salon:It’s been nearly three years since a federal judge in Brooklyn handed down a landmark le
salon:It’s been nearly three years since a federal judge in Brooklyn handed down a landmark legal victory to a group of black New York City firefighters who argued — in one of the most divisive civil rights lawsuits in the history of Gotham — that the Fire Department of New York unfairly weeded out African-Americans and Latinos in its hiring practices.The controversial culmination in favor of the Vulcan Society, the association of black firefighters, was 10 years in the making and capped decades of legal backbiting and wrangling. The litigation deeply angered Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, wound up costing the taxpayers upwards of $98 million and – among some outraged members of the Bravest – kicked off a whisper campaign that public safety would now be at risk, since the FDNY was forced to accept allegedly unqualified minority candidates in the name of diversity.Decades after fight for racial parity began, the FDNY is finally making progress – and its example is instructive -- source link