From the NYT, more on the triumphant Vulcan disparate impact discrimination lawsuit, filed by the Bush Administration in 2007, against the Fire Department of New York.
One afternoon after the trial let out, Capt. Paul Washington, a black officer in Engine Company 234, in Brooklyn, sat in the courthouse cafeteria with Firefighter John Coombs, president of the Vulcans. An hour earlier, Captain Washington had testified about racial insults he encountered on the job: the casual flinging of the N-word and the defacement of a flier for the Vulcans’ first memorial service after 9/11. Where the guest speaker’s name was printed, someone had scribbled other names: Buckwheat, Al Sharpton, Fat Albert.
Now, the two men explained that overt animus like that was fairly uncommon on the job. Instead, they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race, discernible in acts as unsubtle as dinner-table condemnations of affirmative action and as seemingly innocuous as a recreation-room preference for Fox News.
“Our experience is different,” Captain Washington said. “There’s 50 white guys in a firehouse from the same background — middle-class, Long Island, the kids play soccer together — so, yeah, they’re having a ball. But if you’re the one black guy in the house, maybe you ain’t having so much fun.”
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85 comments:
Having a ball? Doesn't sound like any workplace I've ever experienced. We really need to recognize that firefighters have turned into the mascots of local government, not much else. Instead of having them play cards and watch Fox News, maybe police officers could be trained as firefighters. Then firefighter/police officers could serve two year terms as both firefighters and police offers. That would significantly reduce the demand for firefighting jobs, if the firefighters actually had to work a real job as a police officer.
Don't these black firefighters and cops have any pride?
they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race
Is there anything more evil than a racist who doesn't think about the world in terms of race?
"Instead, they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race"
Wasn't that the plan all along?
"discernible in acts as unsubtle as dinner-table condemnations of affirmative action and as seemingly innocuous as a recreation-room preference for Fox News."
The horrors these two brave men are subjected to.
"There’s 50 white guys in a firehouse from the same background — middle-class, Long Island, the kids play soccer together — so, yeah, they’re having a ball."
How dare they!
That would significantly reduce the demand for firefighting jobs, if the firefighters actually had to work a real job as a police officer.
Great idea! Make sure that the firefighters are exhausted from doing other jobs when they go out to fight fires. After all, who would do a better job of putting out fires than a firefighter who is dead on his feet?
OMG! They felt socially awkward at work! This is an outrageous injustice that must not stand, because no one else in any other job has ever felt that way. Clearly, the entire fire department needs an overhaul.
What's truly depressing is that a significant number of Republicans, probably a majority, still think that W was a great guy. If a white guy with a Texas twang who invokes God in every other sentence and has an (R) behind his name was doing the exact same things Obama's done, Republicans would support hime in droves. Our politics has become more cultural than substantive. Once again we're going to end up choosing the GOP nominee based on who we'd prefer to have a beer with.
"Don't these black firefighters and cops have any pride?"
Sure, they have plenty of pride.
They just don't have any shame.
Or dignity.
"corrosive obliviousness to race"
Good f---ing God. How on Earth is it these people are winning? We deserve to become Helots to the Chinese.
I'm shocked, shocked to find out that Sailer's first law of female journalism applies to black firefighters as well!
NYT: "Instead, they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race"
Anonymous: "Wasn't that the plan all along?"
So what are they supposed to look at, wise guy? The content of each others' characters?
/sarcasm
-I Just Had The Strangest Dream
“Our experience is different,” Captain Washington said. “There’s 50 white guys in a firehouse from the same background — middle-class, Long Island, the kids play soccer together — so, yeah, they’re having a ball. But if you’re the one black guy in the house, maybe you ain’t having so much fun.”
I'll bet a conservative feels this way at NY Times or Ivy League university. Or Hollywood or in San Fran government run by gays.
Btw, what's wrong with middle class culture? Aint it nice? What does Washington want? Redneck culture?
Making sure every black employee in America is "having a ball" should be our president's highest priority. Actually, knowing our president, it probably is.
It's not enough to be not a 'racist'. One must actively be an 'anti-racist'.
In Christian terms, it's not enough that you're a good Christian. You must constantly be on the watch for the devil everywhere!!
