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In view of the Supreme Court decision in the New Haven firefighter case, I’m going to postpone the continued discussion of factual analysis. Instead I’ll discuss the New Haven case while it is still fresh.
The typical news headline in this case is that the white firefighters won. While true, that merely scratches the surface. There are many more winners than just a few firefighters. In fact I would argue that nearly everyone in the U.S., black, white, or any other skin color is a winner and that there are few if any real losers. True, there will be many who complain about loss of what they see as a deserved “helping hand.” However that “helping hand” is counterproductive in the long term.
First on the long list of winners in this case are members of the public who might need help from the fire department. They have more assurance that the commander of any fire-fighting unit will be competent to do his job. The firefighters are likely to be better organized and trained than they would under a less-qualified officer. The person trapped in a house fire or injured in a traffic accident will benefit directly from this improvement. This applies not only to New Haven, but across the country as well.
Second, millions of young people will have greater assurance that their study will pay off as they prepare for the careers of their choice. The New Haven ruling tells government agencies that merit and qualification, not skin color should determine hiring and promotion. It is likely that this non-discrimination will extend to non-government employers as well. This decision is likely to strike a blow against the de facto quota system that has come to exist in this country.
Third, minorities will benefit in at least two ways. First, as hiring and promotion become more merit based there will be less suspicion that the minority employees got their jobs because of skin color. Sadly, many competent people have been tarred with the same brush as those who got their positions as a result of the quota system. Those competent and dedicated employees will be more respected and have more self esteem as the system of preferences dies off.
The second way minorities will benefit is that they will be encouraged to develop their natural talents instead of relying on preferences. I recall the case of a secretary in our department many years ago. She had ability and could have been an excellent employee. Instead she did not apply herself and when threatened with discipline would say in effect, “You can’t fire me, I’m a black woman and you need me for the numbers.” Eventually she left the company, taking her attitude with her. It’s impossible to say for certain how much that attitude had to do with this next but it probably played a factor. Sadly I later saw her picture in the paper, sentenced to jail for dealing drugs.
“But wait,” someone says. “What about the minority firefighters denied promotion? Weren’t they harmed?” I would say that they were not. It is true that they may have had to live on a lower salary than had they been promoted. However salary is not the only or even the most important consideration in job satisfaction. Most people like to feel that they are productive in their employment. Promotions or hiring for preferential reasons militate against that, a person who got his job because of his skin color is unlikely to have the same satisfaction as will someone hired and retained because of his work.
If an employee thinks he can get promoted because of his skin color, he is likely to depend on that skin. However if he is confident that promotions are merit-based, he is likely to work harder and study harder to become more qualified. That will increase his satisfaction with his job and his life. For that reason I maintain that the firefighters who did poorly on the test also will benefit in the long term. They cannot change their skin color but they can change how they work and how they study for the next promotional exam.
It is true that many minorities have suffered discrimination and economic problems in the U.S. and elsewhere. However history shows that those minorities who overcome such problems do so by struggle, hard work, and education. Preferential treatment simply helps them stay in the same situation and thus works against them long term.
As the country follows the New Haven decision, everybody will benefit from the wisdom of the fourteenth amendment. That amendment simply requires that no state “shall deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As I’ve described in my blog about the Gander Test, New Haven attempted to deny white firefighters the same protection the city would have given to minorities. The Supreme Court decided correctly in this case and we will all benefit from that decision.
Showing posts with label firefighters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label firefighters. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Gander Test
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There is often controversy over just what is and is not racial or sexual discrimination. Is it discrimination to give preference to someone in hiring or promotion? How about admission to a university? These questions have created lots of controversy and I’m afraid that too often our laws and court decisions have only confused the issue. However there is a clear test that can cut through the fog. It’s what I call the Gander Test.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. That old saying provides the basis for the Gander Test, a sure-fire means of determining if a decision or action is discriminatory. The test is simple, quick and as far as I can tell, 100% accurate if applied honestly. It consists of simply interchanging “goose” and “gander” roles in our thinking and discussion. If we think something might be discriminatory, we switch roles of the affected parties. If it is discrimination after the switch then it was certainly discrimination before the switch.
For example, suppose you are a manager who needs to hire someone. You have two acceptable candidates for the job, one a white man, one a woman or minority. You decide to hire the white man but someone asks if that was because of your bias. Or maybe you decide on the other person and someone asks if you were overcompensating just to get racial balance or meet a quota. How can you be sure you decided fairly? All you have to do is look at what you would have done had the qualifications been switched. What if each had attended the school the other in fact attended, worked where the other in fact worked, had the references the other in fact has, etc? Would your decision change if the qualifications were reversed? If not, your decision was almost certainly based on bias.
This can also apply to the case of the New Haven firefighter promotion test (Ricci v. DeStefano), so prominent in the discussion of Judge Sotomayor. Nobody was promoted because not enough minorities qualified for promotion. What if the situation had been reversed? What if, on a similar test in some fire department, 80% of Blacks qualified for promotion but only 40% of Whites? What if the city said, “we are going to nullify the results because not enough white people qualified.” Nearly everyone would object and call it racism. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would organize demonstrations and protests. Editorials across the country would condemn the action. Almost certainly the courts would throw it out. Switching positions of goose and gander (Whites and Blacks in this case) allows us to see the discrimination clearly.
What’s that you say? Surely such a thing couldn’t happen, we would never expect Blacks to do better on any employment test than do whites. Think again. If the test involves running with a football or getting a basketball in a hoop, whites are seriously under-represented. Both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have a much smaller percentage of white players than would be expected from the percentage of whites in the general population. What should we do about it? Should we force professional sports to use race-balancing measures when they decide which college players they are going to hire? Nearly everyone would object and call that racial discrimination. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would organize protests, justifiable protests I might add.
