In 2003, 117 New Haven, Conn. firefighters took an advancement exam. The tests were administered in both written and oral form.
When the results were released, the 17 firefighters who scored the highest should have been eligible for advancement. Unfortunately, these brave public servants were denied the advancement they earned solely because of their race.
This unprecedented dismissal of valid test scores by New Haven city officials was not met by protest or even intense media coverage.
Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition did not protest the decision the way it did during the Duke rape hoax or the Don Imus incident. Al Sharpton never rushed to New Haven to fight for the rights of the New Haven 17. These brave fire fighters could not even garner the support of a second-tier civil rights leader like Quanell X.
The ugly truth is that the reason these civil rights leaders did not come to the aid of these men is the same reason the test scores were thrown out in the first place. The firefighters were simply the wrong color.
Of the 117 firefighters who took the advancement test in 2003, those who scored the highest and were deserving of advancement consisted of 16 white firefighters and one Hispanic. New Haven’s city officials, fearing a lawsuit by groups like the one headed by Sharpton, decided that no firefighter would be promoted and threw out the exam scores.
With this blatant violation of their civil rights, the New Haven 17 chose to fight this race-based injustice. The case was eventually brought before a panel of judges which included Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.
The panel sided with the city of New Haven. Undeterred, the firefighters continued to fight this injustice all the way to the Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned the panel’s ruling, giving the firefighters their promotions. This marked the sixth time a Sotomayor decision has been overruled by the country’s highest court.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision in this case is also troubling. One vote was standing between these 17 men and immense racial injustice.
One might wonder if these four dissenting judges have ever heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. who longed for a time when a man would not be judged by the color of his skin. Last time I checked, these moving words didn’t include the caveat, ‘unless that skin is white, then it’s okay.’
Timothy Mathis is a history junior and may be reached at [email protected]