Liberals are now the new religious loonies. It's not enough to be an un-bigot. One must hysterically find bigotry where it doesn't exist and condemn it.
And-despite what libertarians and other free-market dogmatists claim- W really *did* do a very effective job of destroying the US mfg base:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/
I am absolutely in support of breaking up this "Old Boys Club" of white privileged suburban white-boys who have an insider track to becoming firemen. Why should they hog up all these desirable cushy public jobs?
Where is the fairness in that?
Remember: These boys have the kinda networking that others do not enjoy.
The 2-year terms would be alternating, Average Joe.
"As of 2008, there were approximately 830,000 police officers and detectives in the nation, while there were 365,000 firefighters in the U.S."
365,000 firefighters? Is that really the relative danger of crime vs. fire? So there are 1.9 million fires reported per year, so that's basically 5 fires per firefighter. What do they do the other 220 working days per year? Hop in a 25 ton truck to get a five pound cat out of a tree?
Truly, the lies about firefighters need to be exposed, and they need to do a little real work. I love mascots, but even the San Diego chicken puts in more effort than the typical firefighter.
It's kind of cool to see firemen get theirs for once. These guys make tons of money, do very little, and have fun doing it.
However, I'd like to see a sensible Republican seize on this issue from the firemen's side against the elitst asshole judge.
The bit about subversive opposition to affirmative action reminds me of the movie "American History X"; after the inherently noble skinhead is reformed he decides his path to fascism began not with the black bullies around Venice Beach but with his fireman dad (departed, shot on call in a black neighborhood), complaining openly about AA at the family table!
The scribbled names, as reported, might have been written in by a black as part of the usual race hoax with which we've all become familiar.
When you have a majority black workplace they not only do nothing to make non-blacks more comfortable, they actually do whatever they can to drive all others out so they can take it over completely.
The black complainant wants everyone to kiss his rear end because his importance outweighs that of everyone else.
In other news, the illegal immigrant DUI in Boston has been verified to be Obama's Uncle Omar.
Days after granting administrative amnesty to illegals picked up on minor charges, Barack Obama's illegal immigrant uncle gets picked up on minor charges. Bummer.
What I wonder is why Uncle Omar, who has apparently been living here illegally since the 60s, didn't qualify under the 1986 amnesty. Could it be that a criminal record prevented him from doing so?
Once again we're going to end up choosing the GOP nominee based on who we'd prefer to have a beer with.
Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, one blanket, a romantic sunset at the beach, some glowing embers from a small campfire in the sand, me, and three ice-cold bottles of Dom Perignon FTW!!!
Making sure every black employee in America is "having a ball" should be our president's highest priority. Actually, knowing our president, it probably is.
Some background for iStevers who don't get the joke.
Don't these black firefighters and cops have any pride?
Where have you been the last fifty years?
So basically... New York is spending 3 million bucks because some guys don't like the TV programs they watch while being paid and the personal lifestyles of their coworkers? Perhaps Mr. Washington would feel more comfortable if the kids of the other firefighters switched to basketball, or maybe the city could force the white middle class firefighters to switch neighborhoods.
My freshman year in college, my roommates were black, and our room became sort of a hangout for the black kids on our floor. The TV was always tuned to some crap reality show whereas I prefer crap drama shows. Plus, they always talked about sports which don't interest me at all. Often they brought up things they learned in African American studies classes which didn't show white people in the best light. Yet, because they treated me cordially, I didn't realize I was a victim of racism, just adjusted to the tastes of the majority. Isn't that what nice, well brought up people are supposed to do?
"Instead, they[two black firefighters] complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race, discernible in acts as unsubtle as dinner-table condemnations of affirmative action and as seemingly innocuous as a recreation-room preference for Fox News.
'There’s[sic] 50 white guys in a firehouse from the same background...so, yeah, they’re having a ball. But if you’re the one black guy in the house, maybe you ain’t having so much fun.'"
Does anyone else foresee firehouse dinner tables around which sit 50 white firefighters agreeing with the lone black guy's approval of AA while BET blares in the background?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/
Yeah, that one was linked to in one of those "DOOM!" threads at AoSHQ earlier this week.
Deeply, deeply troubling, and a stinging indictment of the "mainstream" Econ/B-School canon...
"Instead, they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race,..."
