Anti white bias in favor of non-white role models
Frank Ricci has been a firefighter here for 11 years, and he would do just about anything to advance to lieutenant. The last time the city offered a promotional exam, he said in a swornstatement, he gave up a second job and studied up to 13 hours a day.Mr. Ricci, who is dyslexic, paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 toread textbooks onto audiotapes. He made flashcards, took practicetests, worked with a study group and participated in mock interviews.
Mr. Ricci did well, he said, coming in sixth among the 77 candidateswho took the exam. But the city threw out the test, because none of the19 African-American firefighters who took it qualified for promotion.That decision prompted Mr. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters,including one Hispanic, to sue the city, alleging racial discrimination.
Their case, which will be argued before the Supreme Courton April 22, is the Roberts court’s first major confrontation withclaims of racial discrimination in employment and will require thejustices to choose between conflicting conceptions of the government’srole in ensuring fair treatment regardless of race.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.has repeatedly noted his hostility to what he has called the “sordidbusiness” of “divvying us up by race.” In 2007, diverging from animportant Rehnquist court decisionintegration.that allowed public universities to consider race in admissionsdecisions, the Roberts court forbade public school systems to take raceexplicitly into account to achieve or maintain
“Theway to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stopdiscriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
Butthose cases involved education, and it has been decades since the courtlast took an intensive look at the use of race in public hiring orpromotion. Among the questions swirling around Mr. Ricci’s case arewhether the law should treat diversity in the work force differentlyfrom diversity in the classroom and how it should handle hiring andpromotion tests that have a severely disparate impact on candidates ofone race.
The city says it was merely trying to comply with afederal law that views job requirements like promotional tests withgreat suspicion when they disproportionately disfavor minorityapplicants.
“The fact of the matter is it’s a flawed test,” said Victor A. Bolden, the city’s acting corporation counsel.
Mr.Bolden added that he had sympathy for Mr. Ricci. “There’s no questionthat there are people who are disappointed,” he said. “Butdisappointment doesn’t lead to a discrimination claim.”
The promotion exam was offered in the fall of 2003, and no one has been promoted since, Mr. Bolden said.
Thesuit brought by Mr. Ricci and his colleagues says that the city’srationale for throwing out the test is illegitimate and that they weredenied a chance for promotion on account of the color of their skin.Karen Lee Torre, a lawyer for the firefighters, declined to beinterviewed and said she had instructed her clients not to speak toreporters.
John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., which filed a briefsupporting the city, said the case, Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428,must be understood against the backdrop of what he described aspervasive racial discrimination in firefighting and the pitfalls ofthinking that a test can capture the qualities needed for leadership inlife-or-death situations.
“Firefighting is a skilled job whereall of the skills are learned on the job,” Mr. Payton said. “It’s areally good job, and it’s been racially exclusive in most of our majorcities.”
In a briefsupporting the white firefighters, the National Association of PoliceOrganizations saw the injection of racial politics into public safety.Promotion decisions should be based on merit, the group said.Race-neutral decisions foster camaraderie and a sense of fairness, itadded, saying that people who work in public safety “are, in the main,effectively colorblind.”
But Donald Day, a representative of theInternational Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters,questioned the value of the New Haven test, which included written andoral components. “An individual’s ability to answer a multiple-choiceexam,” Mr. Day told the city’s Civil Service Board, “does nothing butmeasure their ability to read and retain.”
There are moreimportant values, he added. “Young black and Latino kids have everyright,” he said, “to see black and Latino officers on those fire trucksthat are riding through their community. They have every right to lookfor a role model.”