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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   18344 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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In between blogging about fursuit collections, former motte moderator TracingWoodgrains has started to blow up on twitter after wading into an ongoing feud between Steve Sailer and propagandist Will Stancil.
Something in the replies must have really upset him (possibly interactions with a number of replyguys making not-so-veiled threats about what happens to people who associate with bigots or question "lying for the pursuit of good aims"), because he suddenly got really invested in proving that the recent FAA-DEI scandal is real.

After giving up on conservative journalists and deciding to do the legwork himself, he's now posting PACER documents from the recent FAA lawsuit, proving that the FAA HR department sent black applicants a list of resume buzzwords that would get their applications fast-tracked, via the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.

A few hours ago this got the attention of Elon Musk, and Tracing is promising a follow-up, somehow trying to juggle 1L coursework with doing more investigative journalism than the entire conservative media put together. Obviously one of these things takes more time than the other, but I'm sure he'll have a coffee break free for the journalism bit.

One reason I think this could be important is that it's going to paint a huge target on Tracing's back. Propagandists have been claiming that the FAA DEI story was fake, the test designed to favor black applicants never existed, etc. They're going to get very angry at this evidence becoming widely known, and tracing is in a unique position to spread it outside the right wing news ghetto that prevents most liberals from ever encountering facts like these.
I'm not saying it's certain they're going to go after his law school, but he's in a uniquely vulnerable position right now, with very few allies in a position to help him (and probably a number who will suddenly decide he's on the enemy side of the fiend-enemy distinction.) So if anyone is in the position to help if he needs it, maybe start reaching out early.

Unfortunately all of this is getting difficult to follow without a twitter account (I even have one, but they're not letting me log in right now for no apparent reason). It's going to get even harder as Nitter instances die off. If anyone has a reliable account and would be willing to make screenshots, I'd love if you could take over covering the story as it develops.

Edit: his effortpost is now out on twitter and at his blog. I'll copy it into a reply below in case the nitter instance goes down again.

Just a note, this has obvious parallels to colleges letting DEI departments screen out the 80% of applicants before any objective hiring process begins:

they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test.

It's a very effective method of manipulating procedural outcomes, isn't it?

Tracing's effortpost https://nitter.adminforge.de/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471

A scandal at the FAA has been moving on a slow-burn through the courts for a decade, culminating in the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. @SecretaryPete, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment. The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification.

Mainstream outlets have given it sparse coverage, for reasons that will become clear shortly. Right-wing sources paid attention initially, but few ran follow-ups or took a close look at the court filings. So: What exactly is going on? How did all of this happen?

I am not a professional. I am a law student with a part-time job on @TheBARPod, a podcast about internet nonsense, and a side hobby of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. I wanted, and want, to do a thorough report on this when I get the time. But the story is big enough, and spreading fast enough, that I want to make sure that people have access to accurate info as quickly as possible.

First, though: court filings are public records, but they are often expensive and difficult to obtain. Tools like RECAP help, but I was lucky to have people around me willing to pay the $80 in PACER fees for a few of the documents. This story is much larger than me and I do not want people to have to rely on me for it. Here are the court documents I have: drive.google.com/drive/folde… Most of the interesting exhibits are in 139. Please look for yourself if this story catches your interest.

With that out of the way, my current understanding of the situation is as follows. It will be dry at times; others can editorialize more:

Historically, the pipeline into air traffic control has followed a few paths: military veterans, graduates of the "Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative" (AT-CTI) program, and the general public. Whichever route they came from, each candidate would be required to take and pass the eight-hour AT-SAT cognitive test to begin serious training. This test was validated as being effective as recently as 2013.

The FAA has faced pressure to diversify the air traffic control for generations, something that seems to have influenced even the scoring structure of the AT-SAT cognitive test used for pre-employment screening of air traffic control candidates. Leading up to 2014, that pressure intensified, with the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) leading the push.

To start with, in 2000, a three-member task force, including NBCFAE member Mamie Mallory, wrote "A Business Case and Strategic Plan to Address Under-Representation of Minorities, Women, and People with Targeted Disabilities," recommending, per the lawsuit, a workplace cultural audit, diversity "hiring targets" for each year, and "allowing RNO- [Race and National Origin] and gender-conscious hiring." They were advised by Dr. Herbert Wong, who helped the NBCFAE analyze FAA diversity data in 2009. Wong authored a report concluding that the FAA was "the least diverse agency within the executive branch of the federal government." Mallory and Wong were consulted as part of the 2014 test replacement process.

From there, the NBCFAE sent letters in July and October 2009 to the FAA administrator and the Secretary for the Department of Transportation claiming disparate treatment, adopted a strategic plan "advocating for affirmative employment, obtaining an 'independent valuation of hiring and/or screening tools,' and pursuing litigation," a "Talking Points" document pushing the FAA to address diversity, and the creation of a group called "Team 7."

In 2012, Team 7 members met with the secretary of the Department of Transportation, the FAA administrator, and senior FAA leaders to discuss diversity, after which the FAA commissioned a "Barrier Analysis" with a number of recommendations. Central to this: the cognitive test posed a barrier for black candidates, so they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test.

In 2012 and 2013, the NBCFAE continued pushing this process, with members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push diversity among ATCs. By July 2013, the FAA created a "Barrier Analysis Implemention Team" (BAIT, and I swear I am not making this acronym up).