I complain about the same thing: a corrosive obliviousness to race by the media in the reporting of crime.
Another great institution falls to the diversity juggernaught. Funny how there is never a push to diversify the Corrections Department, Mass Transit, Social services - HRA apparatus, State Parole....etc.... all of those City and State offices that employ Blacks in tremedous numbers....Nope, there's a couple of White guys willing to run into burning buildings.....and (gasp!) They're having a "ball!".....Gotta put a stop to that.......
They have only foolish pride and no shame at all.
"corrosive obliviousness to race" huh ?
People like Washington want to decide for everyone else exactly when race should matter:
Nonblacks are expected to notice characteristics such as Blacks being overwhelmingly anti-republican. Nonblacks must thus be careful not to subject blacks to anything that smacks of the right wing, like Fox News.
On the other hand, nonblacks aren't allowed to notice more unflattering characteristics of blacks as a group.
I just love this passage from the NYT that shows just how wonderfully diversity fosters team spirit :
"Firefighter Coombs, the Vulcan Society president, recalled how he once asked white colleagues why they did the job. “They said, ‘Ah, camaraderie! Brotherhood!’ ” he recounted. “I said: ‘Are you guys insane? Has any of that ever paid your mortgage?’ Of course, I cleared the kitchen out with that one.”
"...if the firefighters actually had to work a real job as a police officer."
Sorry to disappoint you, bjtubbs, but my Dad was a career fireman in what was then the most densely-populated city in the US. His work did not end when the rig left the scene of an extinguished fire, out of whose charred, fallen remains my Dad had, many times, the grim job of digging out the charred corpses of dead adults and children.
In the firehouse, firemen do not just sit around and play cards and watch TV. They must perform daily, weekly, monthly, and other scheduled and as-needed maintenance of their rigs, hose, emergency gear, tools, air-packs, and much more - including housekeeping of the entire station and its sleeping quarters, showers, and they also must do the laundry of all the linens and other household gear. They must also maintain stocks of all sorts of cleaning gear, repair tools & gear, and job-specific hazardous and non-hazardous substances. At least half of these tasks are monotonous and disagreeable, but they must be done and firemen get them done. Also, firemen must on their own time have their personal gear maintained, mended, and, if necessary, replaced.
When off-duty, my Dad had to take his helmet to Cairns (the helmet maker) to have it resized, relined, and its exterior reconditioned, and have his boots mended with vulcanized patches, and have his heavy canvas turnout coat patched & mended - all of this has to be done more frequently than most folks can imagine.
Also, in each station house the duty of collecting money from the other fireman - called "house tax" - is collected on a rotating basis by the fireman who has house tax duty; this man has to go out on his own time and shop for all the groceries that he and his fellows consume while on duty in their firehouses.
Then there's the endless stream of false alarms pulled by ghetto punks who then lie in wait for the fire engines to arrive, so that they can hurl rocks, bottles, even Molotov cocktails at the firemen - and the firemen are not, under law, allowed to arrest any of these punks.
Atop all that, like most people, I run out and away from burning buildings. Firemen run INTO them. I wonder, bjtubbs, what you do when you're in, or outside of, burning buildings?
The pyschological-emotional toll on firemen is enormous. Few of us can imagine - but I can, because I saw my Dad suffer - how firemen who come home from a shift of digging blackened corpses from smoldering, sodden ash heaps suffer, and how this suffering casts a pall over their and their families' home life. There were many times when my brother & I dared not even mention anything frivolous for several days after Dad came home after having carried charred dead human grotesques from incinerated buildings. I don't know how my mother even began to deal with my Dad's psycho-emotional traumas. Add to those impacts the injuries and deaths suffered by fellow firemen, and the effect on firemen's morale, in and out of the firehouse, can only be vaguely guessed at by outsiders.
My Dad worked with black firemen, some of whom bristled at the ribbing they took from white fellows on the job, but most of whom just joined in with the general good humored camraderie that involved lots of mutual ribbing based on every man's race, ethnicity, peccadillos, idiosyncrasies, food favorites, how long a guy spent on the "throne," and what have you.
I suggest these black firefighters become social workers where they can feel right at home.
Despite the firefighter union's propaganda about the heroism of their members, there are far far far far more people who want to become firefighters than there are positions. Why do you suppose that is? It's a cushy great job involving little and very rare sacrifice.
