[NOTE: An ADDENDUM was added to this post at 7:55AM Today]
Another controversy over testing has broken out in New England. (For the mother of all testing controversies, recently argued in the Supreme Court, see here, here, here, here, and here.)
Governor Deval Patrick, who once headed the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department, plans to appeal a federal court ruling that allows minority police officers to pursue a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state’s promotional exam….
At issue is a multiple-choice promotional exam prepared by the state Human Resources Division and used by about 200 police departments across the state, said Liss-Riordan. The 44 plaintiffs are patrol officers who took the exam since 2005 but have not received promotions….
Now, the fact that Deval Patrick is opposing a complaint against discriminatory testing brought by minority policemen is interesting enough. After all, this is the same Deval Patrick who, according to Jeffrey Rosen writing in the generally liberal New Republic (and quoted by me here),
committed the Clinton administration to a vision of racial preference that fulfills the most extravagant fantasies of a conservative attack ad. (“You lost that job because you were white….”) Rather than honestly confronting the costs of affirmative action, Patrick has blithely endorsed the most extreme form of racialism.
But what I find even more interesting, and disturbing, than Patrick’s odd trajectory is the argument made by the plaintiffs here in their own behalf:
The officers say that the exam, which relies heavily on rote memorization of facts about law enforcement, discriminates against members of minority groups and has prevented advancement within the ranks. As a result, they said, supervisors in departments do not reflect the diversity of their communities.
I obviously know nothing about this test. I don’t know whether it does in fact “rel[y] heavily on rote memorization of facts about law enforcement” or, if it does, whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent. I have no idea whether it is useful in predicting job performance. But why on earth would a minority policeman want to stand up in court and assert that a test that requires memorization discriminates against him … and everyone who looks like him?
Is there any evidence that minorities are memory impaired? Let’s assume this test was not a good one to determine police promotions. Would these plaintiffs and their lawyers agree that blacks and Hispanics are, in general, less likely to be qualified for jobs that do require memorization than members of other racial and ethnic groups?
If not multiple choice questions, then what?
Frank Landy, a specialist from New York on civil service tests who plans to testify for the plaintiffs in the upcoming trial, said in an interview yesterday that no one knows for sure why minorities do not perform as well as whites on such multiple-choice exams. But other states have developed exams that are not discriminatory and better gauge the best candidates for promotion, he said. Those exams feature multiple-choice personality tests, oral boards, and role playing, among other components.
What specialist Landy means by “discriminatory,” of course, is any test that does not result in racially proportional pass rates. But leave that aside for now. If you had a choice, would you rather be protected by a police force whose members have high memorization skills or who do well on “multiple-choice personality tests, oral boards, and role playing”?
ADDENDUM [Added 7:55AM]
Turns out I made much the same point about the pathos of assuming that blacks can’t pass tests in discussing the recent Ricci case, here, after quoting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comment that
historically, fire departments have been the preserve of white men, something they maintained through discrimination. She likened the city’s decision to junk the test for another exam to changes made by public-safety departments in physical-strength requirements to accommodate women applicants.
“In Justice Ginsburg’s world,” I pointed out,
just as women are at a physical disadvantage in competing with men, blacks are at a mental disadvantage in competing with whites, Asians, and in this case Hispanics…. This is truly pathetic. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
