Is Discrimination Standardized

One argument against the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor centers around her ruling in the New Haven firefighters case - when she supported the city's decision to throw out the results of standardized test for promotions when only white firefighters passed. The white firefighters sued - and were eventually supported in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. Thus, the big question is where the discrimination is happening .... and there are obviously two camps on this.

Mike Littwin of the Denver Post asks some good questions in this article:

This is not a new story. For whatever reason — skewed tests, too many failing schools, too many single-family homes, continuing effects of segregation, some other explanation short of a bell curve — blacks do not score nearly as well as whites on standardized tests.

If standardized tests play a key role in getting into college, in getting into law school, in becoming a lieutenant in the fire department, what are we, as a society that values opportunity, supposed to do if too few blacks and other minorities qualify?

One answer is to do nothing, except quote the Rev. Martin Luther King's line about the quality of our character — as if King wouldn't be on the side of affirmative action.

Another answer is to recognize the problem — as, say, the U.S. Army has done — and find a way to pick out otherwise qualified applicants.

New Haven clearly hadn't offered a test that was meant to discriminate. And yet, the test left the city, one with a majority-minority population, with a new class of nearly all white officers in its fire department. How do you resolve discrimination that isn't exactly discrimination?

There is validity to both sides. The white firefighters certainly don't deserve to have their results invalidated - we can and should be sympathetic to their cause. However, isn't there some pretty obvious problems with a test that seems to be systematically prohibitive to minorities.

Herein lies the problem with discrimination, affirmative action, and the use of standardized assessments.