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The Myth That Is The Racist FDNY ExamBy Hannington Dia | Posted on: October 17, 2011It was a cool, late August afternoon as I took the A train to Jay Street. Mr Ramsay told me to meet him in front of the Brooklyn Federal District Court so I could learn how to shoot scenes. That day also happened to be another in the deliberations between the Vulcan Society and the New York Fire Department, stemming from a lawsuit the Society filed in 2007. In the suit, the black firefighter union charged the FDNY with racial discrimination in its hiring practices through its 1999 and 2002 entrance exams. Since its chartering back in 1865, the FDNY has maintained a majority white composition-93%. African-American firefighters make up 3% in comparison.
Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis eventually agreed that the test is racially-biased towards black recruits, ruling the city must work to change it and the Department's racial makeup.
I wasn't able to view the proceedings, but Mr. Ramsay and I struck up a conversation with a firefighter outside the courthouse. The young man, who happened to be black, told us he didn't support the "biased" notion. He then shared that he'd received a 100 on the exam and he wanted the lawsuit settled so he could return to work.
As he spoke I found myself agreeing with his assertion. The idea that a fire department would purposely design a test African-Americans would be incapable of passing sounded ludicrous to me.
But to be sure, I needed to hear the other side first. A phone interview with Vulcan Society leader John Coombs revealed much about their mindset. "A couple stupid Negroes pass the exam and think the process is not flawed," Coombs told me, in response to the firefighter who got a perfect score.
"That exam is bad. It doesn't matter how many blacks, Asians, minorities pass it. Why do we have the exam when it has been proven to not show who would be a better firefighter?"
Well, according to the results of the 2002 exam, 85 percent of black recruits passed that year. Five years later, that number jumped to 93%. So more than just "a couple of stupid Negroes" have managed to make the cut in recent years. And it doesn't matter how many blacks are passing? Isn't this what the whole controversy is about?
Interestingly enough, Judge Garafuis threw out the 2007 test, arguing that it was poorly designed. Could that be his reason for doing so? Or is it because those results directly contradict his belief that the exam is unfair towards Blacks?
Are there other forces at work here? Perhaps one is our education system.
According to a 2009 study by the Council of the Great City Schools, only 12% of black fourth grade males are proficient in reading. 38% of white fourth grade males are proficient in comparison. The statistics get worse as young black boys enter high school.
The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education found that only 28% of black males graduated from New York City high schools during the 2007-2008 school year.
The exam is written at a 10th grade level. And unfortunately, many African-American males are not as reading-proficient or well-educated as their white peers. Herein is where the real racism lies. The city has been well known to direct financial and staff resources to schools in more affluent, majority-white neighborhoods, largely ignoring schools in heavily Black and Latino neighborhods. Many of these schools close down as a result.
Proponents of the "racist test" bandwagon also need to look at attendance rates. While its final scores were promising, early estimates for the 2002 exam showed that only 21% of the 4,793 applicants were black. Whites made up 75% of applications. How can one expect many African-Americans to pass the exam when so few have shown up to take previous editions?
This speaks to a larger problem within the force: minority recruitment. In a New York Community Media Alliance article from that year, then Deputy Fire Commissioner Douglas White commented that $1.83 million of the department's recruiting budget went more to "personal costs" and overtime for light-duty firefighters in the recruiting unit than the actual drives. Since the light-duty firefighters only worked part time, they weren't fully devoted to the task at hand.
The FDNY ramped up its recruitment efforts for the 2007 exam. Combining an adveritsing campaign with communications firm Arnell Group, over 2,600 community events across the five boros and $3.2 million in annual city funding, results proved promising. Of the 4,000 test-takers who scored the highest, 33% were minorities; blacks made up the second-highest percentage of this minority group.
Fast-foward to 2011 and things are even brighter. Over 61,000 people have applied to take the upcoming January 2012 exam. 2 and half times more black and Hispanic applicants have applied this year than in 2007. Can those numbers he higher? Of course, but that will take time.
Until the mid 2000s, the FDNY largely failed in their attempts to lure more minority applicants, which likely factored into their low acceptance rate. After all, why should blacks and Hispanics apply to a department that's historically shown little interest in them?
Mr. Coombs is right about one thing though. The entrance exam does contain questions that don't seem very firefighter-esqe. One past question about power saws asked which kind of blade needed to be taken out of service after use. The question followed a very technical 250-word passage. Maybe the exam does need more questions about actual firefighting. Still, how does a convoluted question about power saws equal racist bias against blacks?
Perhaps the Vulcans would be better served fighting the pervasive racism inside the NY Fire Department. The spate of nooses at firehouses across the city (and country) in recent years could use their activism. Keeping the pressure on the department to perform more recruitment drives in minority areas would also help. But fighting the exam because it's "racist" towards blacks is a waste of time, seeing as the exam questions have no socially biased questions that I could find.
If you're going to do that, why not say the Department of Probation, which is 65% black, but 18% white, is racist? What about the 78% of blacks that make up the Department of Juvenule Justice? Something tells me the 6% of whites who work there would appreciate that accusation. |
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