The got certified and are working. So we know stupid is not the reason they didn't pass.
How about the second reason. They didn't study. You said to pass all you had to do is study. Remember the answers. Are black people not able to read, study and remember answers? Maybe, they should have been like the one guy who took time off, hired someone to help him study and passed the test. Can't black people do that?
So tell me, what was in the test that a black person couldn't have learned if he would have studied? Nothing. The point is those who did not pass did not put the required time and effort into doing what was required to pass the test and get the job.
Race had nothing to do with it. There wasn't a white test and a black test. They didn't give the black people the wrong books to study. They didn't put all KKK members on the oral boards.
I await your reply.
would an orchestra hire a soloist based on multiple choice and an oral test, or by an audition?
So if you and I work together and do the same job, what skill set would I have that you won't that would make me pass the test and not you? I mean, we do the same things, studied from the same books, and took the same tests. So I still at a lost how I have an advantage over you just because of my race.
Help me with this one.
I'm sorry but when you have an announced test that was designed from a set of books for study material I don't see how anything other than study time and habits can change the outcome.
I guess there are people who don't have the ability to learn who can't understand the material, but I don't see that as a problem in the fire department. Fireman are known for being above average people in general. The requirements to just get hired are normally extreme.
I'm sorry I'm having trouble understanding where race is involved in the outcome here.