A Dream Deferred

Michael Barone does something rarely done outside of law school: he read the concurring opinion in a Supreme Court case, in this case, Justice Alito's concurrence in the Ricci v New Haven case. What Barone finds is an ugly look at the way racial politics works in blue-state cities, and the manner in which progressive jurists like Judge Sotomayor - who joined the cursory opinion dismissing the Ricci case at the appellate level - enforce what can only be described as a patronage system. Firefighter Case Shows Seamy Side Of Racial Politics

After the results of the promotion test were announced, showing that 19 white and one Hispanic firefighter qualified for promotion, (obnoxious race-hustling local pastor) Kimber called the mayor's chief administrative officer opposing certification of the test results.

The record shows that (cynical, "progressive" mayor of New Haven) DeStefano and his appointees went to work, holding secret meetings and concealing their motives, to get the Civil Service Board to decertify the test results. Kimber appeared at a board meeting and made "a loud, minutes-long outburst" and had to be ruled out of order three times.

City officials ignored the inconvenient fact that they had hired an independent and experienced firm -- this is a thriving business -- to draw up a bias-free test and paid a competing firm to draw up another test. Its head testified that the first firm's test was biased without seeing it. The board capitulated and decertified the test. DeStefano was prepared to overrule it if it had gone the other way.

In the bland words of the law, the fire fighter promotion exams that were at the heart of the Ricci case were simply "de-certified." As Alito writes, de-certification is a polite way of describing what happened. The tests were simply thrown out because the wrong people passed. Alito describes the penultimate Fire Commission hearing where the test results were decertified. Kimble showboated all the way through. The aggrieved firefighters who showed up to protest the injustice about to be inflicted on them were referred to as "klansmen" by one disappointed black firefighter. Klansmen? In New Haven? I would say, "grow up," but this man in only acting out the black-white "race relations" choreography that has been taped down by previous generations of cummunity activists seeking de facto reparations for a crime - slavery - that ended 144 years ago.

But Barone reserves his scorn for the educated progressives like Judge Sotomayor who enforce these sorts of racial spoils systems:

Writing in Slate, Yale Law faculty member Emily Bazelon goes further. She laments that the promotion test rewarded memorization and that it favored "'fire buffs' -- guys who read fire suppression manuals on their down time."

She is outraged that a fire department might want to promote firefighters who know more about suppressing fires, rescuing victims and protecting their colleagues rather than simply promote a predetermined number of members of specific racial groups whose self-appointed political spokesmen back the politicians in office.

Bazelon and Sotomayor, who voted to uphold the city's decertification of the promotion test, are typical of liberal elites who are ready to ratify squalid political deals -- and blatant racial discrimination -- in return for the political support and the votes that can be rallied by the likes of Kimber. You supply the numbers on Election Day, and we'll supply the verbiage to put a pretty label on your shenanigans

Sotomayor is not unique in this area. There is an entire industry - call it the race-legal industrial complex - that uses the fine words of MLK and Earl Warren and reduces them to a politically approved hustle. Blacks and Hispanics can thrive. Asians and Whites - including "ethnic" whites like Italian Ricci whose forebears had to endure their own discrimination while working thier way up the American ladder of success - cannot, at least in the realm of public service jobs.

Americans are constantly told they cannot speak honestly abou race. In fact, we are sometimes called cowards. All of this is a smokescreen to cover up what really happens: a racial spoils system whose parameters are enforced by the Al Sharptons of the world and granted approval by the Sotomayors. But that is the one thing that we are not allowed to talk about.