Archive for April, 2010
Connecticut seems to be a hot spot for federal discrimination claims these days. First New Haven (Ricci v. DeStefano), now Bridgeport.
In 2008, 12 white firefighters filed suit against the city of Bridgeport for re-scoring a lieutenant exam, because too few minorities scored high enough to qualify for promotions. The case was settled last year.
This week, a federal appeals court allowed a group of white police officers in Bridgeport to intervene in the settlement of a discrimination case over 30 years old. In 1978, a group of black firefighters sued for discrimination. As a result of the case, the Bridgeport Police Department has been under supervision by a federal court. Intervening will allow the police officers to challenge any court action that impacts them. An excerpt:
“But the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel in New York City — consisting of Judges Jose A. Cabranes, a former chief district judge in Connecticut; Barrington D. Parker, who sits on several Yale University boards; and U.S. District Judge Carol Amon of Brooklyn, N.Y. — didn’t stop there.
“The panel questioned why the 32-year-old Guardians case, which resulted in the federal court overseeing operations of the Bridgeport Police Department’s dealings with black officers, is still active.
“Parker, in a strongly worded final paragraph, writes: ‘this case was filed in 1978 … the world has turned over many times since then. Except in highly unusual circumstances, it is the business of cities, not federal courts or special masters, to run police departments. At some point in time, this litigation has to be ended.’”
Blacks now account for 15 percent of supervisors in the department, and racial minorities comprise a third of all supervisors.
Download the 12-page case (PDF).
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An excerpt of a Minding the Campus article by the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly:
“Although my years of service on the University of California (UC) Board of Regents were the most tumultuous years of my life, my pride in the Board and the university that it serves has, until now, never wavered. But, a recent meeting and action by the Board has caused that feeling of pride to diminish.
“At several UC campuses, a variety of incidents occurred several weeks ago that were characterized as creating a ‘toxic’ racial climate for black students. The source of the ‘toxicity’ came in the form of an off-campus party called the ‘Compton Cookout’ and a noose found hanging inside the library at the UCSD campus.
“In a little over a three-week period, racial epithets were allegedly directed at black students at UCSD; and, at other UC campuses, a swastika was carved into a Jewish student’s door and derogatory graffiti was found at the gay and lesbian students’ center.
“These alleged incidents resulted in a delegation of students, faculty members and UC staff attending a meeting of the Board of Regents in late March to complain that the Regents weren’t doing enough to create a climate that nurtures ‘inclusiveness,’ for minorities, such as blacks and gays/lesbians. With no effort to validate the assertions, several regents gushed into a state of apologia, as is customary for university governing board members in such circumstances.
“Somehow, and not surprisingly, the apology fest about ‘campus climate’ veered into the issue of the number of blacks enrolled at all UC campuses. This was familiar terrain for Regent Eddie Island, whose singular focus as a regent seems to be the circumvention of the California Constitution and its prohibition against race preferences.
“The cause of my growing disrespect for the board was the comment by Island that ‘it is our own standards and slavish adherence to grade point averages and SAT scores that have put us in this dilemma.’ He continued, ‘We value those things higher than we value other human qualities that are just as important and that can make a contribution within the UC environment.’
“UC President Mark Yudof chimed in that he would seek changes in admissions policy as well as the creation of scholarships for underrepresented minorities in order to ‘improve diversity.’ Yoduf stated that all UC campuses needed to employ a holistic review – currently employed at UC Berkeley and UCLA – when screening applicants, rather than focusing on SAT scores and grade point averages in making admissions decisions.
“The University of California is regarded, indisputably, as one of our nation’s premier systems of higher education. In virtually every category, one or more of UC’s ten campuses ranks within the top ten nationwide. This has happened precisely because of UC’s ’slavish adherence’ to academic excellence, not because of other so-called ‘human qualities.’
“It is not uncommon for racial incidents and so-called hate crimes to be nothing more than pranks perpetrated by students in search of a little fun after a beer party. Worse, there have been many occasions in which individuals and organizations (who need not even be students) fake incidents of racism and hate to promote their own agenda by getting the attention of the university. Although these stupid and malicious acts can cause a lot of misery for many students, they do not warrant wholesale changes in admissions, apologies by regents for something over which they have little or no control, and pandering to the extent of providing special benefits for ‘minority’ students.”
