Egalitarianism Ruins Everything

Some time ago I commented on a tiny, emaciated female police officer I had seen in Prospect Park. Now we learn that a 33-year-old woman, Rebecca Wax, is to be made a New York City firefighter despite having failed the physical exam.

Fighting fires is not a political or ideological abstraction. Actual fires take place in actual physical buildings, and threaten actual physical property and actual human bodies. Extinguishing them, therefore, and rescuing the lives of those human bodies, requires the movement and control of actual physical resources and equipment, in great haste, under demanding and extremely adverse physical conditions. Many, if not most, of these physical resources are necessarily bulky and heavy. Moreover, firefighters must work as a team, in which every member’s life may depend, at any moment, on the physical ability of any other member. Therefore, as we read in the article linked above:

In the FST exam, probies must breathe through a mask attached to an air tank while carrying up to 50 pounds of gear.

They must climb six flights of stairs, stretch hose lines, raise ladders, perform tasks that simulate breaking doors and pulling down ceilings, and drag dummies through tunnels with no visibility.

They must complete the course in 17 minutes, 50 seconds or less.

However:

Despite many attempts over the Fire Academy’s 18-week training course, Wax completed the test just once ”” but it took her more than 22 minutes, the source said.

In numerous tries, Wax struggled and was too slow. While fit probies finish with air left in their tanks, she had to stop when hers ran out, the source added.

“She’s in the best shape of her life, and it’s still not good enough,’ he said.

But in she goes anyway. Forward!

This pattern of subordinating vitally important standards to the doctrinal absurdities of a secular religion that prohibits all discriminations — even those that are obviously necessary to our own survival — does not confine itself to the merely physical. Earlier this year our Sandinista mayor, Bill deBlasio, agreed to pay a settlement of $98,000,000 for having required aspiring firefighters to pass a test that proved too difficult for many black applicants. Nobody alleged that the test itself contained any race-specific content; it was simply that black applicants couldn’t pass it at the same rate that white applicants did. That this might represent an actually existing statistical disparity between blacks and whites in the cognitive abilities the test sought to measure is, of course, an unspeakable hypothesis, and so the “disparate impact” of the exam can only be proof of — you guessed it — racism. And so the standards will be lowered, and we New Yorkers will be $98m poorer, while our lives and property are put at greater risk.

Thank you, Mayor deBlasio. Thank you, idiotic secular Puritans.

Here is an article about all of this by Cornell statistician William Briggs. (As you read it, be sure to follow the link to this item by Fred Reed.)

25 Comments

  1. JK says

    I think I can see FDNY person Wax (I’m tempted to say something about how “wax” generally stands up to the rigors of high-temp environments – but Hizzoner reading most assuredly this here comment would miss …)

    Anyway I can see how this is gonna turn out. – Probably to NYC’s further financial detriment – There’ll be another ‘resignation letter’ in the vein of this recent example from the military.

    *Note the caption on the photo – don’t want me being misconstrued.

    http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/04/resigning-commission/

    Posted May 9, 2015 at 12:57 pm | Permalink
  2. Slightly off topic, but why “17 minutes, 50 seconds” rather than an entire 18 minutes? Are those additional 10 seconds really vital?

    Posted May 9, 2015 at 6:39 pm | Permalink
  3. Here’s one female perspective. Let me preface this with, I have a sister, a year older than me, who is retired from the PA State Police. She’s 5’5″ and thin (although not like that photo). She took the exam to get in three times, aced it the last two times, but she got accepted as an alternate and only when someone else dropped out did she get to go to the academy. She was quite angry about some black guys who took the exam and told her they knew they were getting in and they bragged about the low score they needed to get in. She far surpassed that score all three times.

    She was always a tomboy, she’s tough, she has incredible strength in her hands – she can crush your fingers that you’ll be begging for mercy. She demonstrated this at a family picnic, I was told, when a male cousin doubted she could deal with subduing a man. She had him on the ground, begging for mercy in seconds. She worked doing lots of different things, vice stuff when she was younger, detective work later on. Some women can do some of these jobs, but you don’t find many who can handle SWAT training and that sort of stuff.

