From today’s Boston Globe:
Seventeen police and fire departments in 12 cities and towns around Massachusetts fall short of the race-based hiring goals ordered 30 years ago by the federal courts, with many of the departments struggling to keep up with the fast-growing minority populations they serve, a Globe analysis has found.
Chelsea, Lawrence, and Holyoke — with minority populations ranging from 45 to 65 percent — remain the furthest from the goal of two mid-1970s consent decrees, which called for police and fire departments to reach ”parity” with the black and Hispanic populations in their cities. The police and fire departments in those three cities are about 20 percent minority.
Meanwhile, four other departments — fire departments in Cambridge and Newton, and police departments in New Bedford and Winthrop — have reached racial parity, but are still following the consent decrees and hiring based on race….
And for anyone who thinks, or hopes, that quotas were a temporary expedient:
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as having a decree that has fulfilled its mission and now everyone can go back to doing business as they did before the consent decree,” said Nadine Cohen, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who has closely monitored the Boston cases. ”It’s an ongoing obligation to keep a diverse police and fire department. If we’re not vigilant about it . . . the 30 or so years progress we’ve made can all be done away with rather quickly.”
Exactly why and how would this minority hiring “all be done away with”? Ms. Cohen didn’t say, but the article reports that “[s]upporters [of quota hiring] also worry that, as departments are released from the decrees, minority hiring will not be a priority without an affirmative action policy.”
But the important question — unanswered because it is unasked — is, why should minority hiring be “a priority”?
It shouldn’t. What should be a priority is non-discriminatory hiring.
This is a case where affirmative action unabashedly means lower standards. Often fire departments under a quota system like this are forced to drop the swimming requirement of the test in order to increase “diversity.”
This is how the little cogs of tyranny tell us that ‘commitment to diversity’ or diversity~valuing has to mean quotas indefinitely. The people need not support institutions devoted to anti~caucasianism, though. The left can lose much more than one shot at their notion of social justice ; they can lose the whole shooting match, if the government schools go down.
I remember that when California decided to end its minority setasides in road construction there was a Hispanic contractor who cried about the fact that his business of several years was about to go down the drain.
I thought, you’ve had all these years to prove that you provide a quality product at a competitive price. How come you’re so sure you’ll lose the business, hm?
Laura Wrote…
I thought, you’ve had all these years to prove that you provide a quality product at a competitive price. How come you’re so sure you’ll lose the business, hm?
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Laura,
Set-asides are not subject to competetive bidding, they are not competing at all. I recall that they can (and do) charge sometime like 15% over the going rate for the work they provide.
Rich
Well, Rich, I know that. The point of the setasides was to allow disadvantaged businesses to get a toehold, not to gouge the taxpayers forever.
Andrew: That swimming requirement imbroglio was in North Miami.
Laurs Posted:
->Well, Rich, I know that. The point of the setasides was to allow disadvantaged businesses to get a toehold, not to gouge the taxpayers forever.
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1. They are designed to exclude white men, regerdess of their lot in life. ‘Advantage’ or disadvantage’ was *never* a factor in any way, shape, or form. It was all about race. A wealthy black is ‘disadvantaged’, while an impoverished white is not.
2. None of these programs has ever had a cutoff or sunset, they were never designed to *end*.
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I find your mischaracterizations of these racist programs as upsetting as your apparent support for or justification for them.
Rich
FYI, both the FAA and the forest service droppoed *all* qualifications in order to meet their diversity quotas. Since, their sole qualification was that they were not white men, they finally cut to the chase and did what all diversity programs do in more subtle ways anyway.
Rich
Dave,
Thanks for doing my research for me :). I also vaguely recall the same thing happening in Baltimore…is my memory right, or am I just crazy?
Rich, get a grip.
The courts ended minority setasides in my city some time ago because their stated purpose, to help disadvantaged minority businesses, was no longer necessary. You can make up whatever purpose you want, and you may be right, but the courts here went by the stated purpose and ended the setasides. As they obviously did in CA, hence my anecdote.
My original point was that if the Hispanic contractor had not been gouging the taxpayers he would not have had to worry about losing the business once he no longer had the setasides to rely on.
I don’t understand what your beef is with me. And frankly, don’t care.
Affirmative action is the death of competence. You see that in city governments like Detroit and Washington DC. And in national governments like Zimbabwe and Malaysia. When diversity of skin color, ethnicity, or tissue between the legs is all that is important to a hiring agency (government or non-government), then competence takes a long hike—and may never come back.
Regarding the elimination of the fire department swimming requirement; I ended my 30-year San Francisco Fire Dept. career in 1996. My last 12 years were spent at a fire station not far from the beach near Golden Gate Park. We were often called to perform surf rescues for potential drowning victims. All members of my entire battalion district, approximately 10% of the SF Fire Department, were required to take part in and pass a swimming and life guard certification course or be transferred to another battalion. Not one of the black firefighters in my battalion was required to take the swimming course and none was transferred to another district.