Racial Bias in Fire Department

* In response to “Bias Against Any Race is Unacceptable,” by Michelle Eun Joo Park-Steel, Commentary, April 4:

I have worked with the Stentorians, an African American firefighter’s association, for several years and I can attest to the fact that racism and discrimination are alive and well in the department. While it is not totally impossible any longer for African American and other minority applicants to get into the department’s employment ranks, all other things being equal, promotions and opportunities for advancement remain few and far between. Double standards and subjective judgments as to new hires and promotability still serve as an effective bar against equal opportunity.

For this reason, I read with dismay and disagreement L.A. Fire Commissioner Park-Steel’s column in which she denounces the 1974 consent decree between the City of Los Angeles and the Justice Department. Commissioner Park-Steel claims not to know “what a minority is” any longer and expresses great concern about the exclusion of 5,000 white applicants from a firefighter’s test. She goes on to assert that the application process has gotten “bogged down in a bureaucratic maze and is fundamentally unfair.” She cites as evidence that the consent decree, which required long-range goals of integration in the department, has resulted in “the percentage of Caucasian firefighters reduced from 93% to 67%.” Given the percentage of Caucasians among the citizenry, this 30% drop in their domination in 20 years is hardly radical or unjust.

What has not been taken into account is that African Americans and other minorities were confined to “all-Negro fire stations” until the mid-’50s and to long waiting lists, despite many vacant positions. African American and Latino numbers in the department were minuscule and every excuse in the world was used to bar access. And those days are not over yet.

Currently the Los Angeles Fire Department has an overall total of 3,064 employees, of which only 330 are African Americans and 689 are Latinos. Only 33 of 552 captains are African Americans and 80 are Latinos, and of the 87 chief officers, four are African Americans and six are Latinos. The department has 1,654 firefighters--217 African Americans, 453 Latinos and 984 Caucasians. Although Caucasians make up 63% of employees, only 37% of the Los Angeles population is Caucasian. We only need to walk through City Hall East (LAFD’s administrative offices) to see who dominates the administrative ranks and decision-making.

The consent decree has and continues to serve a valid and much-needed purpose in rectifying historical and institutionalized racism. Perhaps it has to be reviewed in some respects and updated, but let there be no question that this legal mechanism to address clear and ongoing disparities among the rank and file and in management positions of the department has ongoing viability.

MELANIE E. LOMAX

Los Angeles

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* This article was right on the money. I am so tired of having to be politically correct. In the city we live in it is becoming more and more insane to “protect” certain people simply because of their race. That is discriminating against all others, in this case 5,000 well-intentioned would-be firefighters. Is it not also demeaning to those groups deemed in need of assistance, could they not get along on their own merits? And now, why would the white firefighters have any respect for their minority co-workers, who are known to have gotten their jobs because of their minority status? Practices such as these are demeaning toward the “minority” groups benefiting and discriminatory against all others.

ERIC GAMONAL

Woodland Hills