Justice Ginsburg’s Ricci Racial Hypocrisy

Justice Ginsburg’s Racial Hypocrisy in Ricci
She Never Met a Black She’d Hire in 1993
By Michael P. Tremoglie
Tremoglie’s Tea Time Blog

During Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s July 1993 confirmation hearing, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, asked her about racist hiring practices. He wanted to know if she thought that an employer, located in a city that was predominantly black, would be suspected of racism if there were no blacks on the payroll. Judge Ginsburg replied it would be.

Hatch then reminded her that her own payroll did not include blacks even though she was in a city with a majority black population. He quickly followed up by saying he did not suspect her of racism.

Ginsburg, who was clearly flabbergasted that her hypocrisy had been exposed, tried to be glib. She replied, “ …if you confirm me to this job, my attractiveness to black candidates is going to improve.”

Now, 16 years later, the blatant hypocrisy she revealed then was displayed once more in her dissent in the Ricci v. DeStefano case. This case involved a discrimination lawsuit by 18 New Haven Connecticut firefighters, 17 whites and one Hispanic. They had all passed their promotional test. Yet, the city invalidated the test results because few blacks had passed.

The lower courts concurred that the city should have issued a new test. However, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that this violated the rights of those who were not promoted. Ginsburg said their rights wre not violated.

This is outrageous to many on various levels. However, the most contemptible flaw is her patently hypocritical reasoning.

The same argument Justice Ginsburg used to suggest that the New Haven Fire Department might be engaged in racist hiring and promoting practices could easily have been applied to her own hiring and promoting practices.

Justice Ginsburg wrote in her Ricci dissent, “…a city in which African-Americans and Hispanics account for nearly 60 percent of the population, must today be served—as it was in the days of undisguised discrimination—by a fire department in which members of racial and ethnic minorities are rarely seen in command positions. In arriving at its order, the Court barely acknowledges the pathmarking decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), which explained the centrality of the disparate-impact concept to effective enforcement of Title VII.”

Justice Ginsburg clearly believes that the racial makeup of the city’s workforce must reflect that of the city itself. If it is not, she claims that is a priori evidence of racism. Yet, her argument is not applicable to herself.

Her assertion that the workforce of the New Haven fire department - or any employer for that matter – must reflect the same, or near the same, racial proportions of the geographical workforce in which the employer operates is known as the “disparity” argument.

The argument goes like this: if the population of a city is 50 percent African-American, then the percentage of an employer’s workforce must also be approximately the same, otherwise the employer must be exercising racism in its hiring procedure.

This “disparity” or “disproportionality” argument has been used to “prove” racism in everything from criminal sentencing to hiring practices to charitable contributions to welfare. It is the reasoning for revising crack cocaine laws.

Later in her dissent Ginsburg tries to deny the racial disparity argument. Using classic Orwellian doublespeak she writes, “an employer could not cast aside a selection method based on a statistical disparity alone." (Emphasis added)

Well then why is she sanctioning the city’s decision to cast aside the test because of racial disparity?

This is classic insult your intelligence rationale. It is typical of liberals.

After listening to, as well as, reading Ginsburg’s opinions about racist hiring practices and also reading the reportage about Ricci v. DeStefano that followed in such liberal journals like the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and others, one cannot help remember the George Orwell’s words in his May 1945 treatise “Notes on Nationalism.”

Mr. Orwell wrote, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”