Puts Onus on Black Candidates
FDNY Test a Rigged Remedy

By BRANDON L. WARD

Talk about an interesting recruitment strategy: consider Mayor Bloomberg's decision to relax the standards for applicants to take the Firefighter entrance exam by reducing academic requirements and allowing any job experience to substitute for college courses.

And talk about a commitment to diversity: again, consider Mayor Bloomberg's decision to bravely go where no other administration has gone in a very long time: to make the Fire Department - an almost homogeneous work force (91 percent of the department's firefighters are white males, 3 percent are black males) - reflect New York City's population - 35 percent white, 27 percent Hispanic, 25 percent black, and 10 percent Asian. Curiously enough, while much attention is given by the media to what's happening in the FDNY recruitment strategy to get more minorities in the department, not much attention is given to what's not happening: diversity in senior levels of other city agencies.

A Vanishing Breed

For blacks, particularly black men, their presence in senior-level positions of the administration and agencies has become scarce as Swiss basketball players in the NBA. According to the latest available data, black men represent less than 0.01 percent (that's not a typo; it's 19 to be exact) of all senior level managers in city agencies earning an annual salary above $85K.

As one who has written and spoken ad nauseam about the issue of diversity in the senior levels of city agencies (especially my own, DOT), I am convinced that Mayor Bloomberg and his commissioners are hardwired to use numbers like drunks use lampposts: to prop up claims of progress instead of shedding light on the problem.

Writing 25 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Judge Robert L. Carter, who argued the case before the Supreme Court alongside Thurgood Marshall, observed: "It was not until Brown was decided that blacks were able to understand that the fundamental vice was not legally enforced racial segregation itself; that this was a mere by-product, a symptom of a greater and more pernicious disease - white supremacy."

An Odd Rationalization

Indeed, it is only within the context of Judge Carter's diagnosis can this observer explain a Jan. 27, 2006 article published in the Staten Island Advance, in which DOT's Commissioner, Iris Weinshall, stated: "Qualification are guidelines only, and it is common for hires not to meet all such requirements provided they excel in other areas." This was the Commissioner's response to critics regarding her appointment of an unqualified white male, Tom Curitore, as the agency's Borough Commissioner of Staten Island. That said, how else does one rationalize the hierarchy of most city agencies? After all, 79 percent of the city's higher-paying administrative/managerial job titles are performed by whites; by contrast, 62 percent of blacks and other people of color are concentrated in the lowest-paying clerical jobs! Sounds like a plantation system to me!

But not to worry; Mayor Bloomberg's decision to relax the Firefighter standards and extend the application period will certainly give the administration some short-lived bragging rights for changing the department's dismal recruitment windfalls (between 1990 and 2001, the FDNY recruitment effort netted 6.6 percent minorities, and got 14.7 percent between 2002 and 2005).

However, after pondering the long-term merits of this recruitment strategy, let me be presumptuous and say that the anatomy of lower qualification standards is rigged on three counts: First, it exonerates the administration from charges of doing nothing to change the department's racial make-up; second, it neutralizes the Vulcans' (the FDNY's black fraternal order of firefighters) longstanding charge that the exams are biased against blacks; and third, it blames blacks (by default) who fail to jump over the administration's lower qualifications barrier.

A Schooling Gap

Truth be told, blacks' test scores on the Firefighters' exams have consistently lagged behind whites. Without a doubt, better preparation would increase our success on the written test. Certainly from this observer's chair, it not far-fetched to suggest that the educational processes that prepare candidates for the written test is not independent of discrimination.

After all, the Vulcan Society has consistently argued that the FDNY's emphasis on written tests is biased against non-white applicants. To my mind, test scores only draw attention to the poorer quality of education doled out to blacks in the city's public schools compared to what is offered whites attending schools outside the five boroughs, where a significant number of New York's Bravest reside.

Presumptuousness aside, Mayor Bloomberg's decision to lower the qualification standards by making the probationary period longer and more rigorous is curious thinking. After all, according to a recent New York Times article, "CUNY Reports Fewer Blacks at Top Schools," the adoption of a tougher admissions policy seems to have had a major impact on black enrollment at three of CUNY's colleges. For example, at City College, black students accounted for 40 percent of the college's undergraduates as recently as 1999. Now, the student body is 30-percent black.

Curiously, Mayor Bloomberg's remedy - lower qualifications requirements - for the FDNY reflects an inverted reasoning of CUNY's enrollment policy. Of course, in the Mayor's mind, this approach is not dumbing down the department.

A Stigma's Attached

However, the fact is, blacks pay a heavy price for being hired on the basis of lower qualifications or job standards. In one sense, "lowering standards" reinforces the myth of black inferiority and in the general sense serves to stigmatize black professionals. After all, how can I ignore the realities of my agency where we are encouraged to believe that for whites, mountains can be made of molehill experience, while for blacks, we hear the same crap all the time: "we cannot find any qualified blacks." Unfortunately, this dictum is given authenticity by repetition.

Unfortunately, I am tempted to conclude that Mayor Bloomberg's lowering FDNY qualification standards has a flip side: as G.K. Chesterton observed, "the reformer is always right about what is wrong; he is generally wrong about what is right."

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.