A few days ago I came across this tweet from Matt Yglesias during a stretch of bad weather that was tying up air travel:
This has been followed by a bunch of edgelord conservative types complaining that DEI initiatives are making it unsafe to fly. Is this just an offshoot of the recent right-wing kvetching about DEI in general?
No! By an odd quirk I happened to get sucked down a rabbit hole today, and among other things learned that Black air traffic controllers have been an obsession on the right for more than a decade. Here's the story, as briefly as I can possibly tell it.
The FAA hires air traffic controllers from a variety of sources: veterans, retired military controllers, the general public, and—notably—something called the College Training Initiative (CTI). Since 2002, both CTI grads and the general public have been required to take the Air Traffic Selection and Training test (AT-SAT) when they apply to the federal air traffic academy.
You will be unsurprised to learn that the air traffic community has long been almost all white and all male. The FAA has studied this off and on for years, and in 2013 published a "barrier analysis" report that came to a few conclusions. First, nearly all CTI grads were white. Second, something was wrong with the AT-SAT test. When it was given to actual air traffic controllers, a whole bunch of them failed. The test was reworked to fix that, but the result, contrary to expectations, was that close to 100% of everyone now passed. So the FAA increased the passing standard, and the result of that was significant bias in favor of white applicants.
Third, there were particular features of the AT-SAT that seemed to favor white applicants more than others. In particular, white applicants did better on some of the cognitive tests but Black applicants generally did better on parts of the test that measured personality traits (composure, work behavior, concentration, decisiveness, etc.). This portion of the test was confusingly called the Experience Questionnaire.
Long story short, in 2014 the FAA gutted the CTI program and created a longer version of the Experience Questionnaire called the Biographical Assessment. This was also confusingly named, since it was designed to test things like decisionmaking, handling pressure, teamwork, efficiency, and so forth. In any case, applicants were now required to take the BA first, and only if they passed did they move on to the AT-SAT.¹
And there was one other thing. Before all this, CTI students had been allowed to take the AT-SAT while they were in school. Now those scores were tossed out. They had to retake it under the new rules, and some of them washed out on the BA. They were understandably infuriated and filed a class-action lawsuit against the FAA. Here's how this is typically described on the right:
Candidates who had trained for years and who had scored high on aptitude tests were dropped from consideration, in favor of lesser-trained people who fit the right biographical profile.
....The FAA’s new hiring regime abandoned the CTI program as a basis for hiring new controllers, and instead based hiring on a “biographical questionnaire” designed to screen out candidates who weren’t members of a preferred minority racial group.
The lawsuit is ongoing, with briefings scheduled throughout 2024. There's no telling how long it will be until a trial is actually held.
In 2016 President Obama signed a bill that discontinued the Biographical Assessment and allowed anyone who had failed it to reapply. In 2020, as part of that year's defense bill, Congress passed the bipartisan ATC Reform Act, which reinstated the preference given to CTI grads.
There are lots of other little details here and there, including a weird quasi-cheating scandal, but they're mostly of minor interest. The nickel summary is that (a) the FAA has never included race in a "biographical questionnaire," but (b) they have changed their testing to emphasize traits that show less bias in favor of white applicants. It remains a matter of controversy which version of the test is better at predicting success as an air traffic controller.
However, this is all moot since the 2014 changes have now all been reversed. What's more, by far the biggest concern at the moment is general understaffing of air traffic controllers. There's currently bipartisan agreement that the FAA just needs to figure out a way to hire more controllers regardless of race or gender.
So that's the story. The idea that Black hiring is making the skies unsafe has been rattling around on the right for years, and the recent discourse about DEI and affirmative action in universities and corporations has just given it an opportunity to pop into mainstream consciousness. It's not brand new racism, just the usual old kind.
¹In the end, the result was a small uptick in the hiring of Black air traffic controllers. Maybe a few percentage points or so.
"...they have changed their testing to emphasize traits that show less bias in favor of white applicants. ..."
It appears to me that they changed their testing so that black applicants would do better just because they wanted black applicants to do better. They don't seem to be as interested in getting better employees.
Is there something about the job of air traffic control that is best done only by white males? If not, and the ATC community was almost all white males, it would seem that prior testing was biased in favor of white males. How else to explain the result?