Denis Dale asks how these guys are winning. That's easy. They have the support of a large portion (my guess would be most of them) of the White Female Professional demographic.
Maureen Dowd in "White Man's Last Stand" encapsulated that attitude: "A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.
...
It was a disgrace that W. appointed two white men to a court stocked with white men.
...
Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity."
Asked Mr. Dale, and answered.
Or more wordily, the Professional White Woman is disconnected from Joe Average White guy. Dowd is typical -- a singleton, dismissive of White brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews she has, one who thinks you can have White women without White men, and one deeply aligned with the Affirmative Action machine. If hiring at the NYT were based on merit, would Dowd have ever been hired? No she's the default female columnist and therefore part of the AA alliance. Of which White Professional Women are the junior members.
But as noted with the Palin bit, this female professional White demo doe HATE HATE HATE their cultural enemies. Openly conservative and attractive women (Kay Bailey Hutchinson never got that venom) or those with cultural attributes (cowboy twang, male swagger) that they HATE HATE HATE.
By the numbers AA suits and the like do not enjoy much popularity among White men. They certainly do among White Professional women, and the reason is at least in part, cultural. As Steve noted, a constant grinding status war. The only answer is a constant grinding counter-war to explicitly change the culture. Among one, saving beating status mongering. No "Denise Researched this" commercials.
lol @ this. try being on a sports team in one of those sports that africans are "interested" in.
my...diverse...teammates sure were concerned with what anybody else thought about their foul language and reckless behavior and loud blasting music. they regularly checked with the rest of us about whether they were offending anybody.
they also were always completely reasonable in their demands, were never total morons who screwed things up, never ruined team chemistry for small minded reasons, and were always easy to talk to and reason with if they did not immediately see your point.
they never discussed various topics by just shouting at you as loud as they could for as long as it took for you to just give up and walk away, then considered the topic won in their favor. that never happened. in fact it was always a friendly and lively exchange of good ideas on how to improve the team and so forth. and they always had good ideas. they were full of good, original thinking on a range of topics.
"An hour earlier, Captain Washington had testified about racial insults he encountered on the job: the casual flinging of the N-word...Now, the two men explained that overt animus like that was fairly uncommon on the job.
Oh, now they tell us, after, ya know, putting their hands on The Bible or The Autobiography of Malcolm X or whatever book it is they swear on in New York courts and swear to tell, the truth, etc., etc.
And how the hell can a behavior be both "casual" and "rare"? I have lived my life in a diversity of places - often politically incorrect places; generally Republican-leaning places - and have never, never, ever encountered the "casual" use of the N-word, even when blacks weren't around.
This sentence from a New York Times article on Alabama's new immigration law made me blink in confusion/amusement:
"It effectively makes it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Alabama"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/the-nations-cruelest-immigration-law.html?hp
"...maybe you ain’t having so much fun.”
Poor Capt Washington -- the fact he's not having fun really pains me. Being so eloquent, I'm sure he could've been just as successful in many walks of life, so NY'ers ought to be grateful he decided to devote himself to being a 'public servant', where he doesn't have any fun.
Again, here is the key to this problem. Note the salaries for firefighters in NYC, including the fact that their pay more than doubles within five years (in what other job does that normally happen?), as well as the mention of a "Generous pension". The absurd lie of needing to offer this kind of money and level of benefits in order to attract the 'best and brightest to public service' needs to be shattered once and for all.
It's also interesting to note that even $150k a year is not enough to buy a little loyalty and discretion from an affirmative action cretin like Capt Washington.
bjtubbs said...
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The 2-year terms would be alternating, Average Joe.
"As of 2008, there were approximately 830,000 police officers and detectives in the nation, while there were 365,000 firefighters in the U.S."
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Well, that means that a significant part of either group is out of practice in his present job.
Firefighters need to be available all the time with short notice, so it would be very difficult - no, make that impossible, given the planning talents of the local govt - for fire fighters who are soon up for jobswitching to tune up their policing skills.
Just imagine the union fights. Or all legal framework that has to be gone through, and made to be consistent.
Also, a recruit for the new dual job would have to both have traits useful for firefighting (heat resistance, whatever) and completely different traits necessary for police work (shooting ability, interrogation, etc.)
