Opponents of reverse discrimination won a rare victory today (Ricci v. DeStefano).
This has been the poster case for reverse discrimination for quite a while now, with two thirds of respondents in a recent CNN poll saying they thought the previous ruling was unfair. Among the Affirmative Action crowd, reverse discrimination is still considered ok. I think they are misguided. When your house is burning down, who do you want to show up, the most racially balanced team, or the guys who passed the fire fighting test? This goes for any other job as well. As far as the justifications for reverse discrimination, there are a whole lot of disadvantaged white people in this country too. There is no such thing as being too white to be poor. If you are going to have a socialist philosophy, don’t help blacks because they tend to be poor, help the poor because they’re always poor. If you are going to help the poor, do it by giving them the opportunity to compete rather than just giving them all a medal.
This is an especially timely case because Sonia Sotomayor had sided with the city when she head the case. Now that The Supreme Court has shot it down 5-4, not only does it make her look bad and hurt her chances for nomination, especially after her questionable attitude on discrimination, it also highlights the importance of her nomination, as she could have swung the vote the their way had she been on the court. It was also an important case in our over-litigious business atmosphere today. Those businesses who have been hiring minorities out of fear of litigation now see that they can be sued going either direction. While this may increase total litigation, it will also get people back to hiring by merit rather than fear.
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