Supreme Ct. ruling on firefighters a setback for affirmative action

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Hundreds chanting, “Everybody in, nobody out!” gathered in Washington, DC, July 30 to demand passage of House Bill HR 676 for “single-payer” health care. HR 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers, provides health care for everyone regardless of their ability to pay and is similiar to the successful Medicare system. The U.S. is the only Western country to not have a government-run health-care system.

Although 86 members of the House (Democrats) endorsed HR 676, only Congressman Conyers attended the rally. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also attended. Thus far, discussion of single-payer health care has been virtually ignored by both major parties and the corporate media during the so-called House and Senate debate on health-care reform. Opinion polls, however, show that most working people support a government run, not-for-profit health-care system. SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2009 3 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 fire­ fighters who claimed they were victims of “reverse racism” in the aftermath of their city’s promotional exams. The rul­ ing implicitly calls the future of affirma­ tive 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 ex­ amination offered to firefighters of the New Haven Fire Department. The ex­ aminations, offered for advancement to captain and lieutenant, differed from previous tests in that they gave dispro­ portionate weight to the written por­ tion 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 fa­ vored 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 lieuten­ ant exam, and eight of the 41 who took the captain exam, not a single African American scored high enough to be pro­ moted. Additionally, only two of the 29 Latinos that took either test achieved scores that fit the promotional qualifi­ cations for advancement.

Because of the clear disparity of the test results, the city of New Haven be­ came concerned that if it promoted the white firefighters on the basis of these results, it risked the possibility of be­ ing 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 histori­ cally existed to keep people of color and women from gaining access, advance­ ment, 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 ab­ stained 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 head­ quarters, 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 fire­ house 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 firefight­ ers in the country, 247,000 are white. Of this number, 82% are white men.

As the overwhelming majority of pro­ fessional firefighters in the country are based in the cities, this often means that significantly white fire companies are not only not hiring from the unemploy­ ment-plagued communities of the most oppressed that they serve, but also that the relationship between the fire com­ Marty Goodman / Socialist Action panies and these communities is one of distrust and alienation.

This is certainly the case in New Ha­ ven, where nearly 40% of the popula­ tion is African American and where the Latino population is rapidly growing, but where only 13 of 89 leadership po­ sitions in the New Haven Fire Depart­ ment 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 ac­ complished over the following decades through the implementation of courtordered consent decrees in the major cities that extended the gains of affir­ mative action into what had historically been a virtually apartheid industry.

Unfortunately, these gains have erod­ ed 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 inte­ gration, as to legally sanction an official return to segregation in not only the firehouses, but in virtually every indus­ try in the nation. This rollback high­ lights the urgent need to wage battles in defense of affirmative action, and for segregated than before the civil rights movement, and the prison-industrial complex—which under the Obama ad­ ministration incarcerates a higher per­ centage of Black males than South Af­ rica 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” in­ voked 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, di­ vided, 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 en­ tirely 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 pro­ gram 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 Re­ publicans—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! n

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Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images ligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man’s emo­ tions superseded his intelligence. He will com­ mit against non-whites the most incredible spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his ‘white superiority’ complex” (“The Autobi­ ography of Malcolm X,” p. 292).

That crippling of intelligence also affected at least one Black cop, Sgt. Leon Lashley, who was present during the arrest. He has publicly come to Sgt. Crowley’s defense, saying that he sup­ ported Crowley 100 percent, thus proving that when push comes to shove, or when shouting leads to handcuffs, a blue uniform trumps Black experience.

Yet, in an implicit public rebuke of police be­ havior, the charges against Gates were dropped several days later. In a rare exception to its usu­ al practice, Cambridge police officials called the arrest “regrettable and unfortunate.”

But Gates’ angry behavior was also an excep­ tion. Gates has never been a militant radical. A graduate of Yale, he became a professor at Cornell and Duke and was ultimately wooed by Harvard, where he has been the W.E.B. Du­ Bois Professor of the Humanities and long-time chairman of the African-American Studies De­ partment.

Opinion-making publications like the New Yorker and The New York Review of Books open their pages to Gates, and the Public Broadcast­ ing System (PBS) presented his “Frontline” re­