Don Buckley lost his job driving a Chicago Transit Authority bus almost two years ago and has been looking for work ever since, even as other municipal bus drivers around the country are being laid off.

At 34, Buckley, his two daughters and his fiancee have moved into the basement of his mother’s house. He has had to delay his marriage, and his entire savings, $27,000, is gone.

“I was the kind of person who put away for a rainy day,” he said recently. “It’s flooding now.”cBuckley is one of tens of thousands of once solidly middle-class African-American government workers – bus drivers in Chicago, police officers and firefighters in Cleveland, nurses and doctors in Florida – who have been laid off since the recession ended in June 2009.

Such job losses have blunted gains made in employment and wealth during the previous decade and undermined the stability of neighbourhoods where there are now fewer black professionals who own homes or who get up every morning to go to work.

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Judge Nicholas Garaufis says despite progress on diversity in recent recruiting, the department hasn't done enough to reverse discrimination against black and Hispanic candidates.

He's expected to spell out a solution in a separate ruling.

The written entrance exam is being redesigned after the judge ruled it favored white applicants back in 2007.

But the judge now says the process that follows the test also favors white candidates.

Since they make up most of the department, the judge says they have a better chance of having potential background problems overlooked.

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“I had a family friend that talked me into taking the test and indicated ‘Daryl, if you don’t like it, you can quit,’” Osby remembered. “And that was over 27 years ago.”

Osby spent those 27 years climbing the ranks of the L.A. County Fire Department into management. Firefighting and management are in his blood.

His father, Robert Osby, put in nearly 50 years and served as fire chief in the cities of Inglewood and San Diego. He watched proudly as his son became L.A. County’s first African-American fire chief.

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The 31-page suit, which lawyers say was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contains information potentially embarrassing to the department. It refers by name to at least 10 white firefighters accused or convicted of various misconduct. It also refers to black firefighters who committed similar offenses.

In a virtual rap sheet, the suit describes cases in which firefighters have been arrested for stalking, assault and illegal handgun possession; disciplined for fighting or injuring fellow firefighters with knives and plates; and investigated for e-mailing images of their sexual organs to female colleagues and cooking naked in firehouses.

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I agree, and for once find myself agreeing with the conservative wingnuts of the Court – Roberts, Scalio, Alito, and Thomas. But on the other hand this court decision really doesn’t meet the smell test when it comes to a referendum on affirmative action.

According to a recent opinion poll, 56% of the public support affirmative action for minorities while only 36% oppose it. And yet a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University cited in a June 3rd McClatchy article before the Supreme Court ruling indicated a 71% opposition to nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s appellate court decision to rule in favor of New Haven on the case, and a 56-36% support for abolishing affirmative action altogether.

Even though these polling results seem contradictory, I think they are reflective of the public’s acknowledgment that we still have a race problem but no easy way to solve it. The problem is not whether THE test is biased. The problem is that A test is biased.

Is a written test the best way of determining who is the most qualified firefighter? Or for that matter is a written test the best way of determining the most qualified candidates for any job?

We need to stop evaluating affirmative action based on test results, even though it is tempting to do so because of the quantitative nature of tests. Otherwise there are a few million Asian Americans in this country who deserve a promotion.

For more information, check out this article in the New York Times.

Ethnicmajority Affirmative Action page.