- #36
swat4life
- 25
- 0
russ_watters said:
You asked for FACTS and NUMBERS so here they are. I'm really hoping that the people who visit this site have the ***very rare*** skill to be able divorce themselves emotionally from a situation and look at the cold, hard facts - actual numbers, statistics, etc.
After all, that's why we have the scientific method or things like peer-review, correct?
What good is to be interested in science if one doesn't cross-apply the practice of evaluating brute facts not colored by one's emotions when coming up with an informed opinion or giving an analysis of physical phenomena?
I remember a while back, I made a comment that you responded to where I mentioned the science of the mind. I did this to try to provide solid evidence to you that one has to work **VERY HARD** when developing a perception to separate
1) the facts
FROM
2) one's own direct experiences which often color one's interpretation of the facts.
After all, if you knew you didn't have perfect vision and were looking at a chalk board without glasses or contacts, chances are you'd probably say, "ok what am I seeing and what's REALLY written?"
THIS IS HOW OUR MINDS/BRAINS WORK!
Whenever I am trying to develop an "accurate" perception of what I know to be an emotionally charged issue for me, I go ALOT out of my way to step back and say "ok, how much of this what I am REALLY seeing and how much of this is based on my own personal history and emotions?"
I do this because I interact with a lot of different people and it helps me to develop relationships with individuals from so many backgrounds - but it's worth the effort. It's what's allowed me to be good friends everyone from ex Neo Nazis to Religious Fundamentalists, to Lesbian Feminists and a whole host of other people - ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
With that, I ask you to evaluate these facts and I'd be curious to know if after viewing the FACTS your perception of the situation is the same...
We all must be quite careful about not accepting the popular projections of news stories because they are almost always a) inaccurate or b)shallow.
Probably 99% of the people who look at a rock see something solid right? (classical Newtonian view).
Well, those of us with a deeper understanding realize that even though one's eyes may see something solid and "obviously true", we know in actuality that there's is almost always something much deeper going on at the quantum level that isn't AT ALL suggested by what's obvious...
STORY
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Playing Hardball With Affirmative Action
...conservative commentator Pat Buchanan suggested that the Republican Party reorganize its image around the white plaintiff in this case). But it’s also got the kind of facts that make well-meaning white folks, and even some blacks, uncomfortable about the parameters of affirmative action.
It seems like a simple case. The New Haven Fire Department conducted an examination for applicants seeking promotion to captain and lieutenant. No black test takers made the cut, so the city, fearing it would run afoul of employment antidiscrimination laws, scuttled the test. To many, this just sounds fundamentally unfair.
But the Ricci case is not that simple. And that’s the problem with conversations about affirmative action. You say “affirmative action,” and people think they know what you’re talking about. They threw out the test? That’s unfair to the white applicants. Why couldn’t the black applicants just pass the test? Who wants a firefighter in a command position who can’t pass the test? Won’t this just stigmatize black firefighters?
What the exchange on Hardball and most discussions about this case show is the danger of talking about affirmative action in the absence of facts. I know that we lawyers tend to muck up good arguments with facts, but facts are important. So here are a few facts you may want to know about the Ricci case before you get into an argument about affirmative action at the water cooler.
First, the issue before the Supreme Court is whether New Haven officials violated the constitutional rights of Frank Ricci, a white firefighter who took and passed the promotion exam, when the city’s Civil Service Board failed to certify the exam. Why did the board refuse to certify it? Questions about the test were raised in part because the company that created the test failed to follow several practices regarded as “standard” among experts providing tests to fire departments. One of those is the submission of the test to a process that determines a relevant cutoff for a passing score. The test developer simply skipped this step. Nor was the test submitted to fire experts in New Haven to ensure its relevance to the particular conditions and realities for firefighters there. Thus, when the racially disparate results from the test differed substantially from the results of previous tests conducted by the New Haven Fire Department, alarm bells went off. The matter was submitted to the Civil Service Board. After hearing from the public and outside experts at five hearings, the board split 2-2 on whether to certify the test (the board’s fifth member, an African American, did not participate in any of the decisions).
Second, this case cannot be examined outside the very powerful historical context of race in urban fire departments in the United States and in this particular fire department in New Haven. As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued in its amicus brief to the court, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended in 1972 to include state and municipal governments precisely because of widespread discrimination in public sector employment. Fire departments have been among the most resistant municipal enclaves to integrate. It has been surmised that because firefighters essentially live together in the same space, whites have been especially resistant to integrating this workspace.
Unfortunately, fire departments have been the sites of some of the most odious incidents of racial discrimination. As documented by the LDF, even in supposedly desegregated firehouses in Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the beds, dishes and eating utensils of black firefighters in some firehouses were marked “C” for “Colored.” Segregated firehouses were maintained in jurisdictions from San Francisco to Memphis through the 1970s. And this is not just a relic of our past. The effort to address discrimination in fire departments is part of the ongoing work of civil rights organizations and the Department of Justice. In one compelling account, Legal Defense Fund lawyers revealed that in the Cleveland Fire Department, black firefighters were assigned to a battalion that was known as “Monkey Island.” In 2004.
Getting employed at all as a firefighter has been a challenge for black applicants. After the application of Title VII to municipal employers in 1972, blacks were kept from employment as firefighters and promotion to officer positions through changes in prerequisites for employment designed to disproportionately affect blacks; the use of quotas as a bar to black promotion; and, of course, the use of tightly held information about job openings and promotion opportunities.
New Haven has a particular history of discrimination in its fire department. Black firefighters and applicants have successfully sued the department for racial discrimination in hiring or promotion numerous times, most recently in 2004. Although New Haven has made strides in the hiring of black firefighters, the promotion of black officers continues to be a problem. In 2007, although a little over 30 percent of entry-level positions in the department were filled by blacks, African Americans held only 15 percent of supervisory positions.
Thus, the only stigma at issue in this case is the stain on fire departments throughout the U.S. that have treated their firehouses like private, white familial enclaves. That’s why it was so galling to hear Chris Matthews on Hardball defend the use of patronage and family connections in some Irish Catholic communities to maintain a disproportionate access to firefighting jobs not as discrimination but as “tradition.”
http://www.theroot.com/views/playing-hardball-affirmative-action
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