La Shawn Barber, who could be described as a “conservative Christian of color,” has a cool blog. I don’t know her, but I’m pretty sure she would describe herself this way only while raising an eyebrow and putting quote marks around the description, as she does in asking “Am I the only ‘person of color’ who…?” (I’m just imagining the eyebrow raising; it’s not in the text) in this post on “Firehouse Diversity.”
In that post she is incensed by a Washington Post article describing plans “to dumb down the test” for Montgomery County, Maryland, firefighters to correct the problem of whites being “disproportionately represented in the county’s fire department.”
Why don’t we just do away with performance standards altogether? Get rid of the MCAT, LSAT, GRE, SAT, and all admissions and employment tests so that everybody will be equal. Am I the only “person of color” around here who’s insulted by paternalistic and condescending junk like this?
….
They plan to dumb down the test. Anything they do to make this test easier to pass will entail lowering the standards. Let’s see, what sort of aptitude test will afford “greater opportunity” to blacks? A test given in ebonics? Hip-hop slang? Lots of pictures? If rewriting a test so that blacks can pass it isn’t outrageous to blacks, nothing is.
La Shawn is certainly not the only “person of color” who thinks this way, but it’s equally certain we’d all be better off if there were more like her.
Thanks for the link! Great blog.