@Debra Law,
Debra Law wrote:
118 employees took a test:
17 white employees passed the test;
2 Hispanic employees passed the test;
0 black employees passed the test.
The results of the test demonstrate a significant disparity of a pass rate among racial lines--
I never said that the LAW requires an equal or better outcome for minorities. However, the LAW does require a employer to consider the disparate impact that the testing may have had on minorities. Ricci sued the city for doing exactly what the law required the city to do.
In the first place, merely from a statistical perspective, your conclusion is not supported by the facts you cited. Only 16% of the employees who took the test passed it. That's a fairly low rate. I don't know the racial distribution of those who took the test, however, it is fairly clear that the statistical case does not warrant either your conclusions or the indignant certainty that appears to accompany it.
Secondly, there is nothing here that demonstrates either the presence or absence of the City's leagally required "consideration" of disparate "impact" - whatever the hell that means.
I don't dispute the plaintif's right to sue, only your insistence that they must win.
Debra Law wrote:
According to your argument, the employer must simply assume that white people possess superior intellect and test taking skills entitling them to promotions without questioning the underlying factors that may have contributed to the disparity of the results and the adverse impact on minorities. According to you, a refusal to certify the highly skewed test results in order to evaluate and determine whether the test was skewed in favor of whites is RACIAL DISCRIMINATION against white people. According to you, the reverse-bigots and the reverse-racists want to keep the poor white man down and give them inferior lazy blacks an unearned hand-out. Shucks! You argue that a good faith effort by the employer to end disparate impact discrimination does more harm than good for its supposed beneficiaries.
Your argument, however, is simply fodder for ignoring disparate impact discrimination and for encouraging the true bigots and racists to design tests that will weed out minorities.
All nonsense. You are apparently arguing for legally guaranteed equal outcomes without admitting it. Nothing in my argument implied anything about any employer's assumptions about the relative intelligence or "test taking skills" of white people and those of "protected minorities". The test was simply a written examination of the candidate's knowledge of technical and procedural issues surrounding various aspects of firefighting. Everyone apparently had equal access to the testing opportunity and to the materials required for learning the material - no contrary allegations were offered on that point.
How does one contrive to create a test of firefighting knowledge that will "weed out minorities"?? It seems to me that you are arguing that blacks are inflicted with some form of permanent learning impairment, genetic or cultural. In fact the growing number of blacks who are succeeding in business and the various professions makes it rather clear that there is no such thing. The issue here is rather clearly the behavior of the 118 individuals who took the test - regardless of their color.