Prior testing was a slapdash thing since it largely proceeded from trying to rapidly restaff after Reagan fired them all. Like anything run by (a) movement conservatives on (b) a crash basis, it was a total clusterfuck. That they kept at it was because it rang the anti-Labor bell really really loud.
"...If not, and the ATC community was almost all white males, it would seem that prior testing was biased in favor of white males. How else to explain the result?"
Two other possibilities. White males are better at the job. White males are more interested in the job.
Anyway it is clear the powers that be just wanted more black controllers regardless of the effects on quality.
Fuck off rscist asshole
+1
+1
"White males are better at the job. White males are more interested in the job."
So your hypothesis is the skin melanin levels make you better at/more interested in an air traffic controller job? Seriously?
Smarter trolls, please.
Thanks for your post, dd. The long and the short of it is that there are a hell of a lot of people in the U.S. that are 100% comfortable with a 100% white male ATC workforce for all the obvious reasons. Mr. Shearer seems to be one of these people. Now, it is patently fucking ridiculous that only a white male is intellectually and temperamentally capable of doing that job and so one has to wonder why the work force is whiter than white.
"... The long and the short of it is that there are a hell of a lot of people in the U.S. that are 100% comfortable with a 100% white male ATC workforce for all the obvious reasons. .."
Alternatively there are a bunch of people who don't want white male controllers for reasons that have nothing to do with safety. They value other things higher.
Yeah, it seems you're not interested in knowing why the test favored white applicants.
"Yeah, it seems you're not interested in knowing why the test favored white applicants."
I expect the reason was that the test favored high IQ applicants. Anyway the powers that be obviously didn't care why the test favored white applicants. Just that it did whether for good reasons or bad.
Given that you're one of our dimmer commenters, I'm guessing that you're not white then, amirite?
Scored!
That's a bold assumption.
I have a high IQ.
Let me tell you that most of these tests require a pevel of stupidity to pass.
"That's a bold assumption."
Written tests generally favor high IQ people. On average whites have higher IQs than blacks. So you would expect whites to perform better on a written test and in general they do.
Why do you think despite several attempts the FAA has not been able to come up with a written test that whites don't perform better on?
Lol, this is classic idiocy.
Here, moron tells us that he didn't care why the test favored white applicants, lets just assume its because they are too good.
Then he projects onto everyone else his own lack of interest in the results and assumptions based on race.
But they are bad for doing the very actions he describes as his own.
Jeez, cant make these morons up.
Your thinking is starting from the fallacy that "these people" are already not qualified to be a good employee.
If a test favors a race, why do you assume that wasn't getting them worse applicants?
So you don't think that character and temperament are important in air traffic control? Good to know. Looking forward to hearing that you were on a flight that a What Boah who went Postal was guiding.
It might have corrected your assumptions, at least for a couple of minutes.
How does the armed forces select ATC staff. Seems to me that a preference for x-armed forces ATC, which I assume would include a good number of people with enhanced melanin, would dilute the 100%.
Apparently you missed the part where blacks actually did better on parts of the test, which is why they revamped the process in the first place.
You white supremacists . . . you will never give up, will you?
You lost. Shit. Grow up!
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. You are behind - it isn't DEI any longer, but DEI&B or DEIB. Your old blogging grounds says as much on the footer of virtually every page. A link under "About us" with link text "DEI&B" pointing at https://www.motherjones.com/mother-jones-commitment-to-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/ though while they have included "belonging" in the text, they curiously leave it out of the headline/title.
Clearly the test should be who has the ability to recall the most dialog from Pushing Tin rather than who looks most like Billy Bob Thornton or John Cusack.
It takes a while for a conspiracy theory to pump up its X file.
Regardless of the issues, screening for potential air traffic controllers should include some cognitive ability test. After all, the safety of the public is in their hands. Also, if civil servants in government must pass a cognitive ability test to meet some standard, so should air traffic controllers.
For anything involving tests, conflicts always arise because any cognitive screening favors groups who do better on other cognitive ability tests, including IQ tests, the SAT and so on. This is the issue Harvard faced because they were getting too many Asians. Can't have that, I guess. So you figure out a way to game the system, like declaring Asians to have worse personalities. Or just abolish the tests all together, like is being done at many colleges now for SATs and ACTs.