What if a candidate for high office were to say, “I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life”? Again everybody would recognize this as bias. In fact many did recognize bias in Judge Sotomayor’s equivalent statement, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Again the Gander Test shows the clear bias in the original statement. Even President Obama who appointed and continues to support Sotomayor recognized the problem, calling it a poor choice of words. (Though the fact that she made essentially the same statement many times over a period of at least 15 years would lead us to the conclusion that it represents her real belief, not something she said by mistake.)
But wait, you say. Is there no constitutional way to help those minorities who don’t have the same education and opportunities as the rest of us? There is as long as the efforts to help are based on disadvantage and not on skin color. What if a state identifies poor schools and institutes a program to improve them, or to allow students from those schools to attend private or charter schools. That would pass the Gander Test. If the bad schools are mostly black (as so many are) we just imagine if it would be constitutional to allow special efforts to improve education of white children in bad schools. The answer is yes it is. The program is aimed at the disadvantages of the children, not at their skin color. In fact a case might be made that equal protection under the law requires that states provide equivalent educational opportunities to children in poor and rich neighborhoods.
The 14th amendment to the constitution requires equal protection under the law for everybody, regardless of race. Giving white people special protection or other advantage violates that clause. So does giving special protection to Blacks, Hispanics, or green people if they were to exist. It is the duty of our judges and elected officials to support that equal protection. It is also the duty of the citizens to encourage their “hired hands” to support such equal protection. We should all contact our senators and ask them to consider this when they vote on the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor or any other prospective judge.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
There is often controversy over just what is and is not racial or sexual discrimination. Is it discrimination to give preference to someone in hiring or promotion? How about admission to a university? These questions have created lots of controversy and I’m afraid that too often our laws and court decisions have only confused the issue. However there is a clear test that can cut through the fog. It’s what I call the Gander Test.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. That old saying provides the basis for the Gander Test, a sure-fire means of determining if a decision or action is discriminatory. The test is simple, quick and as far as I can tell, 100% accurate if applied honestly. It consists of simply interchanging “goose” and “gander” roles in our thinking and discussion. If we think something might be discriminatory, we switch roles of the affected parties. If it is discrimination after the switch then it was certainly discrimination before the switch.
For example, suppose you are a manager who needs to hire someone. You have two acceptable candidates for the job, one a white man, one a woman or minority. You decide to hire the white man but someone asks if that was because of your bias. Or maybe you decide on the other person and someone asks if you were overcompensating just to get racial balance or meet a quota. How can you be sure you decided fairly? All you have to do is look at what you would have done had the qualifications been switched. What if each had attended the school the other in fact attended, worked where the other in fact worked, had the references the other in fact has, etc? Would your decision change if the qualifications were reversed? If not, your decision was almost certainly based on bias.
This can also apply to the case of the New Haven firefighter promotion test (Ricci v. DeStefano), so prominent in the discussion of Judge Sotomayor. Nobody was promoted because not enough minorities qualified for promotion. What if the situation had been reversed? What if, on a similar test in some fire department, 80% of Blacks qualified for promotion but only 40% of Whites? What if the city said, “we are going to nullify the results because not enough white people qualified.” Nearly everyone would object and call it racism. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would organize demonstrations and protests. Editorials across the country would condemn the action. Almost certainly the courts would throw it out. Switching positions of goose and gander (Whites and Blacks in this case) allows us to see the discrimination clearly.
What’s that you say? Surely such a thing couldn’t happen, we would never expect Blacks to do better on any employment test than do whites. Think again. If the test involves running with a football or getting a basketball in a hoop, whites are seriously under-represented. Both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have a much smaller percentage of white players than would be expected from the percentage of whites in the general population. What should we do about it? Should we force professional sports to use race-balancing measures when they decide which college players they are going to hire? Nearly everyone would object and call that racial discrimination. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would organize protests, justifiable protests I might add.
What if a candidate for high office were to say, “I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life”? Again everybody would recognize this as bias. In fact many did recognize bias in Judge Sotomayor’s equivalent statement, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Again the Gander Test shows the clear bias in the original statement. Even President Obama who appointed and continues to support Sotomayor recognized the problem, calling it a poor choice of words. (Though the fact that she made essentially the same statement many times over a period of at least 15 years would lead us to the conclusion that it represents her real belief, not something she said by mistake.)
But wait, you say. Is there no constitutional way to help those minorities who don’t have the same education and opportunities as the rest of us? There is as long as the efforts to help are based on disadvantage and not on skin color. What if a state identifies poor schools and institutes a program to improve them, or to allow students from those schools to attend private or charter schools. That would pass the Gander Test. If the bad schools are mostly black (as so many are) we just imagine if it would be constitutional to allow special efforts to improve education of white children in bad schools. The answer is yes it is. The program is aimed at the disadvantages of the children, not at their skin color. In fact a case might be made that equal protection under the law requires that states provide equivalent educational opportunities to children in poor and rich neighborhoods.
The 14th amendment to the constitution requires equal protection under the law for everybody, regardless of race. Giving white people special protection or other advantage violates that clause. So does giving special protection to Blacks, Hispanics, or green people if they were to exist. It is the duty of our judges and elected officials to support that equal protection. It is also the duty of the citizens to encourage their “hired hands” to support such equal protection. We should all contact our senators and ask them to consider this when they vote on the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor or any other prospective judge.
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