Read the full article.
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In Ricci v. DeStefano, over a dozen white firefighters and one Hispanic scored high enough on a promotion exam to qualify for promotions. Because no blacks scored high enough to qualify, however, the city threw out everyone’s test results for fear of disparate impact lawsuits. The U.S. Supreme Court called foul and said the move was unconstitutional.
After the firefighters requested their promotions, a group of black firefighters tried to block them. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, they contended, they still had the right to challenge the test’s validity. Eventually, the qualified firefighters were promoted.
In a separate suit, a black firefighter in New Haven named Michael Briscoe claimed the promotions exam had a disparate impact on blacks. Specifically, he said that giving more weight to the written part of the exam over the oral was a disadvantage to blacks. The written portion of the test was weighted 60 percent; the oral 40 percent. Briscoe scored higher on the oral than any other exam taker.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed Biscoe’s suit. The court hasn’t released the opinion yet.
Try to understand what Briscoe and others who sue for disparate impact are saying. Look beyond the superficial surface-level discrimination claim and see the real claim. When blacks who earn lower scores on civil service exams sue under disparate impact, they’re implying that blacks can’t or shouldn’t be expected to compete with whites on pencil-and-paper civil service tests. Not the LSAT or the MCAT, but civil service tests. They are broadcasting a belief that they’re inferior. They are telling the world it’s discriminatory to even expect them to read and write well.
In our backward, PC world, requiring every applicant for a firefighter’s job and candidate for promotion to take an objective hiring or promotion exam, regardless of race, is suspect. The government used to do the opposite and make subjective, race-based judgments about who to hire and promote. The civil service exam was designed to end this practice. Now, such exams are perceived as tools of discrimination. And people go to court and publicly make the claim!
Some blacks pay lip service to equal treatment, expressing the desire to be seen and judged as an individual instead of “black person,” but in practice, they seem to abhor it. How sad. It takes courage to be free.
Filed under: Judiciary | |2 Comments
Last year, the University of California’s (UC) Board of Regents voted to eliminate the requirement for applicants to take two SAT subject tests. Effective 2012, applicants with a GPA of 3.0 or higher who’ve completed at least 11 of 15 required college prep courses by their junior year and taken the ACT with Writing or SAT Reasoning (SAT-R) exam will be considered for admission.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Linda Chavez informs readers that UC has changed the standard again. “Now [the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools] is taking aim at the SAT directly. What makes the action more suspicious is that BOARS’ own report notes that the SAT-R was developed specifically in response to testing principles it promulgated and that the new test ‘adds significant gains in predictive power of first year grades at UC.’ Nonetheless, BOARS is now recommending that students forgo the SAT in favor of the less-popular ACT. [emphasis added]
“Both tests have been accepted for more than 30 years and do a good job of predicting first-year grades. So why is BOARS now signaling preference for one test over another? After reading the report, it’s hard to come away without feeling that the real target is standardized testing in general…It’s not too far-fetched to wonder whether BOARS’ effort to discourage students from taking the SAT may be the first step in getting rid of standardized tests altogether.”
That’s exactly right, Ms. Chavez. When schools slouch toward eliminating standardized tests, it’s typically because racial minorities tend to score lower on standardized tests. When admissions officers assess applicants under an objective standard, the pattern is obvious; hence, racial preferences and a subjective eye to compensate for the deficiencies.
We agree on the solution to the disparity problem. Watering down tests and lowering standards for racial minorities are not the way to go. The solution involves “improving the skills of those students who lag behind,” and that’s a tougher proposition, because it involves parents taking a tough stand and students finding and maintaining motivation. Holding someone to a different standard, especially based on his/her skin color, does not motivate.
