This Shockingly Easy Test Has Been Deemed ‘Racist.’ Here’s Why.

One of the things you learn as you get older is that Schoolhouse Rock was a lie. They told us that if the government wants to enact a major policy change that affects the lives of millions of people, there’s supposedly a procedure in place that they have to follow. A bill needs to originate in Congress. Then Congress votes on the bill. Then the president signs it. And it becomes law.

Of course, there are about a million different ways that the federal government gets around this whole procedure. In fact, just a few years ago, the Obama administration pioneered yet another tactic to circumvent what voters actually want. This is a tactic that’s had enormous ramifications for this country over the past decade. Their tool of choice was something called “consent decrees,” which are basically court settlements.

Here’s how the scam worked. The Obama DOJ would accuse local police departments all over the country of being racist. They’d use the massive resources of the federal government to file lawsuits against these local police departments, which threatened to deplete the much more limited resources of local governments. And so, in almost every case, police departments would settle the lawsuits and agree to “oversight” by the DOJ, which in plain English meant that they stopped enforcing the law. After all, they didn’t want to be accused of racism anymore. This is how, without ever passing a law, the Obama administration kickstarted the end of policing in this country.

One of these consent decrees came about in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. As you might remember, Brown violently robbed a store. Then he attacked a police officer and tried to take his gun before the officer shot him in self-defense. That’s the version of events that even Obama’s DOJ eventually admitted was true. But the DOJ knew that, in order to lend some legitimacy to the BLM riots, they had to come down hard on Ferguson’s police department somehow. They had to find a way to make sure that the police stopped trying to arrest violent thugs like Michael Brown.

To that end, the DOJ went to court and accused the Ferguson police department of being systematically racist. The DOJ said that the department was guilty of: “using criteria or methods of administration that have an unnecessary disparate impact based on race, color, or national origin.” And the DOJ won the case. Ferguson settled, and agreed to years of “oversight” by the DOJ — which basically means no more policing. And Ferguson became an even more deadly hellhole afterwards. Racial equity was achieved.

So what was the evidence that Ferguson’s police were racist in the first place, exactly? Let’s see. The DOJ alleged that Ferguson PD engaged in a “pattern and practice” of discrimination. Here’s their evidence:

As you can see, this chart reads: “Between 2012 and 2014, African Americans represented two-thirds of the population in Ferguson. But they represented a much higher percentage of those stopped and arrested.” And then the data shows that blacks made up 67% of the population, but accounted for 85% of vehicle stops and 93% of arrests.

Then there’s this chart from the DOJ.

It reads: “90 percent of people who received a citation in Ferguson were African American. 95 percent of all ‘manner of walking in roadway’ charges were filed against African Americans. 94 percent of all ‘failure to comply’ charges were filed against African Americans.'”

Notice what’s missing in this analysis. They’re not addressing whether African-Americans are committing more crimes than other demographic groups. They’re just assuming that, because they make up 67% of the population, black people must only be committing 67% of the crimes. Any other outcome must be racist, according to the DOJ. If black people make up 67% of the population, but 68% of people who are arrested are black, then clearly the department is 1% racist. That’s the extent of their thought process. They don’t seem to consider any other variables, at least in these charts.

If you go and pull up the DOJ’s full investigative report on Ferguson, you’ll find that they do attempt to address this objection. They include one paragraph about “controlling for other variables.” Here it is:

These disparities in the outcomes that result from traffic stops remain even after regression analysis is used to control for non-race-based variables, including driver age; gender; the assignment of the officer making the stop; disparities in officer behavior; and the stated reason the stop was initiated. Upon accounting for differences in those variables, African Americans remained 2.07 times more likely to be searched; 2.00 times more likely to receive a citation; and 2.37 times more likely to be arrested than other stopped individuals.

Notice what’s missing here. They don’t account for what happens after the traffic stop begins. They say they account for “disparities in officer behavior” but not “disparities in suspect behavior.” And that’s a pretty big thing to leave out. If you get pulled over and you tell the cop to go to hell, and then you start running into the street, the odds are that your traffic stop won’t go so well. That might get you searched. You might wind up with a citation or even get arrested. But the DOJ just leaves that out of its analysis.

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There are other variables they don’t consider either — like the criminal history of the person being stopped, which can obviously influence whether or not they’re searched, particularly if they’re on probation or have a warrant that’s discovered after the stop is initiated. They don’t account for any of these variables because their goal is to conclude that the police are racist so that they can destroy the police department. And they know that no one will ever look closely at the government data. And by the way, pretty much all government data is basically like this. It’s full of lies and manipulation. It falls apart the moment you look closely at it.

This is the “disparate impact” theory of law which has been used to dismantle police departments all over the country — from Ferguson to New Orleans to Cleveland. This is a tactic from the DOJ that was mostly dormant during the Trump years, but the Biden-Harris administration has brought it back. And now they’re not just coming for police officers. They’re coming for firefighters, too.

The Biden DOJ has just announced that the fire department in Durham, North Carolina has to change its screening test for new applicants, and pay massive damages, because the test is supposedly racist. They also have to hire a bunch of failed applicants who couldn’t pass the test. Watch:

The fire department’s understandably shocked that the DOJ has suddenly labeled their test racist, and now they’re being forced to hire a bunch of applicants who can’t pass the test. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

From the DOJ’s press release: 

The City’s fire department screens applicants with a written test that discriminates against Black candidates. … The complaint, filed yesterday in the Middle District of North Carolina, alleges that the City’s uses of the written test called the Comprehensive Examination Battery disproportionately exclude Black candidates from employment as firefighters. The department further alleges that [the Durham Fire Department’s] uses of the [test] are not job-related and consistent with business necessity, and thus violate Title 7.