Those are two trait sets that are different to a large degree, and it would be very difficult to find candidates who are good at both.
Heck, specialization is what has caused society to advance since at least the dawn of industrial age! Why don´t you grow your own oranges and fish for your own salmon, to follow your line of thought?
re: "I love mascots, but even the San Diego chicken puts in more effort than the typical firefighter." bjtubbs
FireFighting in the USA is a jobs program. As home and business fires decrease with increasingly safer buildings as they have for centuries due to the 2% growth on average of the economy over time, Firemen have fewer and fewer fires to fight. The result has been their move into Medicine as they become first responders, paramedics and ambulance drivers.
This is the American way as they are following the enlarging scope of practice ploy as developed by Optometrists, Podiatrists, Nurses, and Chiropractors.
If only they could find a way to increase their IQs by similar pushy tactics.
Dan Kurt
I am Lugash.
365,000 firefighters? Is that really the relative danger of crime vs. fire? So there are 1.9 million fires reported per year, so that's basically 5 fires per firefighter. What do they do the other 220 working days per year? Hop in a 25 ton truck to get a five pound cat out of a tree?
Truly, the lies about firefighters need to be exposed, and they need to do a little real work. I love mascots, but even the San Diego chicken puts in more effort than the typical firefighter.
And who do you think responds to car crashes, ODs, chemical spills, people having heart attacks, conducts fire code inspections, little kids drowning in pools, etc?
I am Lugash.
VDARE is finally looking like a site designed in this century! Better late than never.
Bjtubbs makes a great point. Firefighters mostly sit around and comb each other's moustaches.
Dan in DC
Tell me again what written exams have to do with being a firefighter? While it is true that blacks are less intelligent in general, firefighting does not require much intelligence it seems to me a job of conscientiousness and brawn which blacks have plenty of.
The status quo is de facto discrimination.
Firefighters aren't as idle as a lot of people seem to think. They get called out of their stations for a lot of trivial stuff. I called once because a power line on my street was sparking against a tree branch, and a whole firetruck turned out. I saw a guy collapse in the street downtown, and a firetruck got there even before the ambulance. You'll see firetrucks at the scene of auto accidents. Firefighters are first responders for a lot of situations, not just fires. And frankly, given how dangerous their job can be on those occasions when they do have to fight a big fire, if the job comes with a little more down time than the average working stiff gets I don't begrudge them that.
“So there are 1.9 million fires reported per year, so that's basically 5 fires per firefighter. What do they do the other 220 working days per year?”
Are you clueless enough to think that only one firefighter shows up to a fire, and ignorant that many firefighters are volunteers and hold down jobs?
Society does not handicap exceptional white men who are essential to world progress and achievement. This de facto reparations things is just about giving out some spoils, it's not a big deal if blacks get a bigger piece of it than you feel they deserve.
even the San Diego chicken puts in more effort than the typical firefighter
Where I live --and I assume this is true elsewhere-- many of them have so much downtime they hold other full time jobs or run businesses, while waiting for their handsome early retirement lifetime pay and bennies to kick in.
"...you aint having so much fun".
That's interesting. I thought firefighters were supposed to be about putting out fires, not about having "fun".
Moreover, those white bastards emerge from smoke-filled buildings in blackface. Swine!
Here in drought-plagued southeast Texas firefighters have been very busy putting out brush fires almost on a daily basis.
"What does Washington want? Redneck culture?"
No. He wants the white guys to simply disappear, because they make him uncomfortable. Of course, if I expressed the same sentiment about the residents of the mostly black city in which I live, that would be raciss.
"they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race"
So what, he's mad he didn't get special treatment for being coloured?
Instead, they complained of a corrosive obliviousness to race
It's like when they say blacks, as a race, are incapable of racism. Never mind the mental gymnastics it takes to include "money racism" but exclude skull-bashing racism; the minute they replaced "racism" with "the content of a man's character" they were working on a new racism that worked in their interests, and to hell with the content of a man's character.
firefighters typically do ems runs and fire inspections
they don't just fight fires.
