Heather Mac Donald in City Journal:

"Disparate-impact jurisprudence rests on a massive lie: that blacks and whites would score identically on tests of cognitive ability, absent a biased test design. Given the racial disparities in average cognitive skills–black 12th-graders read, on average, at the level of white eighth-graders–it is impossible to design a test measuring cognitive ability that will not have a lower black pass rate. Garaufis, however, rejects this reality; he has sneered at the city’s suggestion that the differences in scores between white, black, and Hispanic fire department applicants reflect differences in ”capability and preparedness,” calling that explanation ”dubious.” Instead, in Garaufis’s world-view, racial differences in test results reflect the presence of racial animus." Fighting Fire with Quotas A federal judge’s dangerous crusade against the FDNY October 24, 2010

This "racial animus" is supposed be coming from Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council of New York.