Can Whites be discriminated against? Was Judge Sotomayor wrong? part 2
And this says nothing of the mortgage loans and any other financial product. It is a fact that mortgages (all of them) tend to be significantly higher for a person of color than Whites, regardless of credit score, financial background, and any other factor. This is also true of car loans and purchases, and other loans. It is similar in most other types of big ticket purchases.
Even IQ tests are skewed, having a bias built into the system that will cause some people of color to score lower than is accurate. Hell even getting a cab in most major cities is a massive problem if you are a person of color.
So there is a direct, real, daily benefit to being White that cannot be corrected by laws or the legal system. And laws were created to adjust for some of these factors. Whether you agree with these laws or not does not change the reason why the laws were created or the fact they exist.
But is it fair for a less qualified person of color to attain a position instead of a more qualified White person? I think not, in most cases.
With respect to the firemen, this is a position that requires certain exact minimums, thus there cannot (or at least should not) be a lower standard. To have such a standard is to be endangering the lives of the public. And this was not a mere question of a point or 2 on a standardized test. Creating a grade curve as in college grading does not resolve the direct difference in the scores this case is about. The White scores were thrown out. That is wrong, especially as lives potentially depend on this.
But some will want to take this and apply it to other areas that are not the same. College admissions is one example. They say that to alter the requirements of an admission is discrimination. They say this is the same as the firemen.
That is untrue because of several factors. One is the fact that the major bias of the nation is toward Whites. There are multiple institutions that will accept these same students, in general they have better finances to fund their college, they have less resistance in getting a job after or before college, and they were provided (on average) better educations to enable them to have better admission scores. Additionally the admittence to college will not endanger the lives of the public. Not to mention that for the person of color on average, the only factor restricting them was the failure of the education system to provide them the opportunity to excel.
So yes, Whites can be discriminated against. Generally that might happen in an isolated individual basis, like not being welcomed into a nightclub or restaurant. But looking at the nation, Whites are incredibly more leveraged to have an advantage in almost every aspect of life in this nation.
The day when White women don’t fear being in an elevator with a person of color, where public schools in cities no longer have schoolbooks older than the students, where police do not rampage against an innocent citizen solely for the color of their skin, where all media fairly depict crowds and casts (ie there are no people of color in any episode of friends in the crowds of New York, and only 1 character ever that I recall) and news reports, then we can say that discrimination is gone.
But until that day, laws will exist to try to balance a few of the most obvious problems. And those laws will likely be bent and abused by the personal outlooks of judges from time to time.
So in summation, do I think the Supreme Court was right? Yes I do. Do I think that Judge Sotomayor and the others that reviewed this case were wrong? Completely. Is this proof of Judge Sotomayor being biased and unworthy of a seat at the Supreme Court? Not exactly. Though my reasons for her disqualification have nothing to do with this case, and yet are bound by the equality that the Supreme Court is meant to uphold.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
[...] Continued in part 2… Rating 3.00 out of 5 [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
[...] Continued in part 2… [...]