Did you miss the part where blacks did better on other portions of the test?
Which is more important in an air traffic controller—that they understand differential equations, or that they remain calm under pressure?
I doubt that would have much predictive power, and I spent a decade of my career in research on ATC, with active-duty controllers in human-in-the-loop simulations. I have an earned doctorate, and I could not do their job — it takes a rare combination of very special skills and personality characteristics. Assessing those is difficult. The shortage of controllers is a consequence of the turnover when Reagan busted the union, and the high washout rate because we just can’t predict very well who will succeed at the job.
I have no great love for Ronnie - my Department of Energy father came close to being riffed under Reagan. But the air traffic controllers strike was 1981. 42 years ago. Approaching two generations. Judging by the web searching I've done, the FAA will not hire anyone over the age of 31 (yes, that does seem odd): https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individuals-without-previous-air-traffic-control-atc-experience (with experience seems to be 36) They are forced to retire at age 56: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title5-section8335&num=0&edition=prelim and the average age of an air traffic controller is somewhere between 38 and 42 (various). Which suggests that most if not a rather large fraction of the air traffic controllers weren't even a gleam in their parents' eyes when "Reagan busted the union" and any who were ATCs then would have been long gone from the scopes today even if Reagan hadn't.
I would put far more stock in the high washout rate.
The strike and mass replacement of the fired controllers created a large cohort of controllers with similar hire and retire dates. Over time early retirements (and washouts) will gradually spread the dates out, but at the present the second 'generation' of the cohort has reached retirement age, creating a spike in demand for controllers.
"...Judging by the web searching I've done, the FAA will not hire anyone over the age of 31 (yes, that does seem odd) ..."
Apparently the older you are the less likely you are to complete training successfully.
That must have been interesting work.
Cognitive tests test for the g factor. The g factor indicates that people who do well in one cognitive category (mathematical skill, verbal fluency, spatial visualization, memory, etc.) tend do better in all categories. I would think that a cognitive test would help narrow down who would be a good air traffic controller. But I get it that other abilities and personality characteristics matter a lot too.
White people get upset about the weirdest things.
I am white, but I still get tired of whiney angry privileged white people. It must be so much worse if one is not white.
Mr. Drum, ATCs aren't to blame for running out of gates. This person is plainly complaining because they see a lot of black employees when they walk through the airport.
Exactly. The airlines “outsourced” (fired) all of their union baggage handlers and other support personnel decades ago and now those are among the shittiest, low-paying, back-breaking jobs in America (largely because they’re in neighborhoods full of airplane noise and fumes—where black and brown people live). These entitled white shitheads see black and brown people on the runway and freak out—because they’re vile bigots.
I take it Southwest is an outlier? https://www.aviationpros.com/ground-handling/ground-handlers-service-providers/news/53069345/southwest-airlines-strikes-deal-with-19000-ground-workers-for-new-contract
Yes.
It would seem they are union at United. https://www.goiam.org/news/14100-united-airlines-rampfleet-workers-win-iam-union-representation/ So Southwest isn't alone anyway.
https://iam141.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TWU-IAM-Fleet-Employee-Association-JCBA-3-26-2020.pdf implies baggage handlers ate American Airlines are union.
So, that is three of the "Big Four" Airlines. For which airlines are the baggage handlers not union?
Damn! That baggage handling job must have made them really hungry! /s
My first question is why the hell would they name a test for decision making, handling pressure, teamwork and efficiency a Biographical Assessment?
The premise here seems to be that air traffic controller is a plum job that white males have somehow nefariously monopolized although there are lots of other people willing and able to do the work. If so the solution is simple just cut the pay until there isn't a surplus of qualified applicants.
What a clever solution to the shortage of ATC's! You should take the test I guess, now that they've made it easier.
"What a clever solution to the shortage of ATC's! You should take the test I guess, now that they've made it easier."
The shortage seems to be due to a reluctance to hire white males.
Weird, at no point was there a reluctance.
But you manufactured one!
"Weird, at no point was there a reluctance."
