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1. 

   NoFearPup said, 4 months ago

   No one wants white men to have money…

2. 

   Bluejayz said, 4 months ago

   The eternal problem of the PC world of affirmative action. If New Haven had promoted based on the original exam results, they would have been sued by the minority firemen who weren’t promoted. Now they’ve got to promote all whites and will have their hands full of disgruntled minorities and possibly more lawsuits. You just can’t win.

3. 

   believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

   i admit I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how a firefighter promotional exam could be devised that would be unfair/discriminatory toward blacks only, since Hispanic firefighters passed it along with whites …. i simply don’t get how that could be possible

4. 

   IrishEddieOHara said, 4 months ago

   What a complete moron Clay Bennett is. In the real world, those who can do get promoted and those who cannot either go back and study harder or find some other sort of work.

   Complete liberal hogwash in a panel.

5. 

   harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

   Burn baby burn. Time for the pendulum to right itself and just stop swinging. If you still see the color of a persons skin and think that it is important you need to burn right along this idea whose time past 10 years ago.

6. 

   rtt470 said, 4 months ago

   Affirmative action is bull. The right person for the job. Period. I was screwed twice on a firefighters test because “the tests are to difficult”. If you can’t pass the test, you shouldn’t do the job. The test isn’t hard. Minorities just don’t show up for the tests to take them. North Dakota voted away Affirmative action, the rest of the country should follow suit. Where is equality if you have laws protecting minorities and not whites?

7. 

   Simon_Jester said, 4 months ago

   Then I take it all you folks think ClarenceThomas should be removed from the Supremes?

   ( Got into Yale Law School by way of Affirmative Action. )

8. 

   DrCanuck said, 4 months ago

   Right, it’s time to reverse course and start pushing those minorities back down to the bottom of society where they belong. This is a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male-oriented country an’ Jaysus died to keep it that way an’ soldiers have shed blood to protect it an’…..

   (good grief!)

9. 

   Gladius said, 4 months ago

   Affirmative action was necessary when it was passed. There were many qualified minorities that never would have had jobs just because of their skin color.

   That does not mean that it should be eternal or that it doesn’t create its own set of injustices. Unfortunately, I don’t think we are quite ready to scrap it. There are still parts of the country where it is necessary. I’ve lived in some areas that are still very prejudiced. Often you’d have trouble noticing it unless you lived there since the percentage of minorities living those areas was practically nonexistant. That being said, I think we need to leave it to the courts, at the moment, to decide if any discrimination has ocurred. In this case, I think they got it right. The fire department didn’t even authorize an examination of the test to look for bias. It was a simple we didn’t get the results we were looking for therefore invalidate the results.

10. 

    TrickyPickle said, 4 months ago

    How do you bias a fireman’s test against a specific minority?

    “Question 1) Are you easy to spot buck naked at night? Yes/No”

    Seriously though, I’m curious how this works. Is it blatant such as disqualifying anyone who lives in certain neighborhoods?

11. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    I don’t know anything about firefighters exams but the analogy segment on SAT’s would be a good example. One reason for the removal of analogies on the SAT was because the analgous relationships being looked for assumed a certain upbringing that minorities did not have. It was an environmental issue rather than intelligence. While I understand the argument, I don’t see that they found anything to replace the logic testing.

12. 

    dtroutma said, 4 months ago

    I saw far more abuse of affirmative action to place females in “non traditional roles”, than any ethnic or racial minorities. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY should be the rule, but after a few initial years of leveling the playing field, and yes, removing ethnocentric bias, affirmative action should have died a just death.

13. 

    HUMPHRIES said, 4 months ago

    Interesting to note who’s gotten upset with this toon …

14. 

    parkersinthehouse said, 4 months ago

    luvya humphs oh - welcome back

15. 

    missbdiamond said, 4 months ago

    ..call me crazy, but when it comes to blood or smoke, I will always want the A+ student on the job.
    I’m an old white woman who always wanted to go to medical school. I never got better than a C in chemistry and I realized that it wasn’t meant to be. In stead of suing, might be nice if people accepted who they are, move on, and find what strengths they have, and use them. Whining and suing is NEVER attractive.

16. 

