Federal judge Nicholas Garaufis, who made a "finding of law" that the New York City Fire Department was racist, has been replaced on the case by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  It's a rare move for an appeals court.

See U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FINDS DISTRICT COURT WRONG ON INTENTIONAL DISCRIMINATION CHARGE IN FDNY HIRING PRACTICES CASE, from the City of New York’s lawyers.

It's also a bit of sanity in an otherwise boundlessly absurd race-discrimination case:  the FDNY's tests are "racist" because blacks don't pass them at the same rate as whites.

The disparate impact theory cooked up by the courts—and relied on by Garaufis—is one screaming example of how failure to acknowledge inherent racial differences in intelligence works a massive injustice:  whites are unfairly blamed for racism, blacks are unjustly handed goodies they don't deserve, and tons of time, money and nerves are wasted in the meantime.

Not to mention people dying in fires.

The accusations of racism against firefighting forces aren't new.  I recall working on a case as a legal intern years ago in which the Department of Justice was suing a big department in the Northeast, and reading with great curiosity the federal government's briefs. 

In one, there was the flat-out statement that black men are more afraid of heights than white men—and therefore, we need aggressive affirmative action to balance out the force. This was a brief written by and signed by a Department of Justice attorney.

I should've made a copy.

And I just couldn't help but thinking, if that's true—blacks are more afraid of heights than whites—then isn't it completely fair that most firefighters are white?

[VDARE.com note: Check out A confirmatory factor analysis of specific phobia domains in African American and Caucasian American young adults, Journal of  Anxiety Disorders,  2008 Jun;22(5):763-71.]