They threw out a large pool of applicants because it was too white and male. From the post:
"...Before all this, CTI students had been allowed to take the AT-SAT while they were in school. Now those scores were tossed out. They had to retake it under the new rules, and some of them washed out on the BA. .."
"The shortage seems to be due to a reluctance to hire white males.
LOL! When you have not evidence, conspiracy theory suffices, eh?
Smarter trolls, please.
I can't wait for when the right-wingers start blaming the sinking of the Titanic on Victorian DEI practices that let the Irish build it.
If those rivets were tighter...
Of course a Brit was in the cabin.
You'd at minimum think the racists fucks would have to provide evidence our skies have become less safe. Is there any such evidence?
The last fatal commercial airline accident in US airspace to which air traffic control errors contributed was in 1997, in Guam. There's more to whether or not flying is safe than just the fatal crashes, but that gives some indication.
It wasn't the 2009 mid air collision over Albuquerque, in which an ATC error allowed a commercial airliner to collide with a small corporate jet? (Breaking Bad, season 2).
/s
That partially burnt pink teddy bear floating in Walter White's pool was a continuing motif of the season.
And while these white supremest racists nibble at the edges of society, America lost 3 servicemen in the Middle East. That they were black and were killed in the service of our country had nothing to do with DEI but rather to do with them being Americans. They were there because they were serving.
They served despite hundreds of years of discrimination against people like them which clearly continues today.
White supremacists have always assumed that black and brown people would be grateful to die for them.
How does the armed forces select ATC staff. Seems to me that a preference for x-armed forces ATC, which I assume would include a good number of people with enhanced melanin, would dilute the 100%.
Pay a visit to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (home to more evangelical white churches than anywhere other than Dixie).
And recall the "Dominionist" scandal at the Air Force Academy,not that many years ago.
Officers (AF Academy grads) don't control military air traffic; it's a position for enlisted personnel.
Guess what? It is all the old kind of racism.
Lots of the flying delay horror stories I've heard recently first happened to me 30+ years ago. Lost luggage. Several hours from gate to takeoff. Hours waiting for open gate after landing. Two-day delays getting to destination due to overbooking etc. New outrage over old news?
From Kevin:
"The idea that Black hiring is making the skies unsafe has been rattling around on the right for years, and the recent discourse about DEI and affirmative action in universities and corporations has just given it an opportunity to pop into mainstream consciousness. It's not brand new racism, just the usual old kind."
There is an article on DEI in the Atlantic today: "A Constant Drumbeat of Racial Essentialism." The article notes that Wendy Beetlestone, a Black district-court judge, ruled against a DEI program. She states:
"[T]he way these conversations are carried out in the workplace matters: When employers talk about race—any race––with a constant drumbeat of essentialist, deterministic, and negative language, they risk liability under federal law."
And the article concludes: "Aside from all of the legal questions about what constitutes a hostile workplace or a discriminatory DEI initiative, institutions involved in these disputes ought to ask themselves: Is diversity, equity, or inclusion really advanced by an administrator saying the white race has a problem, or by white professors being asked to hold their breath in order to feel pain? Legal or not, that sounds like prejudiced, alienating nonsense."
The idea that opposition to DEI is little or nothing more than conservative posturing is possibly the single dumbest strain of thought prevalent on the Left at this time, and that's really saying an awful lot.
This is not a partisan or tribal issue. DEI should be judged on the merits, and on those merits it fails. The support or opposition of conservatives does not change that reality one way or the other.
And any progressive who persists in propping up DEI mainly if not entirely because it has been attacked by Conservatives completely discredits themselves. There just isn't any reason to take such a person seriously at all anymore.
Rage on tiny man, rage on!
Sure seems like you've misunderstood the words.
Why would you want any employer to speak about race with "essentialist, deterministic, and negative language"?
@Crissa:
Wendy Beetlestone, the district-court judge, is the one who used that language (in her ruling against DEI) to describe the DEI policy in question.
oh goodness.
The judge did not write that to describe the DEI program in question.
She actually made no ruling at all on the DEI program and no ruling on the claims of the case.
The judge ruled that the claims are enough to warrant a hearing and should not be dismissed. Although she did dismiss many of the claims, she allowed one to proceed to a hearing. There was no ruling or commentary on the merits of the claim.
