Discrimination based on race is racism. If someone is denied a job because of their race, it's racism. Not getting a job because you're black is racism. Not getting a job because you're white is racism. You're either for it or against it. If you can live with yourself saying that it's okay to discriminate against some races but not others that's fine. But at least be honest about it: you are a racist. You may as well admit it because it's obvious to the rest of us.

While I am not sure what you are trying to say, the point of Richard's column--and I agree with him--is that Ricci opens the door to racist hiring and promotion practices. It will now work via tests carefully (and secretly) designed to exclude blacks, while appearing to be race neutral. Such tests will preserve a veneer of objectivity sufficient to pass judicial muster, while resulting in the exclusion of most or, as in New Haven, all black candidates.

Put more simply, given the pervasiveness of racism in this country (that is my view, of course; you may believe that there is no significant racism), simply not looking at racial outcomes amounts to endorsing racist behaviour. That is why Congress passed civil rights legislation and why, up until Ricci, the courts enforced it. A "solution" that ignores existing discrimination by not taking race into account--precisely what the current SCOTUS majority wants--is just a way of underwriting that discrimination.

Sadly, you and, I would guess, a strong majority of Fray participants agree with this approach.

Put more simply, given the pervasiveness of racism in this country (that is my view, of course; you may believe that there is no significant racism)

why do you believe that racism is pervasive in this country. how do you come to this conclusion?

come one. this is your big chance. convince me.

i'll bet you have no evidence of 'significant racism' but are just an emotional little turd repeating what some victim monger says.

A "solution" that ignores existing discrimination by not taking race into account--precisely what the current SCOTUS majority wants--is just a way of underwriting that discrimination.

so if you take race into account you're a racist and if you don't, you're a racist too!

how friggen convenient!!!

two bit rage hustlers such as yourself need to just dry up and blow away. really. do us all a favor.

"Ricci opens the door to racist hiring and promotion practices. It will now work via tests carefully (and secretly) designed to exclude blacks, while appearing to be race neutral. Such tests will preserve a veneer of objectivity sufficient to pass judicial muster, while resulting in the exclusion of most or, as in New Haven, all black candidates."

So what you want is a test that will appear to be race neutral but exclude whites?

The facts are simple in this case. There was a test, 100% devoted to knowledge of the job. The people who passed the test happened to be the white candidates (the why of this is a question for a different day), and the people who administered the test didn't like the results because they had wanted members of a different race to pass. So they threw out the results.

Yet somehow this is not racism?

cllr8586:

Discrimination based on race is racism. If someone is denied a job because of their race, it's racism. Not getting a job because you're black is racism. Not getting a job because you're white is racism. You're either for it or against it. If you can live with yourself saying that it's okay to discriminate against some races but not others that's fine. But at least be honest about it: you are a racist. You may as well admit it because it's obvious to the rest of us.

OK lets try your definition in a couple of things. First lets understand what the word "discriminate" means: "To Make a Distinction", "To distinguish by discerning differences" Fair Enough? OK so your definition of racism then is:

To make a distinction based on race is racism.
OR

To discern differences based on race is racism.

So now lets apply your definition to a couple of realities

• MLK's Freedom March discerned differences based on race - QED it was racist
• Montgomery Bus Boycott discerned differences based on race - QED it was racist
• Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman focussed their registration efforts by making a distinction based on race - QED they (and the rest of Freedom Summer) - were racist.

Notice the trend here? Your definition of racism is profoundly silly.

No, Racism is not just discrimination based on race.

RACISM is the imposition of MYTHOLOGIZED ATTRIBUTES based on physical (physiognomic) distinctions. IE because of your skin color, you are [lazy, dumb, incapable, shifty, criminal etc.].

Using this definition,

• Marching for recognition of equal legal personhood ceases to be racist, and the attempts to limit that march based on bigotry about blacks continues to be racist
• the recognition of Jim Crow seating rules ceases to be racist, but the rules themselves remain racist.
• Using this definition the opposition to allowing minorities to vote continues to be racist, but the efforts to overcome this no longer are.