So what is this test, exactly? How can a test possibly be racist? And how can it be “not-job related”? To answer those questions, I went and pulled up a study guide for the Comprehensive Examination Battery test, which is what these firefighters have to take. This study guide was created by Fire & Police Selection, Incorporated. It’s the company that deploys and validates the tests that are used by thousands of local agencies all over the country, including police and fire departments. So this study guide is coming right from the source.

Here are some representative practice questions from the hardest section of the test, which is the math section. Question 1:

A firefighter determines that 350 feet of hose is needed to reach a particular building. If the hoses are 60 feet in length, what is the minimum number of lengths of hose needed?

1. 3 lengths
2. 4 lengths
3. 5 lengths
4. 6 lengths

Now, the test allows you to perform the calculation in the booklet if you’re so inclined. You can use a pencil and scribble some notes. But this is such a basic question that it doesn’t even require that. There are students in elementary school who can answer this question in about ten seconds. Five lengths would be 300 feet of hose, which isn’t enough. So you need six lengths to cover the 350 feet of hose. I am far from a math whiz myself, but even I could answer that without a calculator. 

All of the questions are like this. Here’s another question: 

Office sprinkler heads spray water at an average of 25 gallons per minute. If 4 sprinkler heads are flowing at the same time and at the same rate, how many total gallons of water will be released in 15 minutes?

1. 100 gallons
2. 315 gallons
3. 375 gallons
4. 1,500 gallons

So let’s think about this brain teaser. 4 sprinkler heads would be spraying 100 gallons per minute, since one sprinkler head sprays 25 gallons per minute. Therefore, to find out how many gallons of water you get in 15 minutes, all you have to do is multiply 100 times 15, which gets you 1,500. And by the way, even if you can’t do that calculation easily, you should still be able to look at the multiple choices and immediately identify that the first three options are definitely too low to be the correct answer. That leaves you with 1,500 just by the process of elimination. So there are two ways to get the right answer here. Either you can have a fifth grader’s grasp on the rules of mathematics, or a fifth grader’s basic common sense. If you have both then you’re in really good shape. 

To be clear, I’m not cherry-picking the easiest questions here. There’s another question that just asks applicants to compute the sum of four numbers. And again, they can write in the booklet if they need to. This is as difficult as the “math” section of the test gets — which again, is the hardest section in the entire test. There’s also a “reading” section, which I can’t simulate here because I’m not going to read the entire passages.

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But maybe the easiest — and most alarming — section in the entire test is the “human relations” portion. Here’s the top sample question in that part of the packet. This is the doozy that black firefighter applicants in places like Durham had to contend with. I’m not making this up. This is real: 

You are transporting an injured and intoxicated male who has a large amount of money protruding from his pocket. While transporting him to the emergency room, you notice that money falls out of his pocket. Identify the most appropriate and least appropriate response. Do you: 

1. Pretend you didn’t see the man drop the money. 
2. Wait until you go back outside and take the money if no one else has found it. 
3. Pick up the money and give it to emergency room staff for safekeeping.
4. Pick up the money and place it next to the victim’s hand.

Yes, that’s the actual question. Do you steal the money? Do you ignore it? Do you throw it by the hand of the drunk, injured guy who’s in no position to be carrying it? Or do you give it to ER staff for safekeeping? Essentially this is a question meant to test whether the applicant has a moral sensibility somewhat more sophisticated than that of a lizard.

To those who get above that bar, the answer is obviously “C,” which corresponds to “pick up the money and give it to ER staff for safekeeping.” And the least appropriate is to steal the money, which is answer B. This should not be a difficult question for anyone to answer, regardless of their skin color. If someone says that questions like this are racist, then they’re making a pretty clear generalization about the attitudes and behaviors of certain racial groups. They’re saying that it’s racist to ask applicants whether or not they should steal from drunks. Again, a child could answer this question correctly, unless that child happens to be a budding psychopath. And even then, I think he could still answer it correctly.

The whole test is like this. It’s basic stuff. There’s also a map-reading section, which is obviously important for firefighters because they have to know where to go when there’s an emergency. And that’s it. You can pull up the practice exams yourself if you want.

In no sane universe is this test inappropriate, much less “racist.” If anything it’s far too easy. The real scandal — if there is one at all — is that the standards are already so crushingly low.

But the Biden-Harris administration disagrees. And they disagree for one reason. It’s the same reason the Obama administration harassed so many police officers. It’s the same reason they decided that the entrance exam for air traffic controllers was racist. The people running this country have determined that they’ll gain more power, and more profit, if they promote certain racial groups at the expense of others. They don’t care about competence. They only care about this new racial spoils system they’ve created.

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At the same time, they understand that most people wouldn’t vote for that, so they’re using lawfare instead. They have decreed that any test that might screen for IQ, or a well-adjusted personality, or a basic moral compass, is now racist. They want our police and firefighters and air traffic controllers to be as dumb and immoral and incompetent as possible because ultimately, they think that will advance their agenda, and as a bonus also punish the people who vote the wrong way. And they don’t care if the infrastructure of this country collapses as a result.

That’s why they want to replace your firefighters with people who can’t do basic arithmetic and will happily steal from you when you’re on the way to the ER. It’s why they want to replace your air traffic controller with a moron who will direct your plane directly into the flight path of another aircraft. It’s why they want to replace your local police department with seat-warmers who have no incentive whatsoever to respond effectively to an emergency. They want to do all of this so that eventually, when the United States becomes a third-world country, they have all the power. And you’ll have no one to call for help.