Sotomayor Overturned Already

From an AP article ( Reverse discrimination ruling leaves confusion ):

New Haven, trying to fill senior fire department vacancies, gave a test to 77
candidates for lieutenant and 41 candidates for captain. Fifty-six firefighters
passed the exams, including 41 whites, nine blacks and six Hispanics. But of
those, only 17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.

This means that 118 candidates took the test for either lieutenant or captain. Of those only 56 passed (47%). Of those 41 were white, 9 black and 6 Hispanic. But, only 17 whites and 2 Hispanics did well enough to be promoted. It doesn’t specify but it looks like there were only 19 openings and these were the top 19 test takers. This also means that of the 37 who didn’t qualify to be promoted 24 were white, 9 were black and 4 were Hispanic.

Of the 56 who passed 73.2% were white (41), 16.1% were black (9) and 10.7% were Hispanic (6).

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics there are over 293,000 fire fighters in America. Of those 4.8% are women (meaning 95.2% are men). Overall, 8.2% are black, 0.3% is Asian and 9.4% are Hispanic (meaning 82.1% of all fire fighters are white).

According to the U.S. Census 66% of our population is White/non-hispanic. 12.8% are Black, 4.4% are Asian and 15.1% are Hispanic/Latino. One of the arguments in New Haven is that the racial proportions in the New Haven fire department are not proportionate to the population mix of New Haven. But, the facts (which often confuse liberals), clearly show that the racial mix of Fire Fighters in America is not proportionate to the population of America.

Also, 91% of all fire fighters in New York City are white. It seems, nationwide, white people are more likely to be fire fighters in the first place. Thus, it’s easy to take the raw numbers from the New Haven case out of context. When you compare the percentages they’re not out of whack at all.