This has been going on in St. Louis for 40 years, nothing new to me. My father was one of the main opponents of it.
Now, it's so bad that someone was promoted to Captain. Nevermind they had to take the test in a quiet room because they have A DD. If I lived there, I would just pray she isn't the Captain that shows up if my house was on fire.
It went through the courts several times. There was a thing where they couldn't hire a white firefighter if they didn't have a black one that passed the test, and number 50 on the list would be bumped ahead of number 2 if number 50 was black (number 2 was white) and they needed a black person. My dad missed the Chief promotion 2 or 3 times because there wasn't a black person who'd passed the Chief's test. He and some others brought a lawsuit and he finally got promoted.
What I never understood was this. And, being one of the first women engineers 25 years ago, I totally understand being a minority. I was one of 5 in the country. I wasn't the first. There were 4 women who paved the way for me. And the company that hired me, hired more women when they could. Some good, some not so good. But, I took it as quite a compliment as I paved the way in that company.
I never wanted to get bumped ahead of anyone else. We took the same test, we had the same classes in preparation, we got what we got.
Yes, I got my certification, first time
