Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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4 UCW MAY 31 - JUNE 6, 2017 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM PUBLISHER'S PEN STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/EDITOR Stephanie Crider editor@upandcomingweekly. com ASSISTANT EDITOR Leslie Pyo leslie@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR REPORTER Jeff Thompson news@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR Earl Vaughan Jr. GRAPHIC DESIGNER Elizabeth Long art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS D.G. Martin, Pitt Dickey, Margaret Dickson, John Hood, Erinn Crider, Jim Jones, Shanessa Fenner, Paul Hall BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Keri Dickson keri@upandcomingweekly.com SALES ADMINISTRATOR/ DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com ACCOUNTING Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com ––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan Street P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publica- tion with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/ Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publica- tion consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publica- tion. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and dis- tributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Cover art designed with various elements from: vecteezy.com and freepik.com. A growing outcry contends that there are far too few black firefighters in the Fayetteville Fire Department. e argument is that when the Fayetteville population is 41 percent black and 45 percent white, it is unacceptable that only 2.7 percent of the department's employees are black. I agree with those who say the percentage of black employees does not have to equal the black percentage of the population, but aiming for higher representation is a reasonable goal. What troubles me is the approach being employed by some who are spearheading efforts to rectify this condition. Among these is e Fayetteville Observer newspaper. I con - tend the newspaper is pursuing an approach that represents unfairness to some individu- als, demonstrates a failure to present the whole story and contributes nearly nothing of worth to improving black representation in the fire department. I recently read a Fayetteville Observer editorial titled "Our View: FD needs to solve its hiring problem." To me, the point was that the Fayetteville Fire Department alone has responsibility for solving the problem out - lined above. My thought was: Here is more of the thinking that government is responsible for solving every problem citizens encounter. at seems to especially be the thinking with regard to Black Americans. Conse - quently, the pressure is now on City Manager Doug Hewett and Fire Chief Ben Major to get the number of black employees dramati- cally increased. My life experiences say there are conditions to be considered over which these men have no control. Among these are the level to which parents are involved in encouraging young people to seek opportunities for advancement; the extent to which prospective employees have seen a positive work ethic modeled; and the value candidates assign to educational endeavors. Telling government to, in and of itself, "solve its hiring problem" is, in my estimation, unfair because neither these men nor anybody else in government can fix these external conditions. Further, they would probably put their jobs in jeopardy if they violated the rules of political correctness and raised these considerations as I am doing here. Further, the Observer editorial makes the following statement after a paragraph end- ing with "…overwhelming whiteness of the department sends a message that will be interpreted by many in this community and beyond as discrimination." Fire Chief Ben Major says it's not so, and the fact that he's the city's first African-Amer - ican fire chief gives him some credence. But only some. He's been chief since 2011 and six years should be enough time to see the numbers, analyze the reasons and make some changes. First, the lead-in to the quote regarding Chief Major is the usual default racism nar - rative. at is, for anything that seems unfair to Black Americans, immediately blame it on racism. No need to think it through, gather and thoroughly examine facts and ask the hard questions that might point to any amount of responsibility in the black community. Second, because the chief is black, there is apparently the expectation that he has the power to just make this right and, given that he has not fixed in six years what is a problem across the nation, lay the blame at his feet. In an effort to get the full story, I talked face-to-face with Chief Major. I wanted to know what has been done and is being done to increase the number of blacks employed by the department. Here is some of what I gained from that conversation: • e Cumberland County Schools Fire Academy is an ongoing program at E.E. Smith High School. It offers a challenging program of study for students interested in a career in the Fire Service: college- level classes leading to an Associate degree or Baccalaureate degree through Fayetteville Technical Community College (FTCC) and Fayetteville State University (FSU). It features a unique partnership between FTCC, FSU, Western Carolina University, e City of Fayetteville Fire Department, Cumberland County Fire Department, Fort Bragg and E.E. Smith High School. It also of - fers training at the Fayetteville Fire Station on the campus of FSU. Recognizing the need for attention to soft skills, such as interviewing and dressing for an interview, instruction in these areas is now being provided.Students who complete all phases of the academy are certified in all but two required areas. Since graduates of this academy routinely did not meet the 19-year-old minimum age requirement for joining the Fire Department, the minimum age was lowered to 18. e Academy Direc - tor is Patricia Strahan, who has spent 30 years in firefighting. • e Langdon Street fire station was built across from FSU as part of a plan to have stu - dents study fire science at the university and intern at the fire station. is arrangement did not fully materialize because the fire sci- ence curriculum is only taught online. • Applicants for employment take an agil- ity and written test. e order in which these tests are given may change from one recruit- ment process to another. ose who pass the first test then take the other. During the most recent recruitment process, the written test was administered first. All applicants who passed the written test advanced to the physical agility test (PAT). e top 80 scores from the written test that also passed the PAT were interviewed. e remaining applicants are kept on an eligibil - ity list. ey would be scheduled for inter- views if the listing of 80 from the first round of interviews is exhausted. • Four workshops were held for appli- cants in the most recent hiring process. Two provided an introduction to the applica- tion process and the other two went over sample test questions from the written test. A booklet of sample test questions was also given to attendees and a PAT course was set up for them to practice. Attendance at these workshops was less than hoped for. Similar workshops will be held leading up to the next application period. • A sample test booklet is also made avail- able online for purchase by applicants who do not attend a workshop. • ere is an established Diversity Recruit- ment Committee that is diverse by way of race, gender and ethnicity. is committee reviews results of the hiring process in an effort to fine-tune, and where necessary, to ethically gain greater diversity in the department. • Over several years, the department has used four different companies as a source for written tests. A primary reason for changing companies was to, as far as possible, ensure fairness in the test used. e current test supplier is Firefighter and Police Selection, Inc. e link www.fpsi.com/about-fpsi/ gives information on the company. ese points from my conversation with Chief Major present a man who is, within the bounds of what he controls, working on this issue in a thoughtful and impressive fashion. My conclusion is that what is needed from others is thoughtful, honest and non-politi - cal addressing of relevant conditions beyond the scope and responsibility of government. Too often, and to the detriment of Ameri- cans, issues that cry out for thoughtful attention and resolution are met with actions that produce tension, societal inertia and no productive resolution. I hold that the manner in which less than acceptable diversity in the Fayetteville Fire Department is being addressed by e Fayetteville Observer and some individuals of influence is a prime example of this process at work — that is, tension, societal inertia and no productive resolution. Only as citizens recognize the destructive nature of this process and challenge it will we produce needed change in the multitude of issues and conditions demanding attention. Racial Diversity in the Fayetteville Fire Department: Really? Here's the Rest of the Story by KARL MERRITT KARL MERRITT, Columnist. COM- MENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200 is week, Publisher Bill Bowman cedes his Publisher's Pen to Karl Merritt due to the importance of the issue. Fayetteville Fire Chief Ben Major