The Racism Of The Left

Racisim is alive and well in America. It is appropiate that the only living one time member of the KKK in Congress today is a Democrat. As I have written in detail here, racism is and has historically been a prime driver of the left. And nowhere is it on display today more than in the NYT editorial on the Ricci case.

The Ricci case, which I posted on extensively here, involved several New Haven, Conn. white and Hispanic firefighters who earned the right to be promoted after passing a test meticulously designed to be race neutral and to test only those areas most applicable to the positions of fire dept. captains and lieutenants. The City threw out the results because no blacks had earned a promotion.

The full facts of how the city of New Haven came to toss out the results is a story of vile race baiting and reverse racism. You have to read Justice Alito's concurrence to get the full facts. You can find those facts here.

The two New Haven Fire Dept. Chiefs, one of whom is black, saw nothing unfair in the test. Both were of the opinion that the test results should have been certified and the promotions granted. None of the many black and Hispanic senior Fire Dept. personnel from outside of New Haven who administered the oral portion of the exam thought that it was discriminatory in any way. And then there was Vincent Lewis:

Vincent Lewis, a fire program specialist for the Department of Homeland Security and a retired fire captain from Michigan. Lewis, who is black, had looked “extensively” at the lieutenant exam and “alittle less extensively” at the captain exam. He stated that the candidates “should know that material.”

The person who most vociferously argued against certifying the results was Rev. Boise Kimber. As Alito makes apparent, Rev. Kimber, a close associate of New Haven's left-wing Mayor, is a clone of Rev. Jerimaih Wright. And now, the NYT joins in the call. What all of these people have in common is that they are children of identity politics that would make permanent victims of minorities.

The penultimate holding of the Supreme Court is that racisim, whether traditional or reverse, is still racism made unlawful under Title VII (they never reached the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.) Moreover, while the Court applauded the efforts of New Haven to create a racially neutral hiring procedure that would not favor whites, to go beyond that, to disregard merit and gerrymander the results to achieve a specific racial mix is unlawful racism.

But that is not how the NYT sees it. While the purpose of the NYT editorial is to provide cover for the nomination of Judge Sotomayor, the authors nonetheless give us their opinion of the Ricci case. According to the NYT, "[o]n Monday, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to diversity in the American workplace." The NYT ignores all of the facts covered above and concludes that throwing out the test did not result in an act of discrimination. The gist of the NYT authors is that a racially balanced result trumps merit. You can read it here.

Not only does such an attitude explicitly condone reverse racisim, but it is deeply racist itself. Implicit in their position is the proposition that blacks are incapable of competing on a level playing field with whites. If that is not the very definition of racism, I don't know what is.

Obama promised us an America where the racial divide is healed. The truth is that this type of racisit identity politics is the far left's raison d' etre. They have no intention of giving it up.

On a different note, the NYT today also has an insightful article on the Supreme Court, making the argument that Chief Justice Roberts is incrementally and methodically inching the Court to the right. Unlike the editorial referenced above, this news analysis piece is a worthwhile read for Supreme Court watchers.