Editorial: Racism in the firehouse

A reverse-discrimination case involving Connecticut firefighters being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court today may show just how out of sync this court is with the nation's first African American president.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts calls affirmative action the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race." He prefers to declare the playing field level for everyone, while blithely turning a blind eye to vestiges of discrimination that perpetuate inequality.

Racial bias is perhaps nowhere more evident than within some of this nation's municipal fire departments. With firefighters required to eat and sleep, as well as work, with each other for 24-hour periods, the resistance to integration has always been strong. In many cities, including Philadelphia, it took court orders to bring real change.

But change continues to be fought. White firefighters in New Haven, Conn., have asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower federal court's ruling that the city was right to void results of a 2003 test to select fire lieutenants and captains because none of the 27 African Americans who took the exam qualified for promotion.

The city decided not to certify the test results because it feared that promoting only whites would lead to a suit filed by blacks claiming the test was biased. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act says employers cannot hire or promote on the basis of tests that have a "disparate impact" on minority applicants.

Sixty percent of the test score came from a multiple-choice questionnaire; 40 percent from an interview. The outcome might have been different had New Haven followed the lead of other cities and included additional criteria, such as simulated tactical firefighting, on the test. It can still do that, if the Supreme Court doesn't hold it to the original test results.

But it wouldn't be a surprise if the Roberts court ruled against the city. Among the numerous legal briefs the court has received supporting the white firefighters is one from Philadelphia's chapter of the Concerned American Firefighters Association, which is still fighting earlier court orders regulating how this city hires minority firefighters.

The CAFFA brief agrees that there might be a compelling reason for diversity in schools, and even in a police department, which needs "a workforce that appears unbiased" to be "respected by the community it serves." But CAFFA says the "race of the firefighter is an utter irrelevance."

Such an attitude suggests firefighters are merely autobots, who mechanically put out fires without regard to the humanity saved, or lost, in the process. It's an attitude that disregards the fact that little boys and girls who see firefighters that look like them want to grow up to be one. It's an attitude that disregards that for decades, that dream was denied to blacks, and still remains difficult.

Were it not for court orders in 1975, 1984, and 1993, Philadelphia's firefighter corps wouldn't be more than 30 percent minority. New York faces more lawsuits today because its department is only 3 percent black.

New Haven's fire department is 15 percent minority, in a city 37 percent black and 21 percent Hispanic. The Connecticut city did the right thing in voiding an apparently discriminatory employment test so it can institute one that is fairer. There was no reverse discrimination. Minorities will have to take the new test, along with past white applicants.

The Obama Justice Department has sided with New Haven, but asks that the case be returned to a lower-court jury if the city's motives are questioned.

If the Supreme Court instead rules in favor of the white plaintiffs, it would be hard not to conclude that the majority has gleefully jumped on the Roberts bandwagon to kill affirmative action once and for all. That move, if taken now, would be premature. The ground remains uneven.