She only said that a hostile work environment is a legitimate claim and should proceed to a hearing. There was no ruling against DEI.
But rage on! Dont let facts get in the way. Lol.
@jdubs:
Your post is a good example of what I refer to when I reference a type of Leftist who ties themselves in knots in order to try and avoid, ignore, or dismiss criticism of DEI.
From your post: "The judge did not write that to describe the DEI program in question."
Yes, she did. Sorry, but reality is reality. The very reason why this judge is allowing the complaint against DEI to proceed is because she found that the DEI program in question incorporated "a constant drumbeat of essentialist, deterministic, and negative language" which thereby risked "liability under federal law."
The identity of the judge should not matter at all. The only important consideration should be the merits of the case and the soundness of the ruling. But since the Left is so obsessed with identity that it blinds itself to all other legitimate considerations, I will point out (as is mentioned in the Atlantic article I reference above) that Judge Beetlestone is a black, female, Obama appointee.
In other words, she is that admirable type of Liberal who can still recognize reality well enough to know when her own "side," with all of its insultingly reductive DEI nonsense, has gone over the deep end.
If we are going to argue the white race is inherently safer when it comes to aviation, the Boeing board has 11 whites and 2 people of color (one of whom is Nikki Haley). Sounds like a sweet gig, $345,000 a year in cash and stock to oversee the decline of one of America’s great companies.
It would be interesting to know how effective either of the tests are, in predicting actual performance. Examine folks performance reviews, I assume the controller gets some type of quatitative score (a number or letter grade) as part of the review process. How well does each test predict performance? Longevity ? etc
Many universities have gone test optional. The challenge, the tests (SAT and ACT) are likely the best tool to predict college GPA, graduation rates etc. Note, the testing is particularly valuable for elite schools (class work moves fast) for students in STEM fields.
There is an extensive literature on the predictive validity of the AT-SAT. Here’s a start; have at it:
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/25746
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/15411
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/15412
"Is this just an offshoot of the recent right-wing kvetching about DEI in general?"
An offshoot? No, no. This is the root of the thing, the central motivation made plain.
Writing effective tests is difficult. Have you ever been interviewed for a job by someone who has little clue of how to find the man he’s looking for?
Making a test hard is generally an easy, lazy way of going about it. Assuming you’re looking to fill only a few positions, a low rate of false positives is probably justification enough to just continue as-is. When you cannot fill your positions, or you start to wonder about who might not be making the cut, then it could be time to look at your false negatives.
In the eyes of the bigoted right (ie, the MAGA right, which unfortunately makes up the majority of the right nowadays), there is not a single problem in the US that isn't caused by people who are not White.
As expressed by resident rascist James Shearer here, Whites are the best qualified for any job, and if less Whites are hired, it must be because other groups get preferential treatment, not because the particular hired person happened to be better than the White one that wasn't hired.
There appears to be an assumption that aptitude tests deliver a rank order for qualification, so that a person who scores 86% is more qualified than a person who scores 85%. That's not how those tests are designed, nor how they should be used. Above a certain threshold, everyone is "qualified," and hiring should be based on other criteria. To argue otherwise is to slavishly fetishize numbers over evidence and reason.
Long story even shorter: the people making these arguments are racist scumbags.
Apparently there is about a 30% washout rate at the Air Traffic Control Academy, so most people who were not well suited to being an ATC likely do not get through to become a trainee at ATC. I don't know what the washout rate is for trainee's, but the stress of having the lives of people in your hands may not be suitable for many people.
While there have been numerus well publicized incidents recently, US Part 121 airline travel has gone through an exceptionality safe decade or 2 (though that could of course come to an end at anytime)
I'm confused. Kevin writes the BA "measured personality traits (composure, work behavior, concentration, decisiveness, etc.)." This sounds like something you'd want to test ATC candidates on.
"In 2016 President Obama signed a bill that discontinued the Biographical Assessment and allowed anyone who had failed it to reapply. In 2020, as part of that year's defense bill, Congress passed the bipartisan ATC Reform Act, which reinstated the preference given to CTI grads."
So what are they tested on now? I wouldn't have wondered about all this if Kevin hadn't brought it up, but since he did I now want to know.