Black Firefighters and the FDNY by David Goldberg

Author:David Goldberg [Goldberg, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. revolved around a series of tests that the North Carolina–based Duke Power Company administered to its employees. Access to entry-level and promotional positions hinged on how applicants performed on these tests. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that these testing requirements were discriminatory and illegal. Not only were the tests unrelated to the job, but long-standing racism and institutionalized inequities—both on the job and in society at large—circumscribed Black North Carolinians from competing on an equal basis with white workers and applicants. Unequal access to education in North Carolina as well as the disproportionate rate at which Black North Carolinians quit school to enter the workforce to try to offset the wide racial disparity in wealth created a situation in which 34 percent of white males, but only 12 percent of Black males in North Carolina, had high school diplomas.53

With regard to aptitude tests, the Court found them highly biased. Statistics gathered by the EEOC “found that the use of a battery of tests, including the Wonderlic and Bennett tests used by the company in the instant case, resulted in 58% of whites passing the test as compared to only 6% of the blacks.” To combat the disparate impact created by these policies, the Court ordered that all future tests be validated and brought into compliance with EEOC standards, but it also ordered that an affirmative action plan be adopted to remedy past and present discrimination and its continued impact.54

The Griggs decision represented both the potential and the limitations of employment discrimination litigation as a pathway to equal employment opportunity. While the decision shifted the burden of proof from the plaintiffs to the defendants, the Court’s ability to order affirmative relief was limited by clauses that had been inserted into Title VII by hostile senators who, in conjunction with the AFL-CIO, circumscribed Title VII’s power, scope, and potential impact before it became law.55 One clause inserted by Senator John Tower of Texas, for example, argued that discriminatory testing procedures should be considered legal so long as the tests were job related and in compliance with EEOC guidelines. If these stipulations were met, the disparate impact of these examinations became legally irrelevant, a point indirectly acknowledged by the Supreme Court in its Griggs decision:

If, as here, an employment practice that operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, it is prohibited, notwithstanding the employer’s lack of discriminatory intent. . . . The act proscribed not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business necessity [emphasis added]. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.56

As a result, the discriminatory tests utilized by Duke Power in the past had to be replaced with new, validated examinations. Employers could still use a test so long as it was shown to be professionally developed and job related. This, in turn, left

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