The below AP story discusses Colin Powell’s distaste for the Republican attacks on Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor for racism. Affirmative Action is one of those legal and political issues upon which lawyers and politicians can have unique views which don’t necessarily line up squarely with party lines. The problem with the New Haven case is that the Fire Department rejected the test too late. They could have known going in that the test would disparately favor whites, because all such tests do. That doesn’t make the test racist, it makes it a test that discriminates in favor of those who did well in school and who worked hard to prepare for the test.
The most disturbing part of the test is that the test actually accurately reflects the difference in educational achievement between black males and white males. Why is our education system more than 50 years after forced federal integration of the schools, still so massively failing to educate blacks, especially black men?
I have hopes that this fact will change, primarily for two reasons:
1) The tearing down of the major inner city housing projects, like the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago; and
2) The Election of a brilliant man like Barack Obama, who will provide the type of positive role model for black youths in an area outside of sports.
Maybe these developments can be a catalyst for change. The New Haven Fire Department case shows how desperately something must change.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
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©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2009
Date: 7/5/2009 9:01 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Colin Powell, one of the nation’s most prominent African-Americans, is going after people who attacked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor because of her stand in favor of affirmative action.
Powell, who’s from the same Bronx neighborhood in New York as Sotomayor, said she should face “a spirited set of hearings” in the Senate. But he said the federal appeals court judge, who would be the first Hispanic justice, shouldn’t be condemned for ruling against white firefighters who contended they suffered reverse discrimination.
“What we can’t continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor … called a racist, a reverse racist and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we’re mad at her,” Powell said in an interview broadcast Sunday on “State of the Union” on CNN.
Powell made it clear that he was referring to critics outside the Senate.
“Fortunately, the senators who will sit on this hearing in the Judiciary Committee, after a few days of this kind of nonsense, said, ‘Let’s slow down, let’s examine her qualifications in the way we’re supposed to at a confirmation hearing.'” The committee begins hearings July 13.
Powell said Sotomayor has “an open and liberal bent of mind, but that’s not disqualifying. But she seems to have a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law.”
Powell, a Republican who supported Obama, said his party still is not sensitive enough toward minorities.
He noted that Obama had a significant advantage with Hispanics and African-Americans in the November elections. He criticized Republicans who are not elected to office and “immediately shout racism” against Sotomayor, while accusing Powell of supporting Obama because both men are black.
“We still have a problem,” he said.
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has called Powell “just another liberal,” said he should become a Democrat and charged that Powell endorsed Obama based on race. Powell said Sunday that Limbaugh “doesn’t decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is.”
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last Monday that white firefighters in Connecticut were unfairly denied promotion because of their race. The justices threw out a decision that Sotomayor had endorsed as an appeals court judge.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.