So now lets apply this much more accurate definition to your claims of racism against whites.

So when a white male is passed up for a job in favor of an identically qualified minority, what myth is being imposed on that white male?

What mythologized attributes are being imposed on that white male?

Unless you can articulate the myths being imposed, it IS NOT RACISM.

The facts are simple in this case. There was a test, 100% devoted to knowledge of the job.

Actually that is NOT a "fact of this case". There was a test. But the contents are sealed. No one actually knows how biased or unbiased this test is, although the city did consult some independent experts who indicated that tests like this one often WERE biased.

The people who passed the test happend to be white candidates. White candidates who every day of their lives have received unearned privileges compared to the minority candidates.

The people who administered the test looked at the law contained in Title VII, Section 2, Subchapter(k) which reads:

(k) Burden of proof in disparate impact cases
(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact
is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a
particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on
the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and
the respondent fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice
is job related for the position in question and consistent with
business necessity; or
(ii) the complaining party makes the demonstration described in
subparagraph (C) with respect to an alternative employment
practice and the respondent refuses to adopt such alternative
employment practice.

So there clearly was a disparate impact. HR was worried so they went to the Corporate Counsel for the City of New Haven for an opinion on what to do.

Given that there was a long history of the city being sued in such circumstances and the above text of the law the city was likely to lose if they got sued. So the Corp Counsel recommended to the Mayor that the test be tossed out, and the City proactively engage in subsection (ii) by discussing alterantives with minority represenatitives, while tossing the test.

Where is the racism?

Where is the mythologized attributes that are being imposed on Ricci.

And please don't tell me that it is racism to simply make decisions based on race. Because by that definition MLK's Freedom March and the Montgomery Bus Boycott both are also racist. And that's a profoundly silly concept.

So

Yours is a belief. Which means that facts won't convince you of anything. Enough studies have been cited elsewhere to know this

I'm still trying to determine which part of my engineering examinations were

"It will now work via tests carefully (and secretly) designed to exclude blacks, while appearing to be race neutral. "

Could you be more specific? It might shed a bit more weight to your mostly hypothetical argument.

"There was a test. But the contents are sealed. No one actually knows how biased or unbiased this test is, although the city did consult some independent experts who indicated that tests like this one often WERE biased."

So could you chime in on HOW this test could be biased towards white people? This has been your talking point for quite a while and I'm at this point genuinely curious as to what bias you are referring to.

Degme & Lloyd,

The problem is that there is a 1 std deviation difference in average psychometric scores between blacks and whites. Local selective pressures exerted even over several hundred years can cause big changes in cognitive function. <link>

So any test that aims to discriminate on the basis of cognitive skills will have disparate impact.

"The most distinctive thing about the test is what it omitted--virtually any measurement of cognitive (mental) skills. Although the project's careful job analysis had shown that "reasoning, judgment, and inferential thinking" were the most critical skills for good police work, the final "implementation" version of the exam (the one used to rank applicants) retained only personality ("non-cognitive") scales such as "Achievement Motivation," "Openness to Experience," and "Emotional Stability." The reading component of the "experimental" test battery (the version actually administered to applicants the year before) was regraded pass-fail; to pass that test, applicants only had to read as well as the worst one percent of readers in the research sample of incumbent police officers. Nor did failing the reading component disqualify an applicant, because the final exam score was determined by combining the scores from all nine tests. Not mincing words, Frank Schmidt (1996a, b) predicted that the test would be "a disaster" for any police force that used it."

<link>

As a very succesful and pragmatic physicist once told me - I don't have to explain HOW quantum mechanics works, I just have to describe the rules.

The rules here are that this sort of test consistently generates disparate outcomes. And just as with studies say in stroke correlated to obesity, you don't have to explain the mechanism to address the obesity as a way or reducing the stroke risk

Go peddle your neo-Jim Crow bell curve nonsense elsewhere. We're not that dumb

on quantitative tests. According to your "logic", tell me what should be done?