    DrCanuck said, 4 months ago

    Hey, INanity, you rednecks need all the allies you can get.

17. 

    BillWsr said, 4 months ago

    A job promotion exam should only include questions that will show that the examinee knows their craft and the extended leadership requirement of the position applied for well enough to execute that position.

    Those who would advance someone because of their race or gender or any other unnessary requirement, are doing the people who depend on that knowlege and leadership an injustice.

    Equality simply means the same, or no preferences. Those who demand preferences deminish everyone’s freedoms. To deminish freedom is to enslave everyone.

18. 

    oldlegodad said, 4 months ago

    I am not nor ever have been a firefighter. BUT I have enough common sense that I am sure I could pass the captain exam. I am 72. I have read more than comic book in my life and do not think the world is against me. It maybe unfair, but so is life. You make your own life.

19. 

    Corosive Frog said, 4 months ago

    I don’t think those guys want to put D black people at the same level as A white people or before them. It’s just that between an A black guy and a A white guy, they pick the black one.
    It is wrong to think they don’t consider competence at all.

    I call myself a feminist and I don’t really like those big programs to put girls into non-traditional jobs because I think it fuels a feeling of learned helplessness; “We’re women, so we need a special program to get us into the job we want because since we’re women, we’re not good/smart/hot/strong enough to do it on our own.

20. 

    NoFearPup said, 4 months ago

    It’s our fault Sotomayor is a train-wreck waiting to happen?!

21. 

    parkersinthehouse said, 4 months ago

    hey troutma, if there had been no equal rights for women (call it affirmative action), equality in hiring for credentials and experience alone - - - not my gender, age, race - - - I would have never achieved rank based on merit, never been paid the same as male, young, white professors.

    1964’s title vii was amended year after year - but real “affirmative action” is not that old - - - OF COURSE we’ve had problems with it. Positive changes are made every year, but since it has to sift down to the states and because it suffers hate and bias anyway, it’s slow and there doesn’t seem to be any continuity or progress.

    We can’t back up though; I firmly agree with Gladius. There’s still so much to be done - especially when hate groups are alive. Get rid of the faulty practices and try again with fresh intelligence. It’s a very human process - therefore fallible.

    Some of Obama’s healthiest appointments have been scholarly, expert defenders of humanity (that’s us) - and they aren’t all white and they aren’t all men. The Judiciary has been male/white heavy forever - that doesn’t mean white/male shouldn’t be there, it just means we require balance to thrive. She’s real clear on the value of humane vision, and I fervently hope that she’s appointed.

    SimJ - No One - that’s NO ONE - gets into Yale Law School on Affirmative Action. Undergrad, maybe, but not grad, not law.

    Oldlego - third or 12th overturn - if she’s right, she’s right. The high court will probably support her decision anyway.

    No Pup - aw forget it

22. 

    comsymp said, 4 months ago

    Man, I haven’t seem this many angry white men since the Republican National Convention.

    This particular case was not so much one of reverse discrimination, as much as it was the City of New Haven’s right to throw out this particular exam as being flawed and discriminatory in nature. As long as the Civil Rights act of 1964 has been in existence, there has been a clause that forbids discriminatory practices in promotions, and makes it incumbent on those employers (of more than 15 employees) to negate testing which proves to be so. That is what the city of New Haven did it canceling the promotions based on the results of a test which they deemed flawed.

    The results of the testing seemed to support their action.

    Of the 41 firefighters who took the captain’s promotional exam, 25 were white, 8 were black, and 8 were Hispanic. If you look at the applicants with the 12 highest scores, 10 were white (40% of the whites taking the exam) and 2 were Hispanic (25% of the Hispanics tested). If this test was the only determining factor in the promotions, New Haven would have filled the seven open positions with six whites and one Hispanic.

    Now, if you look at the applicants who had the 12 lowest scores on the exam, 5 were black (that’s a whopping 62% of the blacks who took the exam), 4 were Hispanic (50% of the Hispanics tested), and 3 were white (or, 12% of that group). Considering these numbers, the test seems blatantly unfair. The New Haven Fire Department was about to promote six whites and one Hispanic. That would have been 24% (6 of 25) of the whites that took the test, 12% of the Hispanics (1 in 8), and 0% of the black candidates. Looking at those glaring statistics, the city had every right (in fact, they had an obligation) to eliminate that testing method on suspicion of racial bias.