I have worked in offices with cliques that have made me feel like an outsider - not being invited to lunches or happy hours. Can I file a lawsuit too?
lol. OT but one of obama's kenyan relatives just got arrested near boston for DUI. turns out he's yet another illegal alien. so that's at least two known illegal aliens directly related to the president of the united states.
the evidence just keeps stacking up that the african side of his family is comprised of total losers who never accomplished anything and actually break the law pretty often. yet obama remains steadfast that it was the european side of his family which never did anything for him and was the source of all trouble in his life.
If this man were to emigrate to Africa, he would never have to see another white man again. How come all these non-whites who complain about white people so much want nothing more than to be around us?
Steve FYI if you wanted to update your blogroll, roissy has moved to http://heartiste.wordpress.com/
Condemning affirmative action just seems like a desire for fairness to me, but then I'm not a liberal. Off topic, I notice when I post commments at liberal blogs, like Steve Benen, they are deleted. And it's not just me. If some other right winger comments and I even add a comment saying I agree with him, both the original comment and my comment are deleted. And I'm not engaging in vicious insults. Just the opposite, the liberals responding are engaging in verbal abuse of me and their insults of me aren't deleted. It's funny because sometimes they are verbally abusing someone who's comment isn't even there anymore because the liberal blog owner deleted it. Anyone else had that experience at a liberal blog site?
if the firefighters actually had to work a real job as a police officer.
Wait - being a police officer is a "real job"?
So there are 1.9 million fires reported per year, so that's basically 5 fires per firefighter. What do they do the other 220 working days per year?
What do you think the typical cop does all day?
Bjtubbs,
I live in St. Paul. MN. Here once a year, on natl night out, the firemen come round to the block parties. The guys last time told me their *primary* calls now aren't even medical. They are Hazmat.
Broken CFLs. Spills of unknown liquid substance. Strange smell. Things like that. We're paying 6 figure pensions for 40 years under the nonexistent myth that they are risking their lives on a constant basis.
And they wrap themselves in the flag of sept. 11 as if they were all there (and as if the *reason* so many died that day was they knew the danger and risked their lives anyway. No. They died because their radios didn't work to tell them to get out.)
"That racist"
"But if you’re the one black guy in the house, maybe you ain’t having so much fun."
more fun than the black guys in libya these days.
(great expectations....)
"Making sure every black employee in America is "having a ball" should be our president's highest priority. Actually, knowing our president, it probably is."
I know, right?
Obama is always giving blacks preferential treatment. Like how he's always talking about the black unemployment rate and stuff. He always holds townhalls in places like New Orleans, Atlanta and D.C. instead of addressing the concerns of real Americans in the rural midwest. Worst of all, he takes billions of dollars AWAY from wall st. big wigs and gives it to blacks. That man disgusts me.
"Sure, they have plenty of pride.
They just don't have any shame.
Or dignity"
Kylie's posts get dumber by the day, yawl.
There is nothing undignified about making legitimate complaints.
I know it's gauche to note the double standard regarding black/white behavior, but what does the NYT suppose being the the lone white in a black firehouse would be like?
Something like that Dave Chapelle skit; MTV's Real World with the racial dynamic reversed: one white guy in a house of blacks.
Marco Lalo:
Adding a bit of patronage jobs for blacks isn't likely to cost that much. But how it's done matters a great deal--in the worst case, we can wreck all kinds of delicate machinery trying to make sure the racial patronage is available and doesn't look too much like racial patronage.
At the minimum-cost end of the spectrum is probably something like an explicit quota--at least 10 percent of new fire dept hires must be black, give everyone the tests and then hire the best black candidates for their share of the patronage jobs, and the best white candidates fort their share. If you need a certain fraction of Asians, Hispanics, women, gays, etc., this can be accomodated. It messes up the hiring process a bit, and probably will lead to less competent firemen, but there's not a lot of collateral damage done.
At the maximum-damage end of the scale, you eliminate IQ-related tests to avoid excluding blacks and Hispanics, water down physical requirements to make sure women can be firefighters, etc. The problem here is that you make the hiring process muc worse--in order to get the racial patronage jobs to look like something else, you make it harder for the fire department to hire capable people.
And somewhere in there are things like screwing up race relations within the fire department by having years of lawsuits, mandatory diversity harangues, hiring and promotions frozen or reversed by court order, etc. Those costs are about the fight over how this is to be done.
