and apologies to AVI, i misread where he went with what he said, and so my explanation is not in opposition, but was another view over a similar way of putting it. sorry AVI… my bad…

Poignant story. It shows how affirmative action is a barrier to excellence and achievement. Our nation relies upon excellence and achievement to ensure our independence and freedom. Affirmative action weakens us; makes us vulnerable. And, when we achieve less, when we excel less: we actually increase human suffering amongst our own citizens. We have an innate responsibility to be excellent, to achieve, for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of our fellow human beings. Affirmative action obstructs excellence and achievement. It is an abomination.

so you start with a mass of people taking the test. and out of 100, 20 are on the top… this does not mean that the underperformers are now performing higher, it just means that you created a pool where you can get the underpeformers in and then select them and still appear fair.

so now you take the lowest 4 performers out of the pool.

next year the same 16 take the test again, and some new of their calibre take the test.

eventually you end up with no choice but to hire the one you dont want!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED IN THIS CASE..

that is if you look at this with the record, and how many years they are working, eventually they ran out of low performers who performed just high enough to get over the selection line.

taking the bottom of the top of 4/5s doesnt work unless you get a new set of people each year. and since people take the test every year for their careers (many cases), the top performers eventually push all the others out. and you get a test where none of the top performing underperformers enter the arena to be selected.

what sotomyer wanted was to throw the results back into the bag, and hope soem of the whites would get dissillusioned and not try (given the example she was setting). when and if this then happened, there wold now be suddenly more spaced for the african firefigthers to test to the bottom of the top.

the idea was institutional dissilllusionment would create opportunity for africans and people of color.

and the decline in average merit and ability of the people who protect us is just a necessary cost.

i saw this institutional dissillusionment when i went to the SBA to see if i could build my company and avail myself of such programs. their literature is gender neutral, their practice is reverse racist to the extreme. which is why you dont see any small stores and delis owned by white men in the city. they cant get free equipment, guaranteed loans, etc.

to watch the men slowly realize all day and slowly get up and leave one by one during the course of eight hours was a life changing experience.

all of them if you talked to them in the morning were full of hope and stuff. most were immigrants from europe and other places, just as poor as the others.

full of happiness and such… and one by one their shoulders would collapse, and their dreams would die, and they would slowly get up during speeches and classes and try to become invisable as they left…

welcome to america…

New Haven bent over backwards to make this an “equal opportunity” test. Shrinkwrapped has a good post regarding the winners as the losers complained that the test was designed so that it “favored ‘fire buffs’ who have spent their whole lives reading fire suppression manuals, and studied like maniacs for the exam.” Imagine that. Guess EIT and Professional Engineer exams need to be changed, after all we wouldn’t want the people who lived and breathed engineering actually signing off on designs and managing the teams doing the design work. I begin to wonder if I’m trapped in a novel by Rand, Orwell, Zamyatin, or Kafka. Probably Kafka.

Mickey Dee, look up the word “bigot”. Learn the word so you’ll find your way to stop being one.

Thus Sotomayor was wrong not only on decision but on procedure. That’s a much more serious issue, and it cuts across liberal/conservative lines, UNLESS you believe that SCOTUS only exists to push your own agenda.

When are we going to rate an imago?

I’m sure you’re also against the “legislating from the bench” represented by landmark decisions such as Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.

Personally, I like the former, but think the latter should have been left to the states. But that’s just me; I don’t represent your bogeymen “neocons,” a bunch of people who actually hold a wide variety of opinions of the subject of judicial activism.

And when we adopt a national standard which falls somewhere below “Excellence”: such is deadening to our soul.

And when we adopt a national standard of “we deserve something we have not earned”: such is deadening to our soul.