Chavez reminds us that it’s illegal in California to grant preferences to and discriminate against individuals or groups on the basis of race in government hiring, contracting, and admissions. Since the law passed in 1996, the state government has attempted to get around it. In fact, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill last year that blatantly violated the law. (See Schwarzenegger Signs Racial Quota Bill) The bill directs state departments to award government contracts to the lowest responsible bidder subcontracting 15 percent of the work to minority-owned businesses and five percent to female-owned businesses. The contractor who fails to do so will be rejected, even if he’s the lowest bidder.
Always lowering standards, never raising. Few people seem concerned about this hair-trigger reaction in academia and in the workplace. To pro-preferences folks, the offense lies not in the thing, but in speaking against the thing. Backward.
Chavez wraps up on a good note:
“What [UC Berkeley and UCLA] failed to notice is that black and Latino enrollment system-wide is up over the levels when racial preferences were common,” Chavez writes. “The students now enrolled under more race-neutral standards are doing just fine, graduating in higher percentages than they were when racial preferences admitted many students to campuses where they couldn’t compete with their peers because their grades and test scores were substantially lower.”
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Race and age are the focus of a discrimination case in Mobile, Alabama. A white firefighter claims the department promoted a lower-scoring black man and a lower-scoring younger white man over him.
William C. Hunter scored second highest on a promotions test, but a black firefighter in sixth place and a white firefighter in third place were promoted. For his high score, Hunter received nothing. An excerpt:
“Andy Rutens, an attorney for the city, could not be reached for comment but issued the following statement: ‘The city denies that age or race played a factor in the promotion process. The city promoted three highly qualified individuals.
“According to the suit, Hunter began working for the Fire-Rescue Department 38 years ago and steadily rose through the ranks until he became fire services district chief in 1995.”
Blacks as a group score lower on standardized tests than whites, on average, and employers devise ways to get around strict test score assessments. In Mobile, the department chose from among the top 10 scorers to fill three vacant positions, rather than select the three highest scorers. Hunter also accused the department of watering down standards to hire more blacks, and switching from objective to subjective exams.
Do fire and police departments across the country use similar tactics? Most likely. If departments hired and promoted on an objective highest-scores standard, minorities would sue, claiming disparate impact. When departments hire and promote based on a subjective standard, higher scorers who’re shut out of jobs and promotions are justifiably resentful.
Filed under: Judiciary | |2 Comments
Remember the Berkeley High School (BHS) science labs controversy? The school’s Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students, proposed to eliminate before- and after-school science labs and divert resources to narrowing the intractable racial academic achievement gap.
(Also see Berkeley High May Drop “White” Science Labs)
BHS has the widest racial academic achievement gap in California, but parents and guardians of students at BHS circulated a petition that asserted such “devastating cuts would force science teachers to eliminate many of the labs that enrich the experience for students by having them ‘do science.’ These cuts would result in the reduction in coverage of the state standards and the inability to effectively use instructional strategies that support student learning. This flies in the face of the current push for equity and the 2020 Vision. To close the achievement gap, students require more instruction, not less; more time with qualified instructors, not less.”
The school district compromised. From Berkeleyside:
“Under the plan, proposed by superintendent Bill Huyett…AP and IB science labs are preserved, and other science courses will provide optional labs in either 0 or 7th period, as happens this year.
“The plan that passed provides 1.4 full-time equivalents (FTEs) for two before or after school labs for AP and IB science courses, and a single FTE for the optional labs for other science courses. The lead teachers in the BHS science department are working to get an honors designation for all students who take these labs, so that students’ increased efforts and understanding are reflected on their transcripts.”
In other words, the school retains some labs, and loses some.
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You may have read news stories about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the Christian Legal Society (CLS) at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law. The CLS, a group of Christ followers, wants to exclude from membership homosexuals and people who don’t follow Christ.
Although the issue is whether a tax-supported school may deny funds and other benefits to a religious student organization that requires members to agree with the group’s core religious viewpoints, others see a different issue.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn notes that Leo Martinez, the law school’s dean, is defending the school’s policy to withhold funds from student organizations not just on religious grounds. Martinez believes that a black student organization receiving funds should be required to admit members of the KKK.
Forcing student groups to admit those who don’t share their beliefs would reduce diversity, says McGurn, which social engineers love so much. “The larger fact is the way that Hastings-style ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ are actually making our campuses less tolerant and less diverse. Dean Martinez helps us see why. If every college group must admit even those who are hostile to its mission and beliefs, the result is nonsense and conformity.”
