Judge orders Fire Department to hire black and Hispanic applicants who failed “racist” written test

Here’s a situation which reminds me of the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

The following quote is from this article:

“A federal judge is ordering the New York City Fire Department to implement racial quotas to address grievances from minorities who failed entrance exams. On July 5 in Brooklyn, Nicholas G. Garaufis, a Clinton-appointed judge for the Eastern District of New York, issued a ruling that requires two of every five newly hired fireman to be black and one of every five, Hispanic — until the department has fulfilled the court-ordered quota of 186 black and 107 Hispanic hires. The ruling allows back pay — totaling an estimated $128.7 million — for minorities who failed written tests.”

The test can be read here.

The judge is wrong to claim that the test is “racist.” The test makes no mention whatsoever of race. The same test is given to all applicants, regardless of their race. There is nothing “racist” about the test.

In addition, the test is incredibly easy. The test actually contains the answers within the questions. Here is a question from the test:

Answer question 15 based solely on the following information:

Firefighters primary means of protection against a hostile fire environment are their protective clothing and equipment. Before getting on their fire apparatus at the firehouse, firefighters must put on their protective gear in the order given:

1. Pants and boots

2. Handie-talkie radio

3. Hood

4. Coat

5. Gloves

6. Helmet

7. Prior to exiting the fire apparatus at the fire scene, firefighters put on their SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus), which is the air tank they use to breathe.

15. You are a firefighter at your firehouse preparing to go to a fire and are standing near your apparatus putting on your protective gear in the proper order. You have just completed putting on your gloves. The next item you should put on is your:

A) coat

B) hood

C) SCBA

D) helmet

Even if someone has never taken a firefighting class, they could still pass the test, if they are in possession of basic reading, logical, and analytical skills. A reasonably intelligent six-year-old child, who has never taken a firefighting class, should be able to pass this test. Any so-called “adult” who can’t read and understand this test well enough to pass it is not someone who should be working as a firefighter in the first place.

Think of the kind of precedent this ruling could set. Instead of hiring heart surgeons, bridge engineers, and bus drivers based on who passed the test, we could end up hiring based on who failed the test. Can you imagine the kind of world this would create?

Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis is evil for his ruling in this case – and I don’t use that word lightly. He is evil because he thinks that the lives of human beings who are trapped in burning buildings should be superseded to the politically correct whims of a political philosophy which is based on the idea that individual merit is worthless. When one accepts the idea that individual merit is worthless, it doesn’t take much more to believe that individual lives are also worthless.

The whole reason that we live so much better than the hunter gatherers of thousands of years ago is because we have valued individual merit, the human mind, rational thought, and doing things as well as possible. Judge Garaufis’s ruling isn’t just about firefighting – at its very core, his ruling is an attack on human life, and on all of the things that make civilization so wonderful.