BY BOBBY HALTON
One day while Socrates was out walking, a young man came racing up to him to tell him that he had some important news to share with him about someone Socrates knew.
“Before you begin,” Socrates said, “I must ask you a few questions. First, do you know this individual personally?”
The young man said, “No.”
“Second, do you know that what you’re about to tell me is absolutely true?”
The young man said, “No.”
“Finally, is what you’re about to tell me something good about this person or bad?”
The young man said, “It is bad.”
Socrates said, “So you are going to tell me something about someone you don’t know, something that you’re not sure whether it’s true, and something that is not positive or flattering, correct?”
The young man said, “That’s correct.”
Socrates turned and walked away, saying, “Thank you, but I really don’t care to hear it.”
What Socrates was teaching us in that brief exchange was that there is inherent evil in the politics of vilification. What happens in the politics of vilification is we take someone or some group of people that we really don’t know and we believe and share bad things about them for our own advantage or to help us feel better about ourselves. The politics of vilification are what keep alive racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and a host of other social ills.
When I was very young, still in diapers, I used to have what people called “accidents.” I don’t have them anymore. I would hope that the same is true for our levels of maturity. When we are young and immature, our sense of what is proper and correct may be skewed. As we develop and grow in maturity, as individuals and as a nation, we continue to advance to greater levels of maturity. To that end all firefighters must dedicate themselves.
We have been given some tremendous gifts in this country, probably the greatest being, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Everyone knows where these words come from; they come from our Declaration of Independence, and they assert the basic fundamental principles that guide us as firefighters in virtually everything we do. They affirm, first, that we are all equals—none of us deserve any more than anyone else but rather that God has endowed us with the right to our lives, our liberty, and our prosperity.
The Constitution adds “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” That means we have the right to keep what we fairly and honestly, through our personal efforts, earn or merit. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its recent decision of Ricci v. DeStefano, has reasserted that we are in fact all equals, and advantages and disadvantages must be borne equally among all who compete to promote in the fire service or to become a member of the fire service.
This decision challenges many of the practices that have existed for many years to promote diversity in the fire service. Policies that were designed albeit with the best of intentions have—unintentionally and unfortunately, in some cases—created divisions, grievances, ill will, and concerns as to their effectiveness. These policies and practices began in 1964, when Congress passed Public Law 82-352 (78 Stat. 241) creating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, forbidding discrimination and enforcing laws prohibiting discrimination in all conditions of employment.
The Supreme Court decision found that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibits advancing one group at the expense of another. But despite this decision, another challenge lies ahead. How will we reconcile the 14th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination with the Civil Rights Act, which bans “disparate impact” in tests that yield racially unbalanced results affirmatively, mandating racial favoritism to undo those results? Should we continue to discriminate to ameliorate past discrimination? That, in my opinion, would be cowardly, and we are not cowards.
I could not support workplace diversity any more strongly; it’s critical to our success and to our survival. Where there has been injustice, we must work diligently and honestly to correct it. We need to look like the people we work for, and they need to look like us. However, it is clearly unconstitutional for us to continue what has been called a zero-sum game—that means in the testing and selection of firefighters, we can no longer provide an advantage to some groups by creating a disadvantage to others. We must make sure that every firefighter is afforded the same opportunity to succeed. Diversity will be achieved through increasing public and institutional educational opportunities. We must continue to place greater emphasis on mentoring as a recruiting tool and training method. We must be honestly and passionately more focused in our outreach to those who have felt unwelcome.
We may not be at Socrates’ maturity level yet, but clearly we are a group of men and women who no longer need to rely on social diapers. However, we cannot afford any accidents in this next step forward in our growth. We have the maturity; we have the proven integrity to lead our noble profession. We must embrace this opportunity to move forward toward that beautiful vision of a colorblind society.
Our leadership will need to be bold and decisive while at the same time being honest, respectful, and kind. We must avoid the politics of vilification and the soil it puts on our honor. But we must also endure the growing pains that will surely come with our acceptance of resolving this daunting conundrum.
