Fireman at Sotomayor hearing embodies struggle to right racial wrongs without harm to whites

White firefighter’s frustrations are undercurrent

WASHINGTON — He spoke, this 35-year-old firefighter, to frustrations that still ripple in an undercurrent across the nation.

Frank Ricci, who is white, sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday and spoke in a steady, deliberate voice about how he studied hard, played by the rules, and was denied a promotion because of the color of his skin. His made no mention of Sonia Sotomayor, who had ruled against a discrimination claim by Ricci and fellow firefighters, and now is on track to become the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.

Everyman firefighter and Hispanic role model, these two are among the newest faces in an enduring American debate over how to do right by long-disadvantaged minorities and still give the majority a fair shake.

Had Sotomayor not been nominated for the Supreme Court just as the Ricci case was unfolding, the Connecticut firefighters’ lawsuit might have been nothing more than a fairly significant employment case that went largely unremarked upon in public. Instead, Ricci found himself telling his story before U.S. senators and on national television after Sotomayor herself repeatedly was called upon to answer for her ruling in the case during four days of testimony before the committee.

People shouldn’t be reduced to “racial statistics,” Ricci told the senators. They “don’t wish to be divided along racial lines.” His message was seconded by fellow firefighter Ben Vargas, who is Hispanic.

“You put a face on the issues,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told the firefighters.

Sotomayor, for her part, held out her ruling in the case as evidence that she hews to the law and precedent, not emotion or sympathies.

Ricci, whose lawsuit ultimately was upheld by the Supreme Court, called the whole ordeal “an unbelievable civics lesson.”

To Ronald Walters, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, it was a lesson in the enduring potency of racial politics.

For Republicans, Walters said, “it’s an issue that plays well with their constituency and they’re drumming it. … Basically this is a narrow pitch toward the white community and the elections in the fall.”

It’s not a new strategy.

“This all has a background,” said Kenneth O’Reilly, a historian who has written extensively on racial politics. The notion of the “white male as victim” has been around for decades, O’Reilly said, harking back to tensions over affirmative action during the Reagan years. A decade earlier, the high court first visited the question of reverse discrimination when Allen Bakke, a white student with good grades, accused the University of California medical school of twice denying him admission because of his race.

Michael Selmi, a professor at the George Washington Law School who wrote a retrospective on the Bakke case, said the issue has waned over the years and more people recognize the value of diversity. But he said the firefighters’ case still struck a chord, coming along just as jobs in the auto industry are evaporating.

“They’re trying to hold on to those jobs, and that lost era” when white guys ruled the day, Selmi said.

Interest in the Ricci case is likely to flame out quickly once Sotomayor’s nomination is settled, O’Reilly said, but racial tensions overall tend to heighten in a down economy.

“When the economy is horrific for everybody, the society is less willing, often, to do the right thing,” O’Reilly said. “It’s hard to worry about black, brown, red, yellow getting jobs when whites can’t get jobs either.”

Public sympathies in the firefighters’ case were clear in a May-June poll conducted by Quinnipiac University. More than seventy percent of those surveyed nationally thought the firefighters should have been promoted. At the same time, about three-fifths of those surveyed said the case shouldn’t make any difference in whether Sotomayor is confirmed for the high court.

The details of Ricci’s case played out repeatedly in testimony before the Judiciary Committee this week: He passed a promotion exam only to see the city toss out the results because too few minorities qualified for advancement. He was among 20 white firefighters who sued, and their reverse discrimination claim was rejected by a federal district court. That decision was upheld by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges. The Supreme Court overturned their ruling late last month.

Nowhere is Ricci’s case being debated more hotly than New Haven, where the case originated. He gets strong support there in the white middle-class neighborhood of Morris Cove.

James Izzo, a chef, said the city was wrong to throw out the test results to help blacks and Hispanics. “I just think these people need to study harder,” said Izzo, 26. “They play the race card over everything. I think it’s a little ridiculous.”

Michele Sigg, 44, a project manager in New Haven, didn’t want to take sides, but said the case had “brought to the fore some questions, culture changes and laws that need to be looked at accordingly. I think it’s a good thing to question ourselves.”

The firefighters’ case — and the larger questions it raises about race in America — are being debated far beyond Connecticut.

“You get a feeling like the race card gets used way too much, but in this case it shouldn’t have been used at all,” said John Korte, 57, a white construction manager from Highland, Ill. “It’s not treating people equally.”

But Blake Ziegler, a white graduate student from Nebraska who stopped to talk while on vacation in Kansas City, Mo., said affirmative action still has a role to play.

“There are some people that I know that don’t think the way they should think,” he said. “But it still needs to be in place.”

Associated Press writers Pat Eaton-Robb in Wallingford, Conn., John Christoffersen in New Haven, Conn., Jim Salter in St. Louis and Sheila Ellis in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.