FROM: The American Thinker
Firefighters and Racism
American
Thinker
By Eileen F. Toplansky
June
17th, 2012
Among the highlights in this MUST READ article is the author (Eileen Toplansky) referring often to the powerful Amicus Curiae Brief written and presented by Keith Sullvan & Jay Galleshaw;
"In
June of 2009, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis
of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled that two firefighting written
examinations administered in 1999 and 2002 "unfairly excluded hundreds of
qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters." This ruling was a result of a
2007 lawsuit by the Justice Department after a federal complaint by the Vulcan Society, an association of black
firefighters.
"Then,
on March 8, 2012, Judge Garaufis
ordered New York City to pay $128 million to those firefighters who alleged
that the city used the entrance exam to deliberately keep African-Americans and
Latino Americans off the force. The "judge also ordered the FDNY to hire 293 black and Latino
applicants."...
"...In
the "Brief for Amicus Curiae Merit
Matters" 11-5113-CV, the reader learns of Merit Matters, Inc, founded in April of 2012, which was created
"out of concern for deteriorating standards for hiring and promoting
within the FDNY." Merit Matters
advocates:
“...for a strictly merit-based hiring system within the FDNY and
strongly rejects the 'equal outcomes' approach to equal opportunity, and
believes that Title VII lawsuits are often used as a vehicle through which
legitimate, race-blind, employment examinations and race-neutral selection
procedures are unfairly attacked by unqualified and unsuccessful job applicants
who seek judicial invalidation of such procedures purely as a means to gain
unfair preferences and advantages over others on the basis of their race or
ethnicity.”
Furthermore,
"Merit
Matters believes that race-based hiring and promotional selection procedures
imposed as a remedy for racial statistical disparities in qualifications are
not only unlawful...but antithetical to the FDNY's mission. Moreover,
imposition of such measures on public safety and first responder agencies has a
deleterious effect on morale[.]"
"The
Brief explains how the City met with firefighters to "evaluate, or 'link'
critical job tasks such as search and rescue, scene evaluation, ventilation,
and salvage," in order to create questions for these examinations...
"...Even
more distressing, according to the Amicus, is that the "District Court has
presumed the liability findings bestow the power to interfere with practices
which were neither alleged by the Vulcans nor found to be discriminatory"
in the first place. Thus, "the injunction is invasive judicial oversight
of the FDNY for a minimum of ten years via a special monitor with no knowledge
or experience in firefighting and disaster response."
Consequently,
"[t]he District Court's judgment and injunction essentially require the
City to lower standards and abandon efforts to achieve excellence. Merit-based
hiring is being replaced with race-based or quota-based hiring." In fact, Merit Matters cites the situation
where:
"...as part of the remedial measure aimed at combating the alleged intentional
discrimination, the District Court ordered door-to-door home visits of black
applicants who failed to properly complete the upcoming test application.
During these personal visits a Vulcan Society member would assist the candidate
in completing the application, to be re-submitted four months past the
deadline. (DE #783). Merit Matters is troubled by the extension of such an
undeniable privilege on the explicit basis of race, especially against the
District Court's own racial rhetoric denouncing the FDNY as a bastion of white
male privilege based on nothing but statistics. The fact that the District
Court will deny the privilege of untimely submission of applications to
candidates of another race raises troubling implications: it amounts to a
judicial order for racially disparate treatment of applicants. Merit Matters
believes firmly that a failure to properly complete and timely submit an
application itself flags one's unfitness for the job. Notably, Merit Matters
offered to conduct home visits to all candidates regardless of skin color. That
offer was rejected."
Thus,
in order to prevent racial discrimination, discrimination on the basis of race
is being utilized!
.
.
JMK
.
.
.
Merit Matters once AGAIN thanks Keith Sullivan and Jay Galleshaw of Sullivan & Galleshaw for their tireless and incomparable efforts on this issue. They've consistently taken the lead in this struggle and their Amicus Curiae Brief has been hailed as being more thorough, complete and concise than the City's own Notice of Appeal!
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