Was I the only one disappointed to discover the Ricci opinion doesn’t include any of the actual promotion test questions that managed to weed out almost all minority candidates from possible promotion to fire lieutenant and captain positions in New Haven?
It came out in oral argument that one question asked firefighters whether fire equipment should be parked “uptown, downtown or underground when arriving at a fire” even though New Haven doesn’t have an uptown or downtown. (Apparently some of the questions were based on questions relevant to New York City firefighters.) Not that that matters, since everyone knows you park your equipment underground when arriving at a fire.
In lieu of evidence to the contrary, I like to imagine the New Haven test was a hybrid of Stuff White People Like and a discriminatory SAT question, and looked something like this:
1. You arrive at a yacht that is engulfed in flames in the marina. The yacht owner tells you his wife is trapped aft. The yacht owner means his wife is trapped:
A) In the front of the yacht.
B) In the back of the yacht.
C) On the left side of the yacht.
D) On the right side of the yacht.
E) Under the yacht.
2. A panicked homeowner asks you to save “the greatest Bruce Springsteen album in existence” from the upstairs bedroom of his burning home. When you get upstairs you see five Springsteen albums. Which do you grab?
A) Darkness on the Edge of Town
B) The Rising
C) Born to Run
D) The River
E) Nebraska
-AS
Because I’m not witty enough myself… « Emily Posts // Jun 30, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] post on one of my favorite blogs [disclaimer: the authors are two of my closest friends], entitled New Haven Firefighter’s Test (Imgained). In this post AS imagines what the questions on the controversial New Haven Firefighter’s [...]
This was in fact the greatest blog post in the history of mankind
I agree with most of this, except for the implication that knowledge isn’t a relevant qualification for everything. Unless your problem with that question is that it’s a trick question. Which it is, since the answer is “you drop the baby you’re carrying and grab all five albums.”
-Anthony