Your emotions may be very righteous, Eddie. Or they may be reverse discrimination caused by white guilt. But if emotion entitles you to determine winners and loosers in competitive endeavors, where does it stop?

What playing field would you like to see “leveled” next? What about the unintended consequences of perpetuating the practice of making judgments and selections dependent upon skin color? In your mind do two wrongs really make things right?

Had the roles been reversed would you be more supportive of the Supreme Court decision?

As fighting fires generally takes up but a fraction of a modern fire department’s time, I can understand the reasoning behind why their personnel should better reflect the demographics of the communities they serve. The Libertarian in me says they should focus instead on fire prevention and safety than the squishy agenda of social engineers, but I see the point.

Eddie, in your experience are there any fire or other public safety agencies in the country that get this sort of thing right? All we read about are the lawsuits and activist protests. Is there a city that can be looked at as a good example?

Ah the old “Some don’t test well” excuse. Didn’t one of the firefighters in the New Haven case overcome a learning disability to actually “test well?”

“And organizations that cultivate large, diverse pools of qualified people are more effective than those that do not — whether its a fire department or widget manufacturer”

Opinion or Fact?

Diversity for the sake of diversity isn’t going to improve performance. Promote an undeserving for reasons not directly related to the job and see how effective you have made the widget manufacturer.

Has anyone actually seenread this Test? Are the powers at New Haven so racists that they were able to create a test noone could pass except a white person? Since they’re racists, we’ll jsut assume the one Hispanic got lucky or cheated. I suspect if the test was actually so flawed it would have been posted for all to see long ago.

Eddie,

The New Haven case is a model for fairness in determining promotions in the city’s fire department. Your call for diversity solely on the OUTCOME you desire is a call for discrimination against whatever group is not in favor (white males). It’s funny how liberals can ignore actual Constitutional safeguards like the 14th Amendment, but have no trouble conjuring up new rights to assuage their politically correct liberal guilt.

Poor Eddie, has to rely on opinion (his own) to make his point. Name an occupation where you can test poorly and be considered qualified for the job. Medical profession? Your own legal profession? Education?

Why even bother with school? Just hand out diplomas to whoever bothers to show up at graduation. Oh wait! That’s what some schools do already in order to preserve the student’s “self-esteem”, or avoid an enraged parent who never bothered with the kid until he was home 365 days a year.

One of the applicants in New Haven is dyslexic. He purchased the study materials and had them transposed onto audio tapes so he could study for the exam. He received the 6th-highest score! Should he be denied his promotion based on his race? The exam itself was developed by a 3rd party who specializes in employment testing, and the exam was reviewed and approved by a panel of experts as required by federal law. The department went out of its way to ensure fairness, and I’m sure they would dispute your denigration of their efforts.

What’s really disturbing about this issue is that it reveals liberals as the biggest rascists of all. They don’t believe blacks, Hispanics, or Native Americans can achieve anything without an assist from the ‘Great White Father’, or a “wise Latina”.

If careful reading were a requirement for commenting on this blog, SoCoBoy, MercMan, and Kaplan Meier wouldn’t make the cut. They spout rather than address my points, presumably because they find it therapeutic. But they haven’t laid a glove on anything I wrote.

I don’t, btw, favor changing rules in the middle of the game. The key to what I propose is to do much better on the front end.

If you read the comments, here, I think that you will find that the real apologists for underachieving are those who insist — with a whole lot of bitter, crybaby whining — that we can’t improve our methods for developing a broad, diverse, highly qualified pools of employees.

Go Fish asks if I know of “any fire or other public safety agencies in the country that get this sort of thing right.” It’s a good question. When I was on the police board, I spent a lot of time finding out about the promotion process. I thought it was pretty good, in part because there was a lot of careful thinking about what testing and performance record best measured the qualifications needed to excel at the job.

One of the big challenges was to get talented people to participate in the process. Many worried it wouldn’t be fair — and given an undeniable history of political favoritism and racial exclusion the concern was understandable.

The way you overcome that is to mentor and encourage talented people — just as talented white officers, over many generations, often within the same family, had been mentored and encouraged.

During my time on the board, the system wasn’t perfect. But we had lots of superb candidates, black and white, to choose from.

It is easy to want diversity when it is someone elses job at stake. What about your job Mr Roth? You need to give up your position to a minority canidate. Someone possibly less qualified, but what the heck its all about diversity right? Oh I get it, some “other” white male.

Yes. Giving up centuries’ long privilege and making sure other well qualified candidates get a fair share of opportunity can be hard.

“If careful reading were a requirement for commenting on this blog, SoCoBoy, MercMan, and Kaplan Meier wouldn’t make the cut. They spout rather than address my points, presumably because they find it therapeutic. But they haven’t laid a glove on anything I wrote.” - Eddie Roth

Guys, please put Eddie’s mind back when you’re through playing with it. If you’re not careful you might accidentally open it and contaminate the dogma with exposure to logical thinking. Then you would have one less pundit at the Post to exemplify the arrogance and temper of the leftist mindset.

Eddie doesn’t understand why racial discrimination should apply equally for everyone. He really thinks only bad people would disagree with his opinion of what is adequate affirmative action and preferential treatment to right past wrongs. So please play nice with Eddie and try not to expect too much. And keep in mind, it’s his Papa’s playground we’re using.