Warp wrote:
>   It's puzzling indeed. I'm trying to think how you could create an exam
> which would be disadvantageous to black people, and I can't think of anything.

There are certain tests you can give that would discriminate. Perhaps blacks 
are more poor or worse educated, so if you asked about proper grammar or 
financial questions, you could discriminate.

I can't imagine any test that would discriminate against blacks and have 
something to do with fire fighting, tho.

I remember reading about this - they had to drop the test a couple of years 
because none of the blacks who applied for the promotion that the test 
enabled actually passed the test.

It seems to me if the test is actually a valid test of necessary skills and 
you can't pass the test, you shouldn't be risking your life and mine in a 
job like that, even if the test has a correspondence between skin color and 
pass rate.

>   (I'm assuming that all applicants are given the exact same test, as the
> article doesn't seem to imply anything else. 

Yes.  It just happens that blacks don't pass the test as easily as whites. 
It would be fascinating to see the test.  I can't imagine a set of questions 
that would so reliably discriminate without being obvious about it.  Usually 
these cases come when 23% of the applicants are minority but only 21% of 
those passing the test are minority, but from what I've read, the rates are 
way out of line.

Note that in this country, the simple fact that blacks don't pass the test 
makes it very difficult to legally claim the test isn't "discriminatory" in 
the sense that this article means it. Folks claiming that don't have to 
prove there's something biased on the test. You have to prove there's some 
other reason that skin color corresponds to success rate.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message