Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

Emily's Cat said:
:cautious: Being a doctor excludes a huge majority of the population based on the criteria for acceptance to medical school and the difficulty of residency. I'm not really seeing a good argument for loosening those criteria so that more people can be doctors if they want to.
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Aside from the question of whether that's an apt comparison regarding who wants to do what, and how opportunity works in the world, I think you may have skipped over the second part of my question. It does not appear that firefighters, on average, are paid quite the same as doctors.
 
You have the problem backwards. DEI has made it harder, not easier, to fill the LAFD ranks.
 
Emily's Cat said:
:cautious: Being a doctor excludes a huge majority of the population based on the criteria for acceptance to medical school and the difficulty of residency. I'm not really seeing a good argument for loosening those criteria so that more people can be doctors if they want to.
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You realize that medical schools have massively loosened entrance requirements for favored minorities, right?
 
bruto said:
I'd be interested to see some reliable statistic reporting how often the inability to carry victims has been a problem, and how often such a problem can be blamed on diversity or could have been averted by the presence of a person of normal human strength.
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Those are the wrong questions. The right questions is, how much strength does a firefighter need to do their job? And the number of firefighters hired who do not meet that strength requirement should be zero, regardless of how that impacts the sex ratio of hired firefighters.
 
Ziggurat said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1877460564307251690

The LAFD assistant fire chief thinks that it's more important to have a diverse department than have firepersons who can carry you out of a fire, because it's your fault if you need to be carried out. I'm sure all the people whose homes burned down would much rather have a diverse fireperson consoling them for their loss than have the fire put out by a bunch of hetero cis white males. That would be patriarchal white supremacist oppression.

:dl: indeed.
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Have to give her credit, at least she didn't try the BS that she's every bit as capable of carrying one's husband out of a fire as a man.
 
Orphia Nay said:
The right wing have had a win, and "DEI" has become such a scareword that Meta are cancelling some DEI programs.

www.theguardian.com

Meta terminates its DEI programs days before Trump inauguration

Meta, fresh off announcement to end factchecking, follows McDonald’s and Walmart in rolling back diversity initiatives
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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So Meta-me declined to comment on how this cancellation of (some? the article implies all) DEI programs aligns with their corporate goals? Gee, I wonder why that is. I think your take on this sounds a bit overly charitable if it implies they did not jump at the opportunity.
 
bruto said:
So Meta-me declined to comment on how this cancellation of (some? the article implies all) DEI programs aligns with their corporate goals? Gee, I wonder why that is. I think your take on this sounds a bit overly charitable if it implies they did not jump at the opportunity.
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Meta is not, despite appearances, a monolith. Some people within it might have jumped at the opportunity, some might not have.
 
bruto said:
So Meta-me declined to comment on how this cancellation of (some? the article implies all) DEI programs aligns with their corporate goals? Gee, I wonder why that is. I think your take on this sounds a bit overly charitable if it implies they did not jump at the opportunity.
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Presumably their corporate goals are to reduce costs and increase revenue.
 
jt512 said:
Those are the wrong questions. The right questions is, how much strength does a firefighter need to do their job? And the number of firefighters hired who do not meet that strength requirement should be zero, regardless of how that impacts the sex ratio of hired firefighters.
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All firefighter candidates must pass the CPAT test. It's basically an obstacle course while carrying weights and wearing a weighted vest made up of activities meant to simulate the physical needs of the job. The parameters and criteria are the same for all candidates. Here is the test requirement described for Los Angeles.
https://personnel.lacity.gov/exams/FirefighterCPATInformation.pdf
For the record, I was somewhat surprised. I expected to see different weights or time requirements for women.

Would candidates who pass this test be able to "carry" an adult person out...probably not. The corresponding portion of the test is called "Rescue Drag." I spent a little time at the firehouse and firemen when I was a kid in the 70s. (My friend's dad was assistant chief and later chief.) they were not particularly muscular strapping men. Actually pretty average. The number of them (all male at the time) who could have carried 200 pound adult me out of a burning building probably approached zero. More likely they could assist conscious me or drag unconscious me out (like in the test), but not carry.

I'm pretty sure the female firefighters I've met could do so just as well, having passed and met the same physical requirements.

As for the video of the assistant fire chief, I'd like to see what the context was and what she said next in the original video. Obviously, it came from somewhere, but I can't find any reference to an original video or what it was recorded for.
 
TomB said:
As for the video of the assistant fire chief, I'd like to see what the context was and what she said next in the original video. Obviously, it came from somewhere, but I can't find any reference to an original video or what it was recorded for.
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She seems to be giving a pretty standard explanation of why diversity is important and doesn't affect capability in any way and then goes on to admit that well, yes, it does.
 
TomB said:
All firefighter candidates must pass the CPAT test. It's basically an obstacle course while carrying weights and wearing a weighted vest made up of activities meant to simulate the physical needs of the job. The parameters and criteria are the same for all candidates. Here is the test requirement described for Los Angeles.
https://personnel.lacity.gov/exams/FirefighterCPATInformation.pdf
For the record, I was somewhat surprised. I expected to see different weights or time requirements for women.

Would candidates who pass this test be able to "carry" an adult person out...probably not. The corresponding portion of the test is called "Rescue Drag." I spent a little time at the firehouse and firemen when I was a kid in the 70s. (My friend's dad was assistant chief and later chief.) they were not particularly muscular strapping men. Actually pretty average. The number of them (all male at the time) who could have carried 200 pound adult me out of a burning building probably approached zero. More likely they could assist conscious me or drag unconscious me out (like in the test), but not carry.

I'm pretty sure the female firefighters I've met could do so just as well, having passed and met the same physical requirements.

As for the video of the assistant fire chief, I'd like to see what the context was and what she said next in the original video. Obviously, it came from somewhere, but I can't find any reference to an original video or what it was recorded for.
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Thank you. It's nice to actually have some genuine insight as well as evidence of what firefighters need to be able to do. This is much more useful than a priori armchair surmising of what people on the internet think firefighters should be able to do.
 
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