My sense is that AA probably doesnt cost the economy oall that much directly in the sense of the damage done by hiring or promoting some people to get the racial numbers to come out right. But I think there are substwntial costs to the attempt to make it look like something other tha bald racial patronage jobs/admissions/contracts. In that sense we would probably be better off to just have the policy of "we're 12 percent of the voters, we want 12 percent of the firefighter jobs.". But such policies offend the sensibilities of almost everyone. Even many of the intended beneficiaries, who can be happy with the "hand up not a hand out" rhetoric, won't be happy with a "your kid got one of the black slots at Harvard this year" stated openly, and this policies would never survive politically if made explicit.
"Tell me again what written exams have to do with being a firefighter? While it is true that blacks are less intelligent in general, firefighting does not require much intelligence it seems to me a job of conscientiousness and brawn which blacks have plenty of.
The status quo is de facto discrimination."
More bitter anonymous anti-white Asian whining.
Fire firefighting is more technical than you realize and since when do blacks have plenty of conscientiousness?
In my little city of 29K people north of Boston, they passed a new city regulation that, in addition to the police, a fire truck and ambulance have to respond to all traffic accidents!
firefighting does not require much intelligence it seems to me a job of conscientiousness and brawn which blacks have plenty of
Wait, what?
"365,000 firefighters? Is that really the relative danger of crime vs. fire? So there are 1.9 million fires reported per year, so that's basically 5 fires per firefighter. What do they do the other 220 working days per year? Hop in a 25 ton truck to get a five pound cat out of a tree?"
Well, since your calculation assumes that each fire is fought by exactly 1 firefighter, I think you really aren't being fair to how much work they put in on those 5 days a year.
They have to drive the 25 truck by themselves, put up the ladder by themselves, climb the ladder by themselves, pull out all people and animals by themselves, treat them for smoke inhalation by themselves, attach all the fire hoses by themselves, hold all those fire hoses by themselves, put out the fire by themselves, then put all the apparatus back away by themselves, and drive back to the station by themselves.
Don't you think that after 5 days a year like that, they deserve 220 days off?
There is nothing undignified about making legitimate complaints.
There's a lot that's undignified about making complaints, even so-called legitimate ones. That's why most men just leave and find a workplace where they fit in. It takes an exaggerated sense of self-worth (which women and restive minorities have in abundance) to find dignity in making complaints.
>legitimate complaints<
Hating on people for having a community of values, a mini society, is a legitimate complaint?
You don't make a new society solely by busting up old ones.
You say you put a new better one in its place, but in reality this doesn't happen. A society is natural (bottom-up) or it's dead.
The motive behind these lawsuits is to nip the formation of white communities in the bud. It's OK to have Jewish communities with gated and exclusive everything; Koren communities; etc., etc. But 50 white guys whose kids go to school together, having a BBQ? Thasss racism! And must be stamped out!
Maureen Dowd in "White Man's Last Stand"
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These days, the best way for whites to retain 'white privilege' is to rail against it. Dowd is a WP journalist but welcome to the new order cuz she rails against it.
So, every white firefighters should say he is working very hard to end white privilege. He will be kept on for trying.
I though Fat Al and Al Sharpton were supposed to be positive characters in the black community.
I see a lot of anti-firefighter, pro-cop comments. Firefighters are good guys, while cops are assholes. This worship of cops, and making them out as heroes is bull. It just shows how brainwashed our society is, a bunch of drones being told what to think by Fox News and the Govnment.
F#@k COPS!
"Dowd is typical -- a singleton, dismissive of White brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews she has, one who thinks you can have White women without White men"
Oh, Whiskers, Dowd is just in want of a good ravishing.
Get off the blogs and go see to it, wouldyaplease?
... my Dad had, many times, the grim job of digging out the charred corpses of dead adults and children."
I'm sure that's true of your Dad, but I doubt it's true of firemen in general.
There are about 400,000 firemen in the U.S., and about 4000 fire deaths a year. That's one fire death per 100 firemen.
Let's assume it takes 5 firemen to remove a body (obviously, many more will be at the scene but won't be involved in grislier tasks). That would mean the average fireman has to remove a dead body from a fire scene once in 20 years, approximately once in a career.
