Roberta X goes off about the recent New Haven, CT firefighter racial discrimination lawsuit ruling.

The dissenting — liberal — Justices aver, “in effect, that having so few black firefighters in command positions provides a reason for the city to at least consider throwing out the test and then designing a new one that will accommodate the education level, lower income, and particular work experience of African-Americans. And candidates for a promotion don’t need to be the best; they need simply have qualifications that are only ‘necessary to successful performance of the job in question.’”

This is the cold, dead hand of Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party, reaching out with the soft bigotry of low expectations. telling us, “that’s all they’re capable of, poor creatures.” Bullshit! Pure, unadulterated, triple-strength bilge and hokum! It’s 2009 and just about the only groups that have to be reminded of the countervailing examples all around ’em are unregenerate racists and liberals — but I repeat myself.

Like I said, most liberals aren’t.

Roberta X continues:

…But what still has my blood boiling is this burning desire to define tests down to achieve “balance.” It shows up in public safety jobs and the military these days but public safety is the most damaged by it — there are often different physical requirements for the boys and the girls, yet once they qualify, they do the same job. This is the worst sort of foolishness; if a fireman’s got to be able to carry X weight for Y distance under Z conditions, then a firewoman had better be able to do so, too, or she’s gonna have to leave someone to die that her brothers would’ve been able to save. Unfair? –It may have the effect of setting the bar higher for women than for men but it does not make it impossible, and it could be your loved ones or even you, left to burn by someone who only got in because the bar was lowered.

Some jobs take strength or stamina; some take great powers of concetration and fine motor control. Some — Supreme Court Justice, perhaps? — merely take good sitting-down muscles at both ends. And many jobs require some basic abilities that if you, personally, lack ’em, you had not ought to be doing that job. Not even if Justice Ginsburg thinks it would be “fair.”