Monday, June 29, 2009

A Flicker of Hope

DISCRIMINATION is a word and practice that causes all Americans with a moral and ethical conscience to recoil--and rightly so. However, it is still regularly practiced in many areas of our lives.

In the tennis world there still exists a huge amount of discrimination--and it is discrimination that is directed toward white men over 50. The gays, lesbians and transgendered have their advocates, the minorities have their advocates, the women have their advocates, but alas, there are seemingly no advocates for white men over 50. Just take a glance at the US Open and see what positions are filled by white men over 50 and that will prove our point.

Today our news was filled with a monumental decision by the Supreme Court. Here is the AP account:

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

Hopefully the USTA will take note...

2 comments:

Kevin S. Holmes said...

Note that this was a 5-4 decision. If Sonia Sotomayor had been on the court it would have been a 5-4 decision the other way and racial discrimination in America would be legal and validated by the Supreme Court. Call your Senators and tell them both that if they vote to confirm Sotomayor, then you will vote to confirm their replacement in the next election. By the way, Kay Bailout-Hutchison probably wont care, because she is running for TX Gov and will want to win over as much of the Hispanic vote as possible. So warn her that if she yet again violates the trust that the people of TX have placed in her, she will never see the inside of the Governor's mansion uless she's hired as the cleaning lady. (Which by the way is the only job in the Governor's mansion for which she MIGHT be qualified ... as long as the position carries absolutely not leadership or administrative responsibilities.)

Anonymous said...

Actually, Souter voted to uphold the court of appeals decision that Sotomayor joined, and Sotomayor will replace Souter. So she would not change the balance of power on the court--she is one liberal vote replacing another liberal vote. With the idiots in Minnesota electing a clown to the US Senate, any hope of stopping a Sotomayor nomination is a lost cause.