2005 is going slowly for the New York City fire department, one of the city’s most loved and complex institutions.
A nasty and protracted pay dispute with the Mayor - New York’s Bravest, as they are known, have not had a raise since before 9/11 - was darkened in January by the department’s deadliest day since 2001. Three firefighters were killed in one morning in the Bronx and Brooklyn, two after they were forced to jump from a burning building. And then last week it was disclosed that the federal justice department was launching an investigation into the department’s sorest side, its overwhelming whiteness.
There are approximately 11,500 firefighters and officers in the FDNY, of whom about 300 are black; that’s about 3 per cent. The department, which is 92 per cent white, has been historically dominated by the city’s Irish and Italian communities and is the least diverse fire department of any big city in America. In Los Angeles, just over 50 per cent of firefighters are African American; in Boston the number is closer to 40 per cent. Of the current class of 160 at the FDNY’s academy on Randall’s Island in New York harbour, there are either two or three black trainees, depending on who you ask.
There is no doubt that the department would like to change. Acknowledging the justice department’s investigation, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scopetta said: “We want a department that reflects the communities we serve and we are working vigorously to achieve this goal.” And Virginia Lam, a spokeswoman for the FDNY, told me: “No one here is saying that the department doesn’t need to be more diverse.”
Advertisement
But the problem is that the FDNY has been here before. In the 1970s a series of lawsuits against the department’s hiring practices pushed the number of black firefighters to around 600, or 7 per cent. (The relevant labour pool for firefighters in New York is about 25 per cent African American.) Then for 20 years the number of black firefighters slowly came down, although it is now showing signs of increasing. As Ms Lam put it: “Culturally the roots of the department are, you know, very white and very Irish, and it’s hard to break away from that. But we’re gaining success.”
The force pushing hardest for diversity in the FDNY - bringing complaints since the 1940s and the probable cause of the justice department’s inquiry - is the Vulcan Society, the union of New York’s black firefighters. The Vulcan Society made their most recent complaint two weeks ago, when Abdul Lainard Granger, a member who has been the only black firefighter in his last two firehouses, came to work to find a noose on top of his gear.
I went to see Michael Marshall, the group’s vice president and a lieutenant in the fire department, at the Vulcan Society headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The walls of the union hall were decorated with photographs and memorials of black firefighters (12 Vulcan Society members were killed on 9/11) and a prominent banner carried the Marcus Garvey quote: “Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will.”
Before turning to current events, Lieutenant Marshall told me the story of Wesley Williams, the third black man to join the FDNY and founder of the Vulcan Society in 1940. Williams, who was “a physical specimen” according to Lt Marshall, joined the FDNY in 1919 and fought a one-man war to gain a place for black people in the department: “He kicked a lot of ass, he gained a lot of respect.” Williams was forced to brawl with white colleagues in the basement of his firehouse and was left behind by his team to fight fires single-handed before being promoted again and again until he reached battalion commander in 1938.
“There has always been racism in the fire department,” said Lt Marshall, who is 49 and has a broad moustache. “The problem is how do we rectify that, how do we get qualified blacks to get this job?” The target, and the subject of US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission inquiries in 2002 and 2004, is the FDNY recruitment process: “That’s what’s killing us,” said Lt Marshall.
Advertisement
Right now, applicants to the department take a physical test and a written test, which are both scored out of 100 and weighted equally. Applicants’ scores are then ranked and made into a list. But because many applicants score 100 per cent on the physical test, the determining factor in their overall rank, and chance of a job in the FDNY, is their written score. And, for the same clutch of reasons (poor schooling mainly) that seems to bedevil them on most sorts of standardized, written testing, black male applicants tend not to score as well as their white or Hispanic counterparts.
The Vulcan Society questions why a written test should decide who should be a firefighter, especially when oral exams in other fire departments seem to offer more diverse success rates. And besides, as Lt Marshall said: “You don’t really know who’s going to be a good firefighter until you take five guys and say, ‘Get in that building and put that fire out’. And the last one to come out, he’s probably the best firefighter.”
Lawyers for the Vulcan Society are confident that with the help of the justice department they can change the FDNY’s testing requirements. “It’s clear on the law that there is an open and shut case to knock out the written exam here,” said Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
But everyone on the side of diversity, inside and outside the FDNY, knows that the department has a habit of sticking to its roots. “Look,” said Lt Marshall, “the majority of this job is Italian and Irish and let’s face it, they don’t feel that strongly about getting more blacks on and having less Italian and Irish.”
“But you know,” he went on, “we want change. We don’t want lip service, we want change. We want black guys getting jobs in the fire department. We want someone to upset the apple cart here.”
Advertisement
Slices of New York