Meritocracy, New Haven Firefighters and the Supreme Court

Why should I care about the New Haven firefighters, their written advancement exam and the Supreme Court case involving it?

Because, like most people, I hear this case as a case in point. It's not about firemen; it's about the idea of meritocracy; it's about the nature of the Supreme Court; it's about AMERICA.

So, the first thing that occurred to me is: Why would a firefighter be tested with a written exam? What part of being a fire fighter can be tested better by a written exam than by a practical, physical exam? Why a written exam for a firefighter?

Only things I can think of is:  1/ Firefighting, despite it's physical nature has a lot of mental stuff you have to know, just as wrestlers have to know the science of balance, weight, leverage. But you would never judge a wrestler by a written exam. You could be a "smart" wrestler but none of that matters on the mat, unless you can use it. 2/ For promotions, everyone wants people advanced not because of color or personal connections but because you are "qualified."

This comes back of course, to how do you decide who is qualified? How is one person more "qualified," than another? Before I heard about this exam,  I would have presumed the main qualification for a firefighter is longevity, or maybe who you or your father knows in the department. But that would mean, it's an old boys' club and any Black or Hispanic would be forever blocked from becoming whatever the next level up in firefighter status is, unless there were some more "objective" test of "qualifications."  So they devise an "exam." 

The question is, in a world where mental agility gets translated into physical action, what sort of written exam would you devlse? It reminds me of the scene in Men In Black, where they try to give a written exam to the candidates, who are all, "The Best of the Best," but they already have chosen their candidate based on prior performance in more practical settings.

This whole desire for written exams to distinguish among candidates to discern who is most "qualified," when the fact is almost the whole crew is equally qualified, or if there are any differences, the differences are not great or important, rings true for me.  Doctors take written exams frequently, and they are pretty ridiculous, for the most part. They are devised to separate out people into a bell shaped curve, when in fact the performance of doctors is more of a cresting wave, with most doctors performing at about 80% and very few down around 20% but the test is going to make the cut at 50%, so it becomes very arbitrary and the questions reflect this by being absurd.

Does the fact no Hispanics or Blacks made the cut on the exam mean Hispanic and Blacks simply are less "qualified?" Nobody but a New Haven firefighter could know. Certainly no one on the Supreme Court knows, but that doesn't faze the justices.

Or does the fact the minorities scored lower mean they are simply stupid, or do not possess the type of intelligence it takes to be a leader among firefighters?  Again, I'm not a firefighter, but that doesn't stop me or half of the American citizens from having an opinion.

My best guess is a lot of white fire fighters feel pretty annoyed because it wasn't easy for them to score high on that exam; they had to sweat bullets to get their own high scores, so it's understandable they would be pretty frothy when they manage to score high and then the test is thrown out.

On the other hand, could I devise a test for which those white fire fighters study really hard and fail, while the Blacks and Histpanics score higher?  I suspect I could, but I don't know that for sure.

A lot of this is tied up in the idea of a mertiocracy. What is a meritocracy?  When you are talking about a college, you say well if admission is based on the idea of a meritocracy, you admit kids with the best grades and the best test scores, regardless of whether or not their parents went to the school, whether or not the parents gave millions to the school, whether or not the parents are rich or famous, whether or not the applicant is a movie star or a wonderful athlete all that counts are "smarts."

But what are "smarts?" How do you identify "smarts?"  Are there not multiple forms of intelligence? Is the boy who can scan over a pattern of bodies arrayed in a certain grouping called a "defense" and quickly identify that defense, then call out a verbal code to his own teamates to exploit that defense, is that boy not showing a certain type of intelligence? Do we not value that type of intelligence?

What type of intelligence does the SAT exam test? Why is that type of intelligence, if it is a narrow band of intelligence as has been claimed,why is that intelligence determinant of worthiness? Why are college board exams timed? Does that have to do with the quality of the intelligence of the students or with the convenience of the testers and proctors?

A meritocracy implies we have good tests of quality.

Are grades not a good test of quality? After all, grades are given by teachers who know the students over time, not just over a three hour testing period. But colleges relied more on college board exams because everyone who ever went through high school knows about teachers, grades, differing qualities of schools and so those measures of qualities we call "grades," are so well known noboby places much faith in them.

The problem with mertiocracy as a practical reality is it's an illusion, a delusion. There is no such thing, except in limited spheres. The winner of a wrestling tournament has progressed through an elimination in a meritocracy, espeically if the structure is what is called, "Double elimination," to be sure you didn't get beaten by the champion in your first match. You might be the second best wrestler in the tournament with the bad luck to meet the best guy your first match, so the double elimination gives you the opportunity not to be arbitraily eliminated on the basis of bad luck. There are no comparable written tests like this in the  academic world, or in the professional world.

So the idea of choosing people by the content of their character or the quality of their competence rather than by the color of their skin turns out be a pretty slippery proposition.

As for the Supreme Court. I could and did predict the vote before the case ever got heard. It's like this:  Here you have a case of white guys saying, we took the test and then it was reverse because the Black guys didn't do as well. So you've got the losers trying to take down the winners. How do you think the court is going to divide?  Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas--have they ever voted for the underdog?  So it's only Kennedy who is the question mark.

Which brings me back to the basic point. If you know the way the Court will vote just hearing the case described, how much law could be involved in these decisions and how much pre judging the case by your own predispositions? If you know the personality, the prejudices of the justices and their decisions never surprise you, how impartial, how guided by "THE LAW" is our Supreme Court?