    This isn’t the first time this issue has plagued this fire department. Back in 1973, a group of black firefighters challenged almost every aspect of the New Haven Fire Department’s hiring and promotion practices. Specifically, the group alleged that the department’s entry exam, minimum requirements, promotional exam and use of supervisory recommendations for promotions followed a pattern of ‘willful discrimination’. The courts agreed with the black firefighters, leading to a consent decree requiring the department to increase minority recruiting, create entrance and promotional exams that were job-related and modify other practices to diminish the adverse impact on black firefighters.

    In 1989, the fire department’s long-standing practice of disproportionately promoting white firefighters was challenged. The courts agreed with the black firefighters in this case too, and ruled that the practice violated civil-service laws.

    In 1998, black firefighters sued again. This time, they took exception to how the department used lower-ranked officers to fill positions budgeted for a higher ranking firefighters. The practice created a disproportionately large pool of white candidates for the captain’s exam, and resulted in blacks getting fewer promotions. The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the practice violated civil-service laws.

    This most recent case seems pretty consistent with a pattern and history of discriminatory behavior on the part of the New Haven Fire Department. But this time, instead of going to court like all the times before, the city decided to withhold the promotions on the grounds that the test was biased. That action, ironically, brought a lawsuit anyway- this time from white firefighters.

    We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some are inherent, while others are imposed on us by cultural impediments. As long as we test people by playing to imposed weaknesses, opportunity can be manipulated to favor one group over another.

    The New Haven Fire Department figured out how to stack the deck, but fairness came into question when every single hand was taken by the white firefighters at the table. It might have been because they were dealing from the bottom of the deck (as was proven in the past), or it may have been because the black firefighters had no experience at the game they were expected to play. Either way, the city of New Haven came to the conclusion that they needed to find another game to truly evaluate the skill of the players.

    I agree with the city’s decision, as did Sonia Sotomayor (as one of the three-member panel of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals), and the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. Both opinions were consistent with over four decades of legal and constitutional precedent. So, in this case, it’s not Sotomayor, or the Supreme Court’s minority, who were the judicial ‘activists’… Instead, it was the five conservative justices who just wrote new law.

23. 

    dtroutma said, 4 months ago

    Parker- My daughter was the first female firefighter/paramedic hired in her county- she was highly qualified. I worked with a number of ladies who were “ceiling breakers” as Rangers who WERE very qualified.(and NOT hired as affirmative hires)

    What bothered me as time went on over a 30 year period was more and more UNqualified people hired under “affirmative action” and in one case I lost my own job during a “reorganization” to a woman who FLAUNTED the fact she was totally unqualified for the job, but they HAD to hire her, and she intended to push it all the way to the top, with NO qualifications. She made it.

    p.s. Years before my daughter’s experience, I was also the first person in my organization to HIRE a woman to do a “field” job the guys claimed she couldn’t do- she was outstanding!

24. 

    oldlegodad said, 4 months ago

    The woman to whom dtroutma lost his job sounds like a majority of Federal civil servants (male & female) I have had the unfortunate opportunity to encounter.

25. 

    hank197857 said, 4 months ago

    the bible says it best: you reap what you sow.

26. 

    parkersinthehouse said, 4 months ago

    i absolutely agree with you trout, i’ve seen it everywhere, and i should have said i had an amazing union that kept out the users and supported the qualified … well, maybe not all the users … but that’s everywhere too …

27. 

    Jimathai said, 4 months ago

    First of all… More whites benefit from affirmative action than minorities… The point of affirmative action is to try and cut down on discrimination (black or white) at universities that receive funding from their state… As a student of a HBCU (historically black college and university) I’ve met many white folks who were there thanks to affirmative action.

    Now with that being said… I don’t like affimative action… However, I do think its necessary, and I do think its beneficial in trying to reverse some of the damage and injustice brought on by slavery and racism… but I don’t like it cuz to me its like trying to use a papertowel to dry up an ocean.

28. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    Jim would you care to provide some statistics to support your assertation that more whites than blacks benefit from AA? I’ve never even heard this one before.