The Entitlement Fraud

Suppose you are studying for your dream job, a job that will be interesting, rewarding, and that will pay well and provide good benefits. You expect that 1000 people will be hired when you graduate. The hiring process will require that you demonstrate knowledge of all aspects of your qualifications. However you learn that there are 10,000 people expected to apply for that job. How hard would you study?

Now let's change the scenario a bit. The people hiring not only want employees who can do the job, they also want a certain physical characteristic, namely red hair. In fact they are willing to hire people otherwise unqualified if they have naturally red hair. Of the 10,000 people studying for that job, only 800 are redheads and you are one of them. That means you are essentially guaranteed a job. Now how hard would you study?

“That's silly,” you say. “What employer would ever do such a thing? If they did they would only encourage certain groups to slack off. The employer would end up with incompetent employees. Other employees would resent them and the incompetents would feel inferior. Morale and company performance would both suffer.”

Sadly the answer is that lots of employers do similar things, and our government encourages them to do it. In fact government is the prime offender. The desired characteristics are not red hair but dark skin or two X chromosomes. Any employer with an insufficient number of employees in those categories is considered to be discriminatory, regardless of other reasons for the workforce makeup. Universities also attempt to admit students at least partly on the basis of ethnicity. The results are predictable. We've created a form of identity-based society. Groups of people think that they are entitled to jobs or advanced education because of their ethnicity or sex. In all too many cases, identity supersedes qualification.

For example, “Black American college students planning to go on to post-graduate education were found by one study to feel no sense of urgency about needing to prepare themselves academically 'because they believe that certain rules would simply be set aside for them.'”* That study was done before such things as the Bakke decision, but it does illustrate the problems created by entitlements. People simply don't work as hard when they perceive no need to do so.

Similar studies have found a lackadaisical approach to learning elsewhere when some ethnicities were given preference for hiring or admission. Malaysian students were legally entitled to preferential hiring for government jobs, over the better-educated Chinese minority. In the American Virgin Islands children knew they would have government jobs waiting so they failed to apply themselves in school. Meanwhile their West Indian classmates did better academically but were not eligible for those jobs. In those cases it was the majority getting the preferences and slacking off because of those preferences.* *

The result in such cases is discrimination against those who work harder to become qualified. Another result is poor performance of all employees. Those employees hired (or students admitted) to achieve “racial balance” or something similar are seldom qualified so they cannot do the work well. The qualified employees resent those hired to meet quotas, so they often fail to work to their ability. Everybody loses.

The U.S. Naval Academy is a sad example. Most applicants with C average grades and a 500 SAT score can forget about ever being admitted. Not so for black applicants. In an effort to “remove artificial barriers” they can be sent to a remedial school in Rhode Island where they will have a chance to improve their grades. Even if they fail there they may be admitted to the academy. Then if they do poorly in either class work or deportment they will be treated with kid gloves in order to reach the de facto quota of black naval officers.

As a result of this special treatment, those “special” students are the subject of resentment. Their white classmates resent the fact that they got special treatment. Of course there are plenty of qualified black cadets at the academy and they resent the fact that people may think that they were also admitted under affirmative action instead for their very real qualifications. As citizens we might all resent the fact that defense of our country is being entrusted to the unqualified.

Of course we should help inner city kids whose schools are hardly worthy of the name. However the way to do it is to provide them with opportunity for a good education, not to put them into situations where they are unqualified. Unfortunately too many people want to do it backwards. They want to build the superstructure before the foundation by admitting the unqualified to higher education or by hiring them. Instead we should build the foundation first by educating them at the primary and secondary level.

College admission is not an entitlement. Neither is a job. We need to encourage people to become qualified for education and jobs, not just give it to them because of skin color. Giving someone an “entitlement” because of irrelevant physical features deprives the person of the satisfaction that comes from being a productive citizen. It deprives others of the jobs or education they might have had. It deprives the country of what that person might have produced had he developed his potential instead of just taking “entitlements.”

We should all work to stop this nonsense, for the betterment of the country and for the benefit of both those discriminated against and those handicapped by receiving preferences.

*Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, p40, referring to Daniel C. Thompson, Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads

** Ibid

Judge Sotomayor and the Firefighters

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Imagine yourself in the following situation:

Your favorite sports team just won a hard-fought and important game. Their months of practice and hard physical training practice paid off. The win puts your team in good position to win the championship so the players and fans are about to start celebrating. But wait what is this? The referee is signaling for attention. He asks for a microphone and announces, “The score shows that the team with the green jerseys won. However we believe that there should be more winning teams with white jerseys so we are nullifying the results and officially this game was never played. It will not count toward the championship.”

Or if you’re not a sports fan, imagine you’ve just completed a degree that qualifies you for the career of your dreams. Maybe it’s nursing, engineering, teaching or whatever you think would be an enjoyable and rewarding career. You got high grades and have been offered several positions. You take one of those jobs and go to the human resources department to do the paperwork for new employees. The HR manager takes one look at you and says, “Oh dear! We can’t have this! You have blonde hair and we’ve just decided that at least half of our new employees must have brown, black or red hair. We are canceling your employment contract. You call the other companies who offered you employment and find that they have similarly changed their requirements.

In either case I’m sure you would be incensed that people would change the rules after the game is over. In fact in some countries any referee who made such an announcement after a soccer game would put his life in danger. Yet many of our judges make equivalent announcements in employment situations. Sonia Sotomayor, nominated for the Supreme Court is one of those judges. In the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, she and other judges allowed the rules to be changed after the game was over. This had the sole objective of disallowing a win by a group they did not want to win.

New Haven, Conn. had arranged for a test to determine which firefighters would be promoted to captain or lieutenant. That test was carefully designed to be job-related, exactly what we would want is it not? All firefighters eligible for promotion had the opportunity to study and learn the needed material, then take the test and compete for one of eight lieutenant or seven captain positions. After months of study, the pressure of the test, and the anxiety of waiting, the results were finally announced – and promptly nullified. The rules had been changed after the game was over.

Why were the results nullified? There was no question of fairness, all test takers had the same opportunity to study (including one dyslexic who had to work extra hard but qualified for promotion in spite of his difficulty). Nor was there any question of applicability, nobody questioned if the test was in fact job-related. No, the nullification was because some people did not like the outcome. Not enough minorities qualified for promotion so all the hard studying of all test takers was for naught. After it was over the city decided that the game was never played because they didn’t like the results. That was racial discrimination, pure and simple.

I find it unconscionable that a city would do such a thing and that any judge would allow it to stand. Yet Judge Sotomayor and other judges did allow it, in spite of a clear constitutional provision that equal protection under the law shall not be denied. How can they claim that it is equal protection when people of one skin color are protected from failure while those of a different color are forced into failure?

In my mind, this type of decision should prevent any judge from being promoted, especially to the Supreme Court. One of the most important functions of that court is protection of the constitution. When a judge allows such a flagrant constitutional violation, that judge should never even be considered for promotion.

The constitutional provision should be enough for the courts to overturn New Haven’s discriminatory ruling. However there are good reasons why the city should never have made such a decision, even had it been constitutional.

First is the issue of fairness to employees and the resulting adverse effects on performance. Firefighters, like most employees, perform better and have higher morale if they believe they are being treated fairly. If that is not the case, they will have low morale and little motivation to improve their skills and to go out of the way to do an outstanding job. Why spend all that time in hard, boring study if your employer is just going to ignore your improved skills? Why risk your life to save someone in a house or car fire if your employer is going to promote someone on the basis of an irrelevant characteristic such as skin color?

Second, from the point of view of a citizen, what kind of firefighters and fire department officers do we want? Suppose you are having a heart attack, or trapped in a house fire or a wrecked car with gasoline leaking. A fire truck approaches. Do you care about the skin color of the firefighters aboard? I wouldn’t. I don’t care if they are black, brown, white or green with purple polka dots. Nor would it matter to me how many are male and how many are female. It would matter a great deal that they be competent and dedicated to their job. Any employment or promotion considerations beyond that are discrimination and risk my life.

Allowing racial discrimination in public employment not only violates the 14th amendment to the constitution, it is also unfair to those employees and puts citizens at risk. Any imbalance should be addressed at the education level, not by discriminating against qualified people of any race. Judges who approve discrimination should never be promoted and could do the country a favor by resigning.