The highest-ranking African-American in Boston's transit police, John J. Mahoney, has become the target of resentment from both white and black officers because of the way he was promoted to sergeant.

Originally hired in 1983 and assumed by fellow officers to be white man, he twice took the sergeant's promotional exam without success. But in 1992, Mahoney successfully petitioned to change his racial designation to African-American because his birth certificate described his mother as "colored," in the argot of the day. A department memo noted that his promotion to sergeant a year later was based solely on his minority status, to make the police command "more representative of the community we serve."

Many black officers now consider it a sham that Mahoney, who appears white, should be taken to represent them in a major command position. Many white officers consider Mahoney a white guy who took advantage of an uneven playing field.

In defense of racial preferences in hiring and promotions, Harvard's Gary Orfield notes that "every social policy has its logical absurdities," adding that, to come to terms with multiracial identity, policy makers must "build new complexities into the law."

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