Agreed, coming face to face with suffering and death is stressful, and deserves compensation. But, you know, other jobs face that too. In my year as a hospital orderly I saw plenty of grimness, and while I was reasonably well paid, I didn't make a fireman's salary. Toughened me up a little.
Cennbeorc
"There is nothing undignified about making legitimate complaints."
There's nothing legitimate about complaining that the majority does not share the viewpoint of the minority. That is usually the case, whether or not race is a factor.
Firefighting is about rescuing people and property from the ravages of fire. To complain that being on duty waiting to perform such a crucial task "ain't having so much fun" is undignified, shameless and just plain stupid.
Little wonder it's a viewpoint you saw fit to defend.
.
Liberals should always be asked point blank, "Just what exactly are you liberal with? Your own money? Your own security? Your own status? Your own career? Your own future? Your own Israel? What exactly of your own are you prepared to be liberal with, Liberal?
What?"
Also, all registered Dems should be required to pay their taxes not in cash money, but in menial, physical corvee labor.
It's the only way to teach them what a "tax hike" actually is.
While it is true that blacks are less intelligent in general, firefighting does not require much intelligence
What the hell do you know about how much intelligence firefighting requires?
You know a job which does not require much intelligence? Picking lettuce. So, let's mandate that a certain percentage of lettuce pickers be black.
NOTA: My sense is that AA probably doesnt cost the economy oall that much directly in the sense of the damage done by hiring or promoting some people to get the racial numbers to come out right
Spoken by a true SWPL who's never had to spend so much as a single day [God forbid an entire career] trying to "work" with a quota hire.
QHs are like sand [or pebbles or even boulders] in the gears of the [metaphorical] transmission of any organization - when you're dealing with QHs, everything grinds to a halt.
EVERYTHING.
They bring something akin to "negative" energy with them to work every day - they're like energy sinks, sucking the energy out of all the productive people in the organization.
And they're so dadgum lazy [what I call "aggressively lazy"] that they'll fight for the right to do nothing all day.
Although, come to think of it, it's probably best that they sit there on their posteriors all day doing nothing, because if they actually tried to do something, there's no telling the damage that would ensue.
But never - and I mean NEVER - count on a QH to do its job.
Any task it is assigned will be either done wrong or not done at all.
"Oh, Whiskers, Dowd is just in want of a good ravishing.
Get off the blogs and go see to it, wouldyaplease?"
Whiskers?
JSM, that was really naughty of you.
I meant to leap to Whiskey's defense--and I would have, I really would have--if only you hadn't referred to him as "Whiskers".
"Truly, the lies about firefighters need to be exposed, and they need to do a little real work. I love mascots, but even the San Diego chicken puts in more effort than the typical firefighter."
I'm guessing the job description for fire fighters in the US may be slightly different than here in
Canada. Here firefighters often respond to other non-fire emergencies such as vehicle accidents and people trapped and unable to free themselves for whatever reason. In some fire stations, only about 15 percent of calls for service are for fires.
I would agree though that firefighters and to a lesser extent paramedics may go long extended periods of doing nothing until a disaster arrives.
It's obvious many of you don't know what firefighters do. It varies from region to region but 80% of calls are EMS calls. Average shift cylce is 24 hours on and 48 hours off. It's easy to say we do nothing when we are sitting around the station but where are you when we are trying to save a life of a child at three in the morning,or removing a lifeless body from a vehicle accident while you're eating lunch? How much down time should we get per fatality?
You have no idea the things we see or the things we do. Things that affect you for the rest of your life.
I'm not going to say that being a firefighter requires alot of intelligence, but try moving up the ranks without it. Some things it does require is a willingness to help, compassion, desire and thick skin.
There are many people who become firemen these days who don't have a thick skin. Maybe blame it on today's society where every kid gets a ribbon and scores aren't kept? In the firehouse we tell it like it is. If someone is lazy, the rest of the crew will tell him he is lazy. If someone isn't pulling their fair share of the load, they won't last. When it comes to saving lives, ours or yours, there is no time for beating around the bush. There are days when we might not do much, then there are days when we don't see the station. I, like 90% of firefighters, leave the station in the morning and work a second job.
It's a job that if you have never done, than you have no idea what it is really like. You're negativity and comments are proof that you could never wear the uniform, you just wouldn't cut it.
Jorge
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