Whatever the implications to judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the US Supreme Court favoring the New Haven, CONN., white firefighters can be viewed as another defeat in the civil rights strategy to the lift the least affected by white racism, colonialism, imperialism into the universities, boardrooms, and public life while leaving the country's racist institutions untouched.
Besides touching on the test results favoring white firefighters over blacks and the dread this might open the city to civil rights lawsuits, news reports have focused on Federal District Court judge Sotomayor's role in supporting the city's nixing of the test results to ensure racial diversity.
But both of these points miss a greater one. Anyone seated to take such a test, black, white, or otherwise, has already surpassed some incredible odds: their physical fitness in a fat country being just one. These were rare specimens if ever there were any. Just look at any city firefighter, who are rigorously kept in peak performing form and have already passed other skills tests.
The minority test takers were cleaved from the creme de la creme of their communities. In other words, these minorities were ones who were least affected and suffered less the scourge of white racism in the United States - not a mean feat by the way given the statistics regarding black men revolving in and out our criminal justice system.
These minority test takers were the beneficiaries of a deal with the devil made a few generations ago when affirmative action was the brain child of human rights activists in this country. Like the city government of New Haven, these human and civil rights activists had nothing but good intentions.
That deal they struck basically accepted a talented tenth of minority talent in once-exclusive circles of national life, and it left the woefully neglected, racist institutions of this country unreformed and practically forgotten.
This was to create not a level playing field between aspirants to these spots. The white establishment would never accept that and has continued ever since to keep - as they used to say openly - the black man in his place.
The white establishment created an accommodation whereby certain space was allotted to a minority of the minority - be they blacks, "hispanics" (the term of art coined at that exact time), and women. Women have been the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action, but their status still desires much improvement, as our Congress, boardrooms, and public life show. This minority by being less hungry showed more prowess and could show the country had changed, when it really had not.
The more daring way to begin to address this disparity is a cradle to grave funding equity for all children, their programs, our public schools, and colleges and universities. Because as long as this country tolerates the persistence of underfunded, all-black, all-poor schools full of undernourished and malnourished children, we will continue to roll the dice as to which of those unfortunate kids will be blessed with the right combination of god-knows-what to choose one option over another, again and again until he or she is qualified to submit an application to be a public servant or enroll in a four-year university or become a union organizer to kick ass for the working class. He might even become president.
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