The reaction to this case just adds to the Mt. Everest of evidence that conservatives don't give a damn about justice or equal treatment. They're all about preserving their (often largely hypothetical, as in the case of working class Republicans) privilege and defending it as something they deserve. I'm always amazed by the level of howling that follows any "reverse discrimination," whereas what I guess must be "forward discrimination" goes on every day without too much comment since it's considered normal, proper and just.

As far as the Ricci case goes, where you stand really comes down to which the following hypotheses you accept:

either (1) you believe that a test written by well-educated whites is a complete, fair, and objective way to evaluate applicants, so if blacks do poorly on it, they must be less qualified and/or less intelligent;

or (2) you recognize that any testing instrument has inherent flaws and biases because its creators are only human, and you believe that all "races" (and sexes) are, on average, more or less equal in intelligence, so if a testing instrument reveals big discrepancies, it's more likely that the testing instrument comes up short rather than the test-takers.

We'll never really know the truth, but let me ask you this: Which world would you rather live in?

i consider my socially liberal, and even i can recognize that your argument is flawed. there are numerous other hypothesis that can explain the test results. your first hypothesis would be based on the blacks taking the test being a statistically representative sample of all black americans. i don't know how many took the test, but i'm willing to bet not enough to be representative. so what if within this extremely small sub category of black americans (those that took the exam), all of them happened to be of sub-par intelligence. or, even if they were of average or above average intelligence, they had not taken the time to study the necessary material to perform well on that particular exam (as I believe the plantiff states he did). isn't that possible?

I'm not saying that was the case (i wouldn't presume to have any clue about the intelligence or the study habits of a group of people i've never met), but it certainly is within the realm of possibility, making your 2 options a false choice.

since there are so many successful basketball players. Time to file a lawsuit, right?

That is the fallacy of the whole discriminatory test scheme. The first person or organization that could develop an intelligence test or tests of job specific knowledge that produced racial parity across all achievement levels would win a Nobel Prize and get immensely rich at the same time.

Why hasn't it been done? Apparently because it can't be done. Why can't it be done?

Are blacks and non-Asian minorities as a group, not as intelligent as whites, and whites less intelligent than Asians? Well, we can't accept that answer or even any shred of objective evidence that may lead to that conclusion.

Are they not as well educated? Probably not, for a number of different reasons, unfortunately knowledge is what we are seeking to test, so lack of knowledge for whatever reason is going to put them at a disadvantage in work and life and on standardized tests.

Are they just as a group genetically/culturally bad at taking standardized written tests? I suppose this is a possible reason, but it points to a deficiency in their inate abilities only slightly less disturbing than being as a group, less intelligent. This cause does however suggest a remedy that minorities favor and is gaining wider use; oral testing which has the blatantly obvious shortcoming of increased subjectivity in grading. The race of the test taker is also obvious to the testers, so racial based outcomes can be more easily achieved during testing rather than after testing.

mcmallen:

This cause does however suggest a remedy that minorities favor and is gaining wider use; oral testing which has the blatantly obvious shortcoming of increased subjectivity in grading. The race of the test taker is also obvious to the testers, so racial based outcomes can be more easily achieved during testing rather than after testing.

So why not separate the tester and the testee in different rooms, and conduct it through an intercom? There's no reason the interviewer needs to know his name or race, just his answers. You could even electronically disguise his voice, if you thought it necessary.

pxtot:

(1) you believe that a test written by well-educated whites is a complete, fair, and objective way to evaluate applicants, so if blacks do poorly on it, they must be less qualified and/or less intelligent;

do you know for a fact the test was written by white people? what we DO know is that the city took enormous time and money BEFORE testing to make sure it was fair and balanced and related to the job. so, if we believe that, and i have no reason not to believe, ANY person who did poorly is less qualified! whether because of lack of education, or dedication, i don't know. i do know there is no proof for a "built-in" intelligence diference between races.

based on your "logic", since asian-american do above and beyond anyone else in SAT and college finals, the tests must be rigged to help them. yeh, right!

All of the defenders of white privilege in this string seem to share an inability to distinguish between individual test-takers (who can be said to have some kind of "innate" intelligence, though the ability of any language-based test to measure that "innate" intelligence with any accuracy, no matter how "g-loaded" the instrument, is open to question) and social and/or racial groups.

These kids seem to think that "IQ" is a genuine, objectively determinable entity. This is not the case.

When one attacks the IQ cult, they inevitably reply that one is "anti-science;" the equivalent of the deniers of Global Warming or Evolution. If it pleases you to believe in this nonsense, go ahead, but the evidence for it is all tainted. And how DO you know that the city took "enormous time and money before testing[sic] to make sure it was fair and balanced (where have we heard THOSE words before?) and related to the job?"

Try coming up with a citation to prove your point.

mcmallen:

Are blacks and non-Asian minorities as a group, not as intelligent as whites, and whites less intelligent than Asians? Well, we can't accept that answer or even any shred of objective evidence that may lead to that conclusion.

Are they not as well educated? Probably not, for a number of different reasons, unfortunately knowledge is what we are seeking to test, so lack of knowledge for whatever reason is going to put them at a disadvantage in work and life and on standardized tests.

Are they just as a group genetically/culturally bad at taking standardized written tests? I suppose this is a possible reason, but it points to a deficiency in their inate abilities only slightly less disturbing than being as a group, less intelligent. This cause does however suggest a remedy that minorities favor and is gaining wider use; oral testing which has the blatantly obvious shortcoming of increased subjectivity in grading. The race of the test taker is also obvious to the testers, so racial based outcomes can be more easily achieved during testing rather than after testing.

This is the kind of thinking that Rush Limbaugh loves.

Define, please, what "objective evidence" would be in the world of aptitude testing?

Test scores always correlate much better with how an individual scores on similar tests than they do with any real-world performance. Even when they are tests of "knowledge," because applied knowledge is quite different from test knowledge. Furthermore, there is no such thing as an innate "IQ" waiting to be objectively measured by IQ tests. Rather, your IQ is by definition how well you do on an IQ test.

And unless test-taking is part of your job, I don't see how being worse at test-taking means that you are worse at your job. Lots of people are shitty test-takers, and I don't think it's controversial or offensive to say that those cultures, or even those individual families, with a strong study/school orientation produce better test-takers.

you seem to be talking to some imaginary guy, certainly not reacting to my post. maybe you want to read more carefully next time, before you resort to generalizations and name-calling?

i did not defend any "IQ" cult, i attacked the perverse notion presented in the previous post that in any group of people, test results must be equal across race or the test is flawed.

>>And how DO you know that the city took "enormous time and money before testing[sic] to make sure it was fair and balanced

Read up, please, then get back to me. This is a LIBERAL city if you haven't noticed. How about hiring a consultant who specializes in this discipline? Involving the union and the NACCP? Still not good enough?

ayalonValley:

you seem to be talking to some imaginary guy, certainly not reacting to my post. maybe you want to read more carefully next time, before you resort to generalizations and name-calling?

Not reacting to your post? Quite right. As for the "reading more carefully" part...

mcmallen

In fact, in a way this has been done. When the daddy of IQ tests was being designed (Stanford-Binet), it was discovered that women did worse than men. One conclusion might be that women have lower IQs on average. But that was not the conclusion of the test designers. They could not think of a good reason why this should be, so they changed the test to make the results the same, on average. As they have been ever since.

It is, I think, a revealing fact about American society and the role of race that a similar procedure applied to blacks would be considered, by most people I think and certainly by "conservatives" to be political correctness run amok. Instead, they prefer to believe that blacks have lower IQs. This certainly seems to be the conclusion of many participants of this Fray, and ov many others (most notoriously, Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame).

bfish:

i consider my socially liberal, and even i can recognize that your argument is flawed. there are numerous other hypothesis that can explain the test results. your first hypothesis would be based on the blacks taking the test being a statistically representative sample of all black americans. i don't know how many took the test, but i'm willing to bet not enough to be representative. so what if within this extremely small sub category of black americans (those that took the exam), all of them happened to be of sub-par intelligence. or, even if they were of average or above average intelligence, they had not taken the time to study the necessary material to perform well on that particular exam (as I believe the plantiff states he did). isn't that possible?

I'm not saying that was the case (i wouldn't presume to have any clue about the intelligence or the study habits of a group of people i've never met), but it certainly is within the realm of possibility, making your 2 options a false choice.

Excellent point about a statistically relevant sample. For LT it was 19. For Captain it was 8.

So that's your argument: that New Haven is a liberal city?

You lazy bastard. Ideology is not evidence.

Also, AV, though you say there is no evidence of racial disparity (well, there IS evidence, but it's faulty), you find yourself in bed with racists anyway. And too bad for you. If you don't like the company, don't blame me for that.

Tarkol:

Excellent point about a statistically relevant sample. For LT it was 19. For Captain it was 8.

Well, duh. But if this was a statistical anomaly, either because the New Haven fire dept has unusually stupid black people or because the black people all happened to have a bad test day, then the tests should still be run again. New Haven did the right thing, even if they did it for not quite the right reasons.