Say Anything Blog

Firefighter Mark Ricci is the man who filed a lawsuit after his employers refused to give him a pay raise because some of his co-workers who also happen to be minorities didn’t pass the same test he did.  Ricci, rightfully, accused his employers of reverse discrimination.  That case was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, and along the way got a ruling by Obama’s SCOTUS pick Sonia Sotomayor who was actually overturned by the Justices.  Now Ricci is going to be testifying at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, and Democrats are on the attack.

But the tact they’re taking is interesting.  As it turns out, Ricci got his job through the Americans with Disabilities Act (he has dyslexia) and now he’s being called a hypocrite.

Frank Ricci is a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter, who is one of the GOP’s showcase witnesses on Thursday. His reverse-discrimination suit against the city of New Haven was rejected by a three-judge appeals court panel that included Sotomayor.

Liberal groups and bloggers are noting that Ricci, who has dyslexia, got his firefighting job in New Haven “by claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects Americans from discrimination over disabilities.”

Marge Baker, People for the American Way’s vice president, says: “I don’t think Mr. Ricci thought that his being hired was a case of reverse discrimination against those who weren’t disabled ... You can’t have it both ways; these laws can’t be good when you use them to protect yourself and bad when they’re used to protect someone else.”

Republicans and conservatives are calling this a smear campaign. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said: “it is beneath both contempt and the dignity that this process demands.” Conservative bloggers and at least one conservative group, the Judicial Confirmation Network, are trying to rally conservatives behind Ricci.

What’s interesting to me is that Democrats seem to be equating race with a handicap.  We can argue about whether or not preferential hiring based on disability is better or worse than preferential hiring based on skin color (I think the most qualified candidate should get the job regardless of skin color of disability, personally), but let’s take a moment to admire the logic being applied here.

Dyslexia is, certainly, a disability.  It makes reading, and thus learning and communicating, more difficult.  We can all agree on that.  But liberals apparently want us to believe that being of a particular skin color is the same thing.  They want us to believe that being black or Hispanic or Indian is the same thing as being disabled.

Isn’t that a little…insulting?

Personally, I don’t believe for a moment that being a certain race is a handicap.  I’d be insulted if someone suggested that my skin color where a handicap, and I wonder why more of the people who get preferential treatment based on their skin color aren’t insulted by the suggestion that their skin color is a handicap.