Comments on: Racist Thinking at the Supreme Court—Again

By: No1KState

No1KState — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:57:39 +0000

Day late, dollar short, yes. But was anyone else aware of this? And am I the only who’s suddenly suspicous about exactly who’s playing identity politics and to what end? Okay, so I’ve thought the 4 faithful conservatives are (overt?) racist for several months now. But I wasn’t aware of this statement by Scalia, which seems especially significant in light of the Sotomayor “wise Latina” bwuhaha.

Justice Antonin Scalia said at oral argument that he didn’t believe New Haven would have canceled the test results if they’d yielded no white promotions.

http://www.slate.com/id/2221250/entry/2221298/

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By: No1KState

No1KState — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:00:36 +0000

You know, it’s funny. We’ve never actually, as a country, accepted that each individual is equal regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, lack of religion, etc. It’s interesting to get comments from people like jamal contending that the problem is this idea of innate equality and not socio-polical and economic inequality.

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By: Kristen

Kristen — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0000

jamal, your assertion about “genetic realities” is untrue. You might get away with that statement 100 years ago. Phenotype does not correlate with brain power. And, standardized tests do not measure innate ability but rather accumulated skills.

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By: jamal

jamal — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:21:22 +0000

“In terms of hiring, it means companies can use discriminatory tests and deny applicants of color jobs and promotions.”

Any test that measures mental aptitude will “discriminate” against blacks. Any test that measures height will “discriminate” against asians. These are just genetic realities. The more we deny this, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves.

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By: Alston Adams

Alston Adams — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:27:52 +0000

I haven’t gone through the 30 responses so far, but I have glanced at a couple of them. It’s pretty difficult to know how a test could be biased against a minority. People just haven’t gone into those details at all it seems. I didn’t have a clue as to how it could happen until I stumbled on comment #22. If something like this were to happen, then OF COURSE it’s flawed and racially biased, but at this point, I still don’t know.

But does anyone? Even if something like the SAT scenario were to take place, how would you even know it is taking place? Does the lack of success by black people automatically mean that the test was flawed? Were there other factors that we should know about? Sorry for my ignorance; I am not sure that I have ever taken such a test in my life.

The Supreme Court made it clear that had the city done its job and justified it actions, the decision would have come down in their favour, therefore you might say that the result is the direct result of the city’s mishandling of the affair, rather than the racism of the SC. This means that it is the city, and not the SC that dealt a blow to the gains won by PoC.

Another thing that I don’t understand is why black people should score lower than others when there is a significant written portion of a test. Does this mean that black people dont rite gud? If New Haven wants firefighters with better written skills, why does this adversely affect black firefighters?

Once again, it’s late, I haven’t done a lot of research and I am tired. Sorry about my ignorance.

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By: No1KState

No1KState — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:18:21 +0000

The other cities got more representative results because they “race normed” the results of their tests i.e. used different curves for different groups.

huh?

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By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:13:38 +0000

The other cities got more representative results because they “race normed” the results of their tests i.e. used different curves for different groups. They didn’t have a test that produced representative results without statistical tweaking.

Also, any weighting is arbitrary. Making it 50% written, 50% verbal isn’t inherently fairer or better than any other weighting. In fact, weighting the verbal heavier allows all kinds of bias in whereas you can at least try to keep it out with the written.

The decision was a lot narrower than I was afraid of. It’s clear that Thomas and Alito want to scrap affirmative action/”racial preferences” altogether but thank god, Keneddy is somewhat reasonable.

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By: No1KState

No1KState — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:37:00 +0000

In terms of hiring, it means companies can use discriminatory tests and deny applicants of color jobs and promotions.
~
It’s not “punishment” not to be promoted when NOBODY was promoted. But that’s the problematic thinking on the court. In the course of ensuring racial justice, some white people may be denied certain things they thought they were entitled to. That’s not “punishment.” That’s justice. We’re not going to achieve a society of racial equality if we’re always worried about white people being “punished.”

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By: siss

siss — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:17:34 +0000

It looks as though the NHFD backtracked -Provided an exam, didnt like the results and yanked the scores. It was their fault for not correcting the exam (which was needed as some claim), and implementing a fairer version. You cannot punish the test takers – which is what they did by denying promotions. In all of this hoop-lah has anyone heard what is to become of this decision? What exactly does it mean in terms of hiring? Thats what i was getting at.

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By: Kristen

Kristen — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:35:50 +0000

siss, I’m sorry, did I miss where you got to the clarifying part? I can work with a metaphorical expression, if used creatively and clearly, but your statement just seems dismissive.

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