White Applicants Blast FDNY After Being Denied Entry To Preparation Class

CBS Local ^ | 03/01/2012

[GreaterSwiss]

Applicants are letting loose on the FDNY, saying the department engages in reverse discrimination.

There were hurt feelings and racial tensions as white applicants were left standing outside a prep class on Wednesday night, reports CBS 2’s Lou Young.

“Whoever’s name is not on the list is not getting in, so were just following orders. That’s just the way it is,” the applicants were told.

Joseph Basile was one of those who didn’t get in.

“It wasn’t a good feeling. It felt like it was discrimination,” Basile said.

The class was conducted by the Vulcan Society, a group of African American firefighters in an overwhelmingly white department. Many applicants who were turned away preregistered online on forms that did not ask for their race, which made for testy moment.

“What would Martin Luther King do?” one agitated applicant asked.

Many applicants were referred to the Vulcan Society test by Deputy Chief Paul Mannix, who heads a group called “Merit Matters,” which calls for even-handed entry requirements regardless of race. He said it wasn’t a stunt.

[Verginius Rufus]

I watched a bit of a C-SPAN interview last night with Randall Kennedy, whose main concern is with racial issues. He comes across as soft-spoken and thoughtful but it was hard to see much difference between what he was saying and what someone like Al Sharpton says in an angrier way. Kennedy supprts affirmative action as a form of reparations, for example. Pretty much standard left-wing ideology, even if he has sometimes been attacked by more hard-line leftists.

A caller asked if black people could be guilty of racism and he said yes, listing some examples (all of them against other "protected groups"--no hint that he thought that a black person could be guilty of racism against a white person).

[Verginius Rufus]

Why did the “agitated applicant” think Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been on his side? Because of one sentence in the “I Have a Dream” speech? That’s like assuming Thomas Jefferson would have supported the Abolitionists because he wrote “All men are created equal.” Has anyone ever examined MLK’s statements between August 1963 and April 1968 to see what his attitude was to early efforts at affirmative action?

[AnTiw1]

" Another day in Obamaland.

Now why don’t you go pay your taxes? Your government is broke. :) "

obama has never and will never get one dime from me