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NEW
HAVEN, Conn.—A serious blow to civil rights was dealt by the Supreme
Court on the last day of its 2008 term, when in Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court ruled in favor of a group
of white firefighters who claimed they were victims of “reverse racism”
in the aftermath of their city’s promotional exams. The ruling
implicitly calls the future of affirmative action into question, and
marks a great setback for people of color and women in job hiring,
advancement, and equality in the workplace.
The
Ricci v. DeStefano case stems from the
results of a 2003 promotional examination offered to firefighters of
the New Haven Fire Department. The examinations, offered for
advancement to captain and lieutenant, differed from previous tests in
that they gave disproportionate weight to the written portion of the
exam over the oral portion. Knowing full well the inequalities of the
educational system that minorities are forced to face, the schema of
using examinations that have little to nothing to do with aptitude has
long been a favored tool of the employers for keeping minorities either
outside of industry, or in the lowest paid positions within it.
While
no explanation was given as to why this change was administered by the
New Haven Fire Dept., the results paint a familiar picture: despite
Black applicants having constituted 19 of the 77 firefighters who took
the lieutenant exam, and eight of the 41 who took the captain exam, not
a single African American scored high enough to be promoted.
Additionally, only two of the 29 Latinos that took either test achieved
scores that fit the promotional qualifications for advancement.
Because
of the clear disparity of the test results, the city of New Haven
became concerned that if it promoted the white firefighters on the
basis of these results, it risked the possibility of being sued under
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace
discrimination by requiring employers to remove the “artificial,
arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers” that have historically existed to
keep people of color and women from gaining access, advancement, and
equality in the workplace.
Perhaps
cognizant of the degree to which the examinations fit the very mold of
the language of Title VII, the city of New Haven decided to drop the results
of the examination and abstained from making any promotions. In turn,
the city was hit by a lawsuit from 17 white firefighters, plus one
Latino plaintiff, who claimed that the city had deliberately
discriminated against them by not promoting them on the basis of the
test. Known as the New Haven 20, their lawsuit
challenged the very heart of Title VII, which not only allows but in
fact requires the consideration of race to achieve and maintain
diversity.
Despite
the case having been rejected by two lower courts, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled, in a 5-4 decision, in favor of the white firefighters,
thus throwing the future of Title VII into question.
In
a message delivered during a press conference at the local NAACP
headquarters, Lt. Gary Tinny, president of the New Haven Firebirds, a
fraternal group for Black firefighters, said of the court ruling, “It’s
going to set us back 45 years in encouraging fire departments to hire
more Blacks, Hispanics, and women.”
In
many respects, the fact that Ricci v. DeStefano’s
beginnings are in a firehouse offers a poignant illustration of why
affirmative action is so needed. For decades city fire departments have
been almost the exclusive domain for whites. Labor Department
statistics for 2007 indicate that of 288,000 firefighters in the
country, 247,000 are white. Of this number, 82% are white men.
As
the overwhelming majority of professional firefighters in the country
are based in the cities, this often means that significantly white fire
companies are not only not hiring from the unemployment-plagued
communities of the most oppressed that they serve, but also that the
relationship between the fire companies and these communities is one of
distrust and alienation.
This
is certainly the case in New Haven, where nearly 40% of the
population is African American and where the Latino population is
rapidly growing, but where only 13 of 89 leadership positions in the
New Haven Fire Department are currently filled by African Americans or
Latinos.
As
a matter of fact, this overwhelming degree of whiteness in the nation’s
fire companies represents a figure that once was on the decline—in part
a product of years of struggle by firefighters of color and women
against hiring and promotional policies similar to those demonstrated
in New Haven. These struggles began in
the 1950s and ’60s in the civil rights movement, and were accomplished over
the following decades through the implementation of court-ordered
consent decrees in the major cities that extended the gains of
affirmative action into what had historically been a virtually
apartheid industry.
Unfortunately,
these gains have eroded alongside other civil rights reforms, such as
school integration, as many of the consent decrees have expired and the
firehouses have rapidly returned to an almost all-white-male reserve.
It
is in this regard that the Supreme Court’s most recent decision threatens
to not so much put the brakes on integration, as to legally sanction an
official return to segregation in not only the firehouses, but in
virtually every industry in the nation. This rollback highlights the
urgent need to wage battles in defense of affirmative action, and for
its extension. This urgency is illustrated by the potential weight of
the Ricci v. DeStefano decision on the
“reverse racism” cases being waged in both nearby Bridgeport and New
York City—where just 3 percent of the city’s 11,000 firefighters are
Black.
The
civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s achieved majority support
in the U.S. for the position that all
people should have equal access to a job, public facilities, public
education of equal quality, and the right to vote. The concept of
affirmative action became the tool with which these ideas could
actually be implemented.
Maintaining
this support today means winning white workers to the realization that
the horrors of the capitalist system that affect all workers—unemployment,
taxes, social service cutbacks, and union busting—disproportionately
affect people of color. This discrepancy can be seen in the Black
infant mortality rate being 2.5 higher, underfunded
inner city schools that are now more segregated than before the
civil rights movement, and the prison-industrial complex—which under
the Obama administration incarcerates a
higher percentage of Black males than South Africa under apartheid.
It
can be seen also in the official Black unemployment rate standing at 14.7
as compared to 8.7 for whites (with these figures taking into account
only those currently filing for unemployment, not the long term chronic
unemployment that has historically plagued the inner city ghettos), and
by no means lastly, in the fact that Blacks earn on average only 70% of
what white males earn.
Such
discrepancies do not even speak for the centuries of enslavement, Jim
Crow laws, and racist discrimination that have left Blacks at a
disadvantage that makes the “equal playing field” invoked by the
slander of “reverse racism” an utter deception. African Americans are
by no means the only victims of such discrimination, as similar
statistics can be found for women and for Latinos and other oppressed
minorities.
But
it isn’t white workers who gain from such “unearned privilege.” Only
one class profits from unemployment, discrimination, and war: the
ruling class. To better protect their profits, the capitalists utilize
racism and sexism to keep the working class atomized, divided, and
weak. When a capitalist pays a Black worker $100 a week less than
whites or a woman $150 a week less than men, the added profit goes not
into the pockets of white workers, but entirely into the pockets of the
employers.
The
lower wages paid to Blacks and women drive down the wages of all
workers. And the ever declining, yet comparably higher living standards
of white males under capitalism are but a fraction of the potential
living standards that could be attained by all workers if they unite to
fight against their common enemy, the capitalist class.
But
it will take more than a defense of affirmative action to protect all
workers from the capitalist onslaught driven by the economic crisis
that is inherent in the system itself. Workers need a program for
improving the conditions of the working class as a whole, a fighting
program to force from the bosses full employment at union wages for
all. This can be achieved by reducing the work week from 40 hours to 30
hours with no cut in pay, and by undertaking a massive program of
useful public works.
Money
for jobs, education, hospitals, housing, and public transportation—not
for war! Break from the twin parties of capitalism—the Democrats and
Republicans—the parties of the ruling rich who each fought tooth and
nail against the civil rights movement, and who have been eroding its
gains ever since!
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