The Color of Fire

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The Color of Fire

The Austin Fire Department is making yet another attempt at staff diversity – will it do any better this time?

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-05-13/the-color-of-fire/

[FFLieu 70]

Well they better get to it then or else Nicholas Garaufis will stick his ridiculous nose into the mix and make the situation worse than it was at the beginning, just like he did in New York City.

I'm getting real tired of people claiming racism when it comes to certain issues. For example, for 8 years, it was openly encouraged and considered pop-culture to mock the President of the United States. Do it now and people call you a card-carrying member of the Klan. But that's neither here nor there. The real issue is that diversity is just another topic-du-jour that gets a lot of press because it sounds important and sounds like it might fix a problem. But there really is no problem. The issue is not that cities and departments aren't encouraging enough of the protected class to become fire fighters; the issue is that most in that class don't feel the need to take the exam in the first place. There are two parts of the equation when it comes to an entrance exam for a civil service position: there's the actual exam and then there's the desire to take the exam. It's real easy in this day and age for someone like the esteemed District Court Judge to focus on the former rather than the latter, throw their hands up, cry racism, and then inject an agenda into the fray in order to solve a problem that never existed. In the end, the remaining applicant pool suffers - just like in NYC - and so does the public. So really, as the saying goes, if it ain't broke (NYC isn't broken, Austin isn't broken, and neither is any other big city that is having "problems" attracting a diverse set of applicants who desire to run into burning buildings as everyone else is running out), then don't fix it.