By STU BYKOFSKY
Philadelphia Daily News
Let’s agree on two things:
1) The Philadelphia Fire Department has a history of bigotry.
2) Using racial hiring quotas creates resentment.
The resentment seems to have been illustrated Friday in the form of a white pillowcase folded to look like a KKK-style hood. It was attached to the locker of Joe Montague, a white lieutenant at Engine 9, a predominantly African-American firehouse in Mount Airy.
The act was cowardly, and likely criminal.
Police have asked Montague not to talk while they investigate the incident as a hate crime, just as they would if someone had fastened a noose to a black firefighter’s locker.
The Fire Department is investigating, too, says Executive Fire Chief Daniel Williams, speaking for Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers, who offered no other comment. Tighter than a hydrant, the PFD wouldn’t tell me how long Montague had been a lieutenant nor how long he had been assigned to Engine 9. (“Since January,” says a friend of Montague’s.)
I wanted to talk to Ayers because, as an African-American who came up through the ranks, he might have some insights on race and the PFD.
Instead, I turned to the previous commissioner, Harold Hairston, another African-American who came up through the ranks. Hairston was hired years before a court-ordered consent decree in 1974.
Noting low levels of African-Americans in the department at that time, U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle set aside 12 percent of each new class of recruits for African-Americans, with the goal of hiring 151 blacks among the next 1,250 firefighters selected.
Hairston says the goal was reached and wonders why the decree is still in effect. “It seems to me you were supposed to get 151 additional hires. We had met and exceeded it.”
When something like a KKK hood is hung on a white lieutenant’s locker you ask - why him?
Maybe it’s because Montague is vice president of Concerned American Fire Fighters of America, which says (on its Web site, caffaphilly.com) it exists “to promote fair promotional and hiring practices, free of any race based quotas.” Quotas such as the consent decree, of course.
Some see CAFFA as a Klan equivalent. That was made plain by lettering on the faux hood: “KKKAFFA.”
Former Commissioner Hairston “wouldn’t call [CAFFA] racist. Their concern was to get rid of the consent decree” which “was supposed to end at some point... so it would not be unreasonable for anyone to say it’s time to end it.”
Precisely right, says CAFFA President Michael Bresnan, a PFD lieutenant. Bresnan admits there has been bigotry in the department. At one time blacks were assigned only to Engine 11 (at 10th and South streets) or Fireboat No. 1, both all-black - except for officers.
Bresnan says that was wrong, but the never-ending quotas seem to be a “payback” against white recruits.
CAFFA favors “affirmative action,” Bresnan says. “Race-based quotas hurt not only whites, but Asians, Hispanics and others.” (The CAFFA treasurer is Asian-American Lt. Kelvin Fong.)
African-Americans now account for about 26 percent of Philly uniformed firefighters, according to chief Williams. The last census has Philly about 43 percent black.
If the city wants PFD to reflect the city’s ethnic composition, “Let’s do that across the board,” Bresnan challenges. “Let’s look at the Streets Department, the Water Department. You have to do it everywhere.”
One day Americans are going to wake up color blind and not know what to do with ourselves.