NYT downplays disrimination against whites, highlights potential impact on Sotomayor

This morning, I scanned the Chicago Tribune and saw the following headline: "Ruling for White Firefighters May Alter Hiring," the article itself having been taken from the L.A. Times.

I was very interested in this case the first time I heard about it because it was an actual live breathing version of what semi-privileged white people generally refer to as "reverse-discrimination" and I was deeply curious to see how it would turn out. Not just for the effect it would have on the ability of the European-descended neither rich nor poor nor connected to continue to claim discrimination had occurred in the attempt to eliminate discrimination, but more importantly, to see what the courts would do in the face of something that clearly was discriminatory. Courts play games with the law, especially at the highest levels, and usually these games have more to do with public sentiment and wordsmithery than what the "law" actually is (while a fervent supporter of the impact of Roe v. Wade, please see said case for an example of a total invention of legal rights from whole cloth to effect social change).

As a very simple summary, in New Haven a number of years ago, firefighters were given the opportunity to gain a promotion based on the taking of a test. They took it very seriously, studied very hard etc. When the results came out, it turned out that white (and hispanic, although only one hispanic was among the plaintiffs) people had done much better than other people and the fire department, fearing a lawsuit based on action taken based on the results, threw out the test and no one got promoted. The firefighters who had done well eventually found out (if you know any firefighters, you'll understand why that was inevitable and whoever threw out the results should have known that too and just hired and lawyer and taken a leave of absence until this as all straightened-out) and then sued based on discrimination. Which makes sense, since they were denied promotions they were told they would be entitled to based on their performance on a test merely because of their race.

The Supreme Court ruling was close, 5-4, but the white firefighters won, seven years later, which isn't bad, really, in terms of time (which says a lot about our justice system, but that, for another time). Now that alone is a huge story. Absolutely fascinating. What it means for our country, our society, our culture, it's huge.

Here is where the media got interesting.

Yesterday afternoon I was scanning the New York Times home page and saw under the new important news section among one of four links, Supreme Court Justice Nominee's Decision Overturned. I saw that, and like any rational person familiar with Sotomayor and the current make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court, I totally ignored it. I would expect the Supreme Court to overturn a decision of hers. It's totally uninteresting. It's only interesting it you note that it's the white firefighters case. So why did the New York Times do that?

The major stories on the case came out in today's newspapers, so it wasn't that the decision had been sufficiently analyzed on its own merits and it was time to delve into related consequences. That would have been reasonable. Like, for example, when the news mentioned yesterday, several days after his death, that Michael Jackson's children were temporarily going to be in custody of his mother. A few days later, delve into related consequences, that's the main story. But not on day one. Imagine if instead of the headline saying "Michael Jackson dead" it said "Michael Jackson's children temporarily going into mother's custody" - first, you wouldn't have read the story right away, if at all, since it's totally logical (just like the Sotomayor thing) but second, that isn't the story at all. And to write it that way shows a very weird bias. So what is the NYT's bias here?

Let's imagine you're a reporter for the New York Times. This decision comes down. You've presumably lost what you were going after, since white people can't be obviously discriminated against anymore and this is all the more galling since as a New York Times journalist, you probably have no respect for decent working class people like firefighters and think they're racist and that this is why they brought their suit. So that's a write-off. But then you're like, but oh no! this was Sotomayor's opinion, so not only will white people have established rights, this is a strike against her potential rise to the role of justice. Ergo, the news bulletin I saw. That's the best I can figure, since it's extremely bizarre.

I likely would have forgotten or not even noticed this, but for the fact that at dinner last night, someone mentioned that Sotomayor's decision had been overturned. Everyone had exactly the same reaction as me - of course it was, it's a conservative court, what do you expect. But no one knew what the case was. And it gives me a bit of an icky feeling as I can't help but feel there is an undercurrent of what I outlined above in our society, at least the educated urban-sphere - that middle-class working white people really do deserve to be treated poorly in some ill-devised attempt to straighten things out, but really, it's a form of xenophobia directed against people who are most innately American. Who get up every morning and work hard and struggle to raise families and put food on the table and give their children the best future they can. I don't claim that these people don't have flaws; I know nothing about them, but I have to assume they do, since we all do. But do they really deserve to be completely written-off in this way by society, such that they are a punchline in jokes and a mockery for those who were lucky enough to know how to get into good colleges and find cushy jobs and who had a support network that told them how to do it?

The New York Times continues to disappoint me. Although I imagine that what I am really disappointed with are Americans who should know better than to be so close-minded.