The libertarian Cato Institute and the Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty have submitted briefs in support of the CLS. Both say such groups allow the minority to have a voice. The latter contends that a forced membership policy assures “only majority viewpoints…That is a patently unreasonable way to ‘promote a diversity of viewpoints.’”
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Parents with children in Walthall County Schools in Tylertown, Mississippi, may request transfers for their children. Last year, about 250 whites and 50 blacks exercised the option and transferred their children from predominantly black Tylertown High School to predominantly white Salem Attendance Center. (Source)
Based on the numbers, it seems more white parents than black parents don’t like Tylertown. Now why is that? Why would parents want to pull a child out of one school and place him in another? Let’s speculate. Salem may be closer to where the white transferees live. The teachers at Salem are probably better qualified. Salem may rank higher academically than Tylertown. Salem’s environment may be safer and more conducive to learning. White students may feel more comfortable at Salem. Whatever the reason, requesting a transfer from Tylertown to Salem isn’t illegal or unethical.
But you wouldn’t know that from reading and listening to news stories. There mere fact that whites are leaving a predominantly black school in greater numbers than blacks is enough to brand the acts racist.
I frequently wonder about this phenomenon, the dreaded fear of a majority black school. They are to be avoided like the plague, even if it means hauling children to schools outside their neighborhoods. The implication is that black students can’t learn among their own. White students must be present, or we’re headed back to the days of Jim Crow.
I am patiently waiting for black parents to start raising a ruckus over Chicken Little pronouncements about majority black schools.
That whites may not want their children attending schools with blacks isn’t the issue. Who cares? Parents may take advantage of transfer policies as they see fit. If the Walthall County School District granted transfers only to white students, however, the actions clearly would be discriminatory. Obviously, that isn’t the case.
Whatever black parents in Walthall County may think, it doesn’t matter, anyway. A federal judge ruled that parents in the district exercising transfer options have created “racially identifiable” schools, a bad thing. The judge also found that the district’s elementary schools “were concentrating white students into certain classrooms, a practice some school officials have defended as necessary to avoid white flight from the county.”
Are teachers (white and black?) separating students based on the color of their skin or on each student’s ability? The likely reason for the concentration is the academic achievement gap. Higher achievers are grouped in higher-level classes, which typically results in a racial imbalance. It may seem wrong or racist or illegal, but it isn’t.
At any rate, the judge ordered students who transferred from Tylertown to return. One word: homeschooling. Don’t be surprised if the government tries to ban it.
The district’s transfer policy was race-neutral. After the judge’s ruling, the district has two options: stop transfers altogether, or begin approving and denying transfers based on race.
And we’re back where we started. Progress!
Filed under: Achievement Gap, Diversity | |2 Comments
Interesting piece of news: the University of Pennsylvania’s Black Law Student Association (BLSA) held a panel discussion last week titled, “Revisiting Race and Remedies: Should the Government Play A Role in Eliminating Racial Disparities in Education and Employment?“
A search for mainstream media news articles about the panel turned up nothing. Of the four panelists, John Derbyshire has written about the discussion (online, at least). Derbyshire is a believer in human biodiversity (HBD); that is, there are biological differences between races that “can’t be legislated out of existence; nor can they be ‘eliminated’ by social or political action.”
HBD is controversial, and it’s quite amazing that the organizers invited Derbyshire to participate. Physical differences between the races are obvious and readily admitted, but mental differences, well, we’re not supposed to acknowledge or talk about those. But people like Derbyshire, “racial realists,” do talk and write about the topic. At National Review Online’s The Corner blog, he said this about the event:
“It wasn’t actually very exciting. The main point of the thing was indeed to chew over Amy Wax’s new book. The argument of the book, very briefly, is that what can be done in law, politics, and social engineering to make amends for slavery and Jim Crow has been done, and the rest is up to African Americans themselves.”
On his web site, Derbyshire posted his remarks that the government should not play a role in eliminating disparities between the races, because it can’t. He says the differences are “natural” and “intractable.”
