Race norming

Hilary Clinton is involve in a group called, “The Children’s Defense League” and this group was founded by Mary Wright Edelman. She is a black lady about my age who grew up in South Carolina. Her father was a minister with five children. He emphasized the importance of education and all five children became productive citizens. Mary wrote several books and I read her first one. It was like reading two separate books. In the first half she lauds the combination of church and family as the foundation of their culture. She outlines how they learned to be responsible for their own behavior and how work was an essential part of life. She brags about their self-reliance and how they reached out to help those in need. The second half of the book is devoted to the idea that the government should do more to help people. Here is one quote from the first half. Affirmative action does not and should not mean that unqualified people get an advantage. Everybody has to be able to do the work in school or on the job to succeed. Nobody should use affirmative action as a favor, a crutch, or as an excuse not to be prepared or not to do a first-rate job or to stigmatize. This is what most people thought affirmative action was when it was introduced as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Since then it has morphed into something called, “race norming”, and that differs significantly from Mrs. Edelman’s definition. Race norming it the process of statistically adjusting the scores of minority job applicants on job-qualification tests by rating each test-taker’s scores against the results of others in his or her racial or ethnic group. This shift has caused considerable controversy and case after case has come to light showing what seems to be a bias in favor of minorities. There are a number of cities across the country where minorities were underrepresented in their police and fire departments and race norming was used to correct this imbalance. In other words the top qualifiers were replaced with those who scored lower because of their race. This was justified by saying that past injustices caused certain groups to be less able to qualify. While this may be an acceptable excuse it does beg the question as to why the tests are given in the first place. In the current situation in Ferguson, MO where the blacks are severely under represented on the police force perhaps some race norming would have prevented the chaos now going on.