EDITORIAL for February 10, 2005
Northeast Times

Ebony and Ivory

Here’s a simple question for all Americans — for everyone from the simple-minded to the deepest thinkers:
How many black Americans like to be singled out for anything merely because they’re black? And how many white Americans like to lose out on a job merely because they’re white? An honest answer probably would be, very, very few.
Hiring somebody to do a job — any job, be it police officer, firefighter, teacher, janitor, basketball player, whatever — based on the color of their skin is patently offensive and directly contrary to what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so forcefully and eloquently expressed in his I Have a Dream speech.

February is Black History Month, so this is a good time to point out there is something very unsettling about using pigmentation as the basis for anything in America these days. We’ve come too far as a society. Blacks are people, too. We all get that message, and we all agree with it.
Therefore, it is distressing to know that the City of Philadelphia is still hiring firefighters on the basis of their skin color, thanks to a federal consent decree.

An assurance that at least 12 percent of fire department classes consist of black recruits is just as wrong as an assurance that at least 12 percent of the classes consist of white recruits . . . or Hispanic recruits . . . or Asian recruits, etc.
The consent decree should have been put to sleep long ago, along with all the other vestiges of racial discrimination.
Efforts such as aggressive outreach and recruitment in "minority" communities and bilingual training for present and future firefighters are a much better way to go to make the Philadelphia Fire Department more representative of the population as a whole.
"Reverse" discrimination — i.e., discrimination against whites who do well on examinations but are the "wrong" color — is just as wrong as discrimination against blacks.