You can imagine how his presentation went over. Derbyshire said his 10-minute remarks were “followed by a sort of stunned silence, into which Madame Moderator [preferences proponent Dr. Camille Zubrinsky Charles] interjected the remark that ‘Mr. Derbyshire is here as a private guest of Prof. Wax, not at the invitation of the BLSA.’ This was not true. BLSA invited me, and I have the email trail to prove it. To his credit, David Williams, the BLSA officer who’d invited me, came up afterwards and apologized for the immoderate demeanor of our ‘moderator.’”
Impressive, but Williams’s apology would have had a greater impact if uttered during the discussion.
Part of the reason racial preferences exist is disparities between preferred minorities (blacks, Hispanics, American Indians) and whites and non-preferred minorities (certain Asians) exist. Racial preferences (euphemistically called affirmative action) are designed to artificially narrow the disparities.
As painful as some topics may be to publicly air, they need to be aired. Let’s assume for a moment that biology (genetics) is the basis for racial differences, and the differences are intractable. Do the biological component and intractability justify lowering standards for blacks, or should the government strive to achieve and put into practice race-neutral standards for all, despite differences between racial groups?
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The retiring Justice John Stevens, although appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, favors the practice of admitting and rejecting students based on race in government-supported institutions of higher learning. But not always.
In 1978, he voted with the majority in part in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which declared the school’s racial preferences scheme unconstitutional. The economically and/or educationally “disadvantaged” and/or members of preferred racial minority groups had the option of being admitted under the school’s “special program.” These students were assessed against one another rather than the general applicant pool. In other words, they were assessed under a different standard.
Although “many” whites applied as disadvantaged, none were admitted under the special program.
A rejected white student named Allan Bakke filed suit, and the lower court ruled against the school, contending the special program operated as a racial quota system that violated the state and federal constitutions and the Civil Rights Act. The court also prohibited the school from using race as an admissions factor. The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in part but reversed the lower court’s ruling that race could not be used as an admissions factor.
Justice Stevens agreed that the school violated Bakke’s rights under the Civil Rights Act. Eight years later, however, Stevens would vote to uphold a racial quota system that violated the Act. Writing at the Weekly Standard, Terry Eastland quotes Stevens on the United Steelworkers of America v. Weber case:
“The only problem for me is whether to adhere to an authoritative construction of the Act that is at odds with my understanding of the actual intent of the authors of the legislation. I conclude without hesitation that I must answer that question in the affirmative,” Stevens wrote. If you’re looking for a definition of judicial activism, there it is—the subordination of legislation intent to what the judges say.
Justice Stevens caved to quotas and admitted that his view represented judicial activism, rendering a judicial decision based on personal or political ideology rather than on the Constitution.
In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), in which the court ruled the University of Michigan’s race-based points admissions system unconstitutional, Justice Stevens filed the dissenting opinion. He contended the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring the suit. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), in which the court upheld the law school’s use of racial preferences, Justice Stevens voted with the majority.
In Ricci v. DeStefano (2009), in which the court ruled in favor of white and Hispanic New Haven firefighters whose test results were tossed because they were white and Hispanic, Justice Stevens joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent (surprise). Ginsburg claimed, among other things, that disparate impact justified the city tossing out exam results because no blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotion.
Addendum: From the National Journal’s article on Justice Stevens:
Seen in his early years as an idiosyncratic loner given to writing separate opinions joined by no other justice, Stevens was never a solid conservative. But he joined conservatives on ideologically charged issues including racial affirmative action, the death penalty, rights of criminal defendants, freedom of speech and government funding of abortion. Since about the mid-1980s, however, he has taken positions markedly to the left of where he started on these and other big issues.
…
Race. Stevens sided with conservatives in the court’s first big cases involving racial affirmative action preferences in admissions and federal contracting. In the 1978 Bakke decision, Stevens wrote a dissent joined by his three most conservative colleagues arguing that the 1964 Civil Rights Act barred state universities from giving race-based preferences to minorities. And his 1980 dissent in Fullilove v. Klutznick argued for striking down a federal law requiring racial quotas in federal contracting.
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