Firefighter Wilson helped coordinate the lawsuits that forced the department to diversify. Captain Washington, who joined the department in 1988, rose through the ranks to start the department’s first majority-Black firehouse. Those realities forced an older generation of Black firefighters to develop their own coping mechanisms. “So while we’ve made progress, of course, there is such a long way to go.” “I hate to ask people for patience when it’s not me that’s suffering, it’s them,” Mr. Still, employees have regularly accused the department and individual firefighters of discrimination and harassment in the years since. The Fire Department is currently under the watch of a federal monitor to focus on diversity, who was put in place in 2011 after a lawsuit determined the department had discriminated against Black and other minority applicants in its post-9/11 hiring process.
Only after several Black firefighters sought help from Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is now the Democratic nominee for mayor, did the department issue guidance against using the tactic. “This man can’t breathe,” the meme read, “but you won’t see that on the news.”ĭuring last year’s protests, three white fire lieutenants suggested turning fire hoses on protesters to disperse them, the department confirmed, an echo of some of the worst images to come out of the civil rights movement. One meme on the page showed an image of a white man being smothered by a naked Black woman. In a complaint shared with The New York Times, a Black firefighter in Brooklyn said he overheard white firefighters call George Floyd a “piece of shit.”Īlonzo Baker, another Black firefighter, filed a complaint with the department stating he was assaulted by a white civilian in the firehouse, who was drinking with white firefighters after hours and called him a racial slur.Īnother active Black firefighter, who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution, shared an image of a white colleague’s social media profile, which The Times independently verified. Charles said in an interview that he was called “Kool Aid” by other firefighters in the academy. The portrait that emerged is of a rigid culture born from the department’s overwhelmingly white and conservative ranks, one that has clashed with recent efforts to diversify the department and bring in new Black recruits at a time of pitched racial and political polarization. In reporting this article, The New York Times reviewed the racist messages and internal communications and spoke to more than a dozen active and recently retired Black firefighters, as well as others familiar with the department’s inner workings. “We have to make them feel as if they belong. “We’ve welcomed the folks in and now we have to make them feel welcome,” Mr. Nigro, the Fire Department commissioner appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, said in an interview that the department was working to become more inclusive. In recent years, department leaders have embraced diversity initiatives and welcomed historically diverse classes into the academy.
It is more overwhelmingly white than its police counterpart: 75 percent of firefighters in New York are white, compared to 47 percent of police officers, according to departmental data. There are more than 11,000 firefighters and fire officers in the New York Fire Department, making it the nation’s largest.
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