I am SO upset by the 5-4 ruling of the Supreme Court in favor of the firefighters in Connecticut. It should have been a 9-0 ruling!!! At least they got Sotomayor's decision reversed.
For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, apparently fire fighters were denied their promotions because none of their minority peers passed the promotion exam. So because all that passed the exam were white, no one got the promotion even though they rightfully deserved it. THIS IS DISCRIMINATION!!!!!!*
If indeed we are "post-racial" then why should the color of these fire fighter's skin interfere with their exam scores?!! It is not their fault they worked hard and passed the standard exam and that they happen to be white males. This is reverse discrimination and I feel that the court ruling shouldn't have been so close; it is uncomfortably close.
I thought our country was moving beyond Affirmative Action (a late 20th century frame of mind) and heading to Dr. King's ideal of a man being judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. I believe there is no better example than this case to prove that still, in 2009, skin color continues to be a huge factor.
As a white woman, I want to be evaluated as a person, not as a category, and my hope is that I am not alone in that desire.
*I hope my opinion has not offended any of my readers- I am very interested in creating a dialogue of opinions if you feel differently.
2 comments:
I all too much agree with you. You not only still see it with race, but with religion, family size, and Education or lack there of. We took 3 years to get into Dental School, just to find out that a number of students in years ahead of us got in with even lower scores, less background and no more ambition to be a Dentist but to make lots of money. Oh, but they are of color and or female, and foreign! The admitting comitee wanted to see what might happen with future Alumni if they accepted less than half of the Caucasion-Male-LDS students that they had found they had been taking in the many years past. Apparently (we) don't give back to the schools as much as they would have hoped! It was verry hard for my husband to find this stuff out. But that is the way of the world these days!
Well, actually, I love to be judged by my appearance. I love it when the guy at the auto shop looks at me and assumes I don't know anything about my car, and that he can therefore convince me that, strangely enough, every single fluid in my car is simultaneously dangerously low and in need of an expensive fill up. :) Jess Peterson
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