    In jobs where lives are at stake, keeping high standards and insisting all those (both men and women) in these jobs can meet these standards should be obvious. The trend is for feminist mouthpieces to screech that the test isn’t fair or the standards aren’t reasonable and either they begin dropping or lowering requirements to accommodate females or they turn a blind-eye to females failing and pass them anyway.

    The feminists ignore research that raises questions about their political agenda in regards to integrating women into the police, fire departments and the military. The goal is always to push to get that “first woman whatever” title. They never consider that performing some of these jobs can be very detrimental to women in their childbearing years. Women are prone to many more injuries of all types from grueling physical tasks, heck, even in basic training in all the military services decades worth of data is there to show the much higher injury rates among females.

    Neither the police, fire departments nor military benefit when the integrity of the organization is compromised for political agendas. And the mission, not the aspirations of feminists should determine the standards. In police and fire departments, finding people who can best perform the tasks should decide who gets in and who doesn’t. In the military, I oppose putting women in many combat jobs, like infantry or armor units, due to the need for a great deal of upper-body strength and those units must establish esprit de corps to function well. Lots of times situations are grim and they have to take care of basic bodily functions with no privacy. Now, I have many ideas on how to incorporate women into some special forces missions, by developing teams and structuring specific missions where women could be useful – especially dealing in the Muslim world where our male operator can’t even talk to half the population.

    In my younger days I served a short time in the Army. I signed up to work in Public Affairs, but I ended up in a Pershing unit that went on field training exercises constantly. I was trained to be a M60 gunner. I’m not a petite frame. I learned to do the job, but I doubted my ability to carry that machine gun over wooded terrain for any great distance – I didn’t have the upper body strength and I could not carry the machine gun and the box with ammo very far, if the need arose. That was 1980, maybe girls nowadays are tougher and stronger…

    Posted May 9, 2015 at 10:48 pm | Permalink
  4. Musey says

    Well, I don’t know for sure, but anecdotally I hear that smaller individuals are put into spaces to fight fire, or rescue people, where the burly guys can’t fit through.

    My daughter is 5’9″‘ and very slim despite being able, no, needing to eat a lot. She is also a natural athlete and surprisingly strong. I don’t know that she could carry an enormous weight easily, but she is a champion runner who beats most of the men, and a brave soul. There would be a job that she could do within the fire service without compromising safety and efficiency. One size doesn’t fit all.

    She is an actuary. What a waste.

    Posted May 9, 2015 at 11:55 pm | Permalink
  5. Whitewall says

    “Sandinista”, do I ever remember that. They run NYC, Baltimore, Atlanta….when Khruschev banged his shoe on the podium and claimed “we will bury you”, the “we” meant by his proxies. The delicate word for these proxies being “progressives”. Nikita understood his long term allies.

    Posted May 11, 2015 at 7:59 am | Permalink
  6. Malcolm says

    Musey,

    If small stature were deemed important enough to warrant setting aside some slots in the FD for people who could get through tight spots, it would still be that case that male applicants of the same height and weight would have a significant statistical advantage in strength and aerobic capacity.

    Posted May 11, 2015 at 11:35 am | Permalink
  7. Musey says

    Of course, Malcolm. How silly of me to question you.

    Posted May 11, 2015 at 10:26 pm | Permalink
  8. Malcolm says

    Now, now, Musey. If my response was insufficiently couched in sociable disclaimers, such as “well, good point, but have you considered the possibility that…” or “ yes, of course, but I must say, nevertheless, that it seems to me…“, I do apologize for my tone. (I suppose such brusqueness is an occasional characteristic of what our reader Essential Eugenia calls “Man Chat”.)

    But please! It’s not “silly to question” me. You are more than welcome to do so as often as you like.

    Posted May 12, 2015 at 9:27 am | Permalink
  9. Musey says

    Until now I’ve been a little bit secretive about my commenting on this blog. I mean, I’ve been asked about who you are and what you write but I’ve always conveyed the information rather than saying “have