Reverse Discrimination against promotion?

[Dudde]

I didn't see a thread about this anywhere yet, but I might suck at searching too:

 

As reported by both USAToday and CNN, there's apparently a group of firefighters who are bringing up a lawsuit for reverse discrimination on a written and oral test for promotions in the unit.

 

From CNN

Key plaintiff Frank Ricci and others took promotional exams in 2003 for lieutenant and captain positions that had become available in New Haven, Connecticut's second-largest city. The personnel department contracted with a private firm to design an oral and written exam. When the results came back, city lawyers expressed concern about the results because none of the black firefighters and only one Latino who took the exam would have been promoted.

 

This kinda makes me wonder what kind of questions exactly are on this test - shouldn't a promotion test, especially for fire-fighting, be based on some competencies and what they know, as opposed to asking "what nationality were your parents?"

 

Does anybody have a better idea of what kind of questions could be given to promote any sort of on-the-line results? I couldn't think of any serious ones.

[CharonY]

I am not sure whether where you get that nationality was asked. The problem was that especially blacks scored lower than whites and as a result the test was voided due to concern of a racial bias. And the suit is against the decision. One probably needs to take a look at the test and maybe conduct an analysis to see whether there actually was a bias, or whether it is well into statistical fluctuation (depending on how many blacks actually took the test.

[Dudde]

my bad -

 

that was shoddy wording on my part. That wasn't a question I think was actually asked, just a sarcastic example of how you'd get such divided results.

 

I wish they would release the test questions for review, it would be interesting to see - I love the fact that we have so much protection for minorities, but I've seen it taken too far in some cases ( e.g. ignoring a promotion for someone who's far more qualified over a promotion for someone else, to meet racial quotas.) This test has piqued my interest as to which it would be

[CharonY]

Ah I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Sounded like a knee-jerk response. But without further data it is hard to evaluate.

[SH3RL0CK]

Regardless of the outcome, someone isn't going to be happy.

[CharonY]

Well, that is always the case.