Around this time, the FAA decided to pause the hiring of CTI graduates pending the implementation of the biographical assessment. Neither the schools that ran the CTI programs nor their students were informed of this when the decision was initially made. A number of students, including the class representative, passed the AT-SAT (in the case of the class representative, with a perfect score), not knowing they would never get to use it.

In 2014, the FAA rolled out the new biographical questionnaire in line with the Barrier Analysis recommendation, designed so that 90% or more of applicants would "fail." The questionnaire was not monitored, and people could take it at home. Questions asked prospective air traffic controllers how many sports they played in high school, how long they'd been unemployed recently, whether they were more eager or considerate, and seventy-some other questions. Graduates of the CTI program, like everyone else, had to "pass" this or they would be disqualified from further consideration. This came alongside other changes de-prioritizing CTI graduates.

ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/…

CTI schools were blindsided and outraged by this change. A report on FAA hiring issues found that 70% of CTI administrators agreed that the changes in the process had led to a negative effect on the air traffic control infrastructure. One respondent stated their "numbers [had] been devastated," and the majority agreed that it would severely impact the health of their own programs. The largest program dropped from more than 600 students to less than 300.

Concurrent to all of this, NBCFAE members were hard at work. In particular, one Shelton Snow, an FAA employee and then-president of the NBCFAE's Washington Suburban chapter, provided NBCFAE members with "buzz words" in January 2014 that would automatically push their resumes to the tops of HR files. A 2013 NBCFAE meeting advised members to "please include [on resumes] if you are a NBCFAE Member. [...] Can you see the strategy", emphasizing they were "only concerned" with the employment of "African-Americans, women ... and other minorities."

After the 2014 biographical questionnaire was released, Snow took it a step further. As Fox Business reported (related in Rojas v. FAA), he sent voice-mail messages to NBCFAE applicants, advising them on the specific answers they needed to enter into the Biographical Assessment to avoid failing, stating that he was "about 99 point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question."

Per a 2016 Yahoo Finance article, an internal FAA report cleared the NBCFAE and Snow of wrongdoing.

finance.yahoo.com/news/faa-a…

A few changes were made by 2015. In 2016, Congress passed Public Law 114-190, which among other things banned the use of biographical assessments as a first-line hiring tool for air traffic controllers.

People snubbed by the process filed dozens of lawsuits as a result, culminating in the class-action suit now underway as Brigida v. Buttigieg. In arguing to deny class certification, the defendants argued that the "underlying grievance--that they pursued college degrees in reliance on their perception that the role of the CTI program in the FAA's hiring process would never change--is not actionable."

In a moment with a certain bitter irony, black CTI graduates who were left adrift by this process are the only demographic left out of the class: while the plaintiffs tried to include them initially, the court denied certification until they were excluded. The class has been granted certification, and the suit is slowly rolling forward.

Finally, in 2024, @whstancil picked a fight with @Steve_Sailer, who like many in right-wing media had released occasional articles touching on this case. Their scuffle stirrred up enough attention towards it to catch my eye. @SashaGusevPosts, almost alone out of many who accepted my points and moved on, pushed me to look with a more skeptical eye. To win a petty bet with him, I elected to spend an evening digging into this. @raspy_aspie, who I shared early info with, drew my attention towards the initial exhibit I posted, and I went from there.

To get a bit personal for a moment: I was a day-one donor to @PeteButtigieg during his presidential campaign, impressed by his deep understanding and articulate defense of liberal principles. He has been saddled with a messy, stupid lawsuit built on bad decision after bad decision, from predecessors who--between a rock and a hard place in the impossible task of avoiding disparate impact while preserving objective standards--elected to take the easy road and cave to political pressure to implement absurdities. He has extraordinary power to end this mess in a moment and begin to make things right for those who were directly denied a chance at the jobs they had worked towards thanks to an arbitrary and perverse biographical questionnaire.

People will turn this into a culture war issue, and in one sense, that is perfectly fair: it represents a decades-long process of institutional failure at every level. A thousand things had to go wrong to get to this point, and if people want to harp on it—let them. But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue. Virtually nobody, looking dispassionately at that questionnaire, wants to defend it. Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers. Everybody, I suspect, can sympathize with the people who paid and worked through years of education to have their career path suddenly pulled away for political reasons far beyond their control. I am confident that Buttigieg can see that just as well as the rest of us, that for many, it is simply the same neglect everybody else has shown towards the case that has led it to linger awkwardly unresolved for a decade.

There is nothing to be gained from fighting the suit further. It is a black eye on the FAA, a black eye on the DOT, and a black eye on our public institutions as a whole. People have paid shockingly little attention to it as it's rolled through the courts, in part, no doubt, because anything touching on diversity is a hot topic that becomes a culture war football in a moment. My instinct, looking at the whole mess, is that the DOT and FAA should publicly apologize, settle, and do their best to begin making right what was so badly broken

court filings are public records, but they are often expensive and difficult to obtain. Tools like RECAP help, but I was lucky to have people around me willing to pay the $80 in PACER fees for a few of the documents.

And then he uploads the documents to a random Google Drive folder, rather than telling his "people around him" to install the RECAP extension in their browsers so that they will automatically upload the documents to RECAP. This makes me pretty angry.

I now have purchased document 139 (memorandum in support for motion for class certification) and all its exhibits, using the RECAP browser extension so that they have been added to RECAP for public viewing at this link.

In the Google Drive folder, I shout at people to install RECAP. I went with the first guy who had PACER access, a stranger to me, trying to get into the story as quickly as possible.

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