Racism Is Alive And Well

When I heard about this story I just couldn't believe it. In this day and age I can't believe that there's an instance of racism as blatant as this. You may have heard about it but for those who haven't I summarize: There's a police district in Little Rock, Arkansas that recently had a large number of slots to fill in the "upper" roles of captain and lieutenant. The higher ups decided to conduct a test to determine the most qualified people because, after all, wouldn't you want the most qualified people in that field leading the task of protecting citizens?

Of course you would.

To that end, they rigorously planned this test out so that it would be racially neutral. They didn't want to disparage anyone, so they even went to the trouble of hiring an outside firm that specialized in creating politically correct tests (to the tune of about $100,000).

When the results finally came in, the white test-takers did very poorly, while the Hispanic and black recruits excelled. Many of them had worked long hours, quit second jobs, even dealt with learning disabilities in order to pass this test. When the powers-that-be got word of the test results, they decided to throw them out to avoid lawsuits. Unfortunately for them, it produced exactly the same outcome. The odd twist of irony is that the council who decided to throw out the results was comprised of 3 blacks and 1 Hispanic; the only groups that performed well enough on the tests to be promoted.

Now black and Hispanic policemen are suing, saying the results were thrown out simply because they are black. They played by the rules, they studied hard and scored high enough to make the promotion cut, yet that promotion was denied simply because of the color of their skin.

Like I said before - can you believe this is happening in this day and age? I mean, in the past affirmative action and social engineering has been utilized to "equalize the playing field", but this is ridiculous. The council's defense is that they are not promoting anyone based on the test score, so they are not discriminating; they're simply throwing the scores out. To make matters worse, this happened a few years ago, and since then they have been rotating people in and out of those positions in order to be fair, thus placing in some cases the non-qualified whites into those positions just for the sake of equality.

Sufficiently riled up?

Ok; I have a confession to make...the above story is not true. Well, at least not entirely true. They weren't policemen, they were firemen. It wasn't in Little Rock, it was in New Haven, Connecticut. And finally, it wasn't blacks who excelled on the test while whites failed miserably, it was the other way around.

Still think it's a travesty? The sad truth of our nation is that if the above situation would have happened that way, there is no way they would have held back the recruits from their rightful promotion. As a matter of fact, I would venture to say the NAACP and other minority organizations that have chimed in on this case would have touted the fact that the most successful test-takers were non-whites. It would have been entirely acceptable to promote deserving minorities, but deserving majorities? Not a chance.

I understand there is political pressure (at every level) to promote people evenly distributed among the various races, or at least proportional to the numbers available in each race, but this is not some job that requires little skill. This is a job that directly affects peoples' lives. It affects the lives of the firemen and of the people they're trying to save. I guarantee you one thing: If my house was burning down, I wouldn't care who or what came through my door to save my children or try and save my property.

I bet the vast majority of Americans feel the same way.

So why did they do it? Well, in this case it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. The minority groups were threatening to sue if the tests were not thrown out and the ones who passed were threatening to sue if they did. Despite the political backlash, the council showed bad judgment. Thankfully, this case has finally wound its way to the Supreme Court, who should be layout out a verdict any day now.

If you'd like to read about this case and its history, this website is very thorough.