It's not the test, guys. It's the people taking the test. It's time to look a little deeper for the reasons that black and white applicants don't score in racially equal porportion on job application tests. Maybe the NEA needs to look at their fight against charter schools and vouchers which help the minority communities gain a better education. Maybe the problem goes a little bit deeper than a test. Are we testing the individuals or the test? Is this test, which has been "scrubbed" clean of all/any raciality, what we will base our quotas on? Evidently so, according to the New Haven city board. Nothing seems to matter to them except the outside of a person.
Are you too fat? Are you disabled? Is your skin black or brown? No, no--don't tell me what you know. That will confuse the issue. I just need to look at you to determine whether you are fit to hold a position of authority in our fire department. Don't open your mouth to say you don't have the knowledge to run the computer on the truck, or to gauge quickly the stability of a burning building so you can either send men into it--or not. I don't want to know these things. I just want to see your outsides. That will tell me immediately whether you are able to hold the position.
New Haven, just admit that you don't care about qualifications of intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, experience. All you want is to avoid the racial discrimination lawsuits. Bring on the lawsuits that come after the burning building has fallen on the six firefighters your fat/black/brown/disabled lieutenant sent into it. Bring them on, you are saying. Call us accessories to murder, but don't ever, ever call us racists.
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