Ricci v. Perez

Thomas Perez, President Barack Obama’s nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights, the same man who believes medical schools should drop standards for black applicants because they’re more likely to work in “underserved” communities than white doctors, also believes in watering down firefighters recruitment tests.

The Center for Equal Opportunity‘s Roger Clegg posted on The Corner blog a press release from 2004 when then Montgomery County, Maryland, Councilmember Thomas Perez called for an investigation into the fire department’s written firefighter aptitude test. The problem? Too few blacks were being recruited. From the release:

“These statistics are unacceptable…But I have confidence that we can get back up to the original number of minorities in the Department, and develop a comprehensive plan to recruit diversely…I have worked closely with Fire and Rescue Chief Carr and several other leaders on this issue…We have formed a partnership and the commitment from the department is clearly there.”

I remember covering this story on my personal blog in 2004. According to the Washington Post, 89 percent of class recruits in that fire department were white. Because the county’s population was 60 percent white, elected officials like Perez criticized the department. There was a drop in minority recruits, which likely was caused by the county implementing a race-blind hiring process. For the sake of skin deep-only diversity, people like Perez favor lowering standards to recruit minorities, but call the practice something else: affirmative action.

I also blogged about the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) lowering standards in a “pro-diversity” campaign to attract blacks. FDNY reduced the college credit requirement and considered changing the way the employment test was scored.

In the same post, I mentioned the Denver Fire Department’s new watered down test. I spoke with Chief Larry Trujillo, who said a Denver newspaper article left the impression that he favored the dumbed-down test, but he told me he did not. He said as a minority, he was proud to have gone through the same process as other recruits, but believed “something” needed to be done to bring in more blacks. The fire department hired a consulting firm to create a new test, and I spoke with three people (conference call) at the firm to try to find out what made the new test easier. All they would say is the test would evaluate a broader range of abilities than traditional written tests. The answers were vague on purpose. I suspected the firm watered down portions of the test on which blacks performed poorly.

Finally, years ago I read about one fire department that dropped its swimming test because too few black applicants knew how to swim!

The absurdity is too astounding for words.

I guess the Civil Rights Act and other civil rights legislation – and the entire movement – were pointless. The American people strived to eliminate racial considerations in government hiring and admissions. Almost two generations later, the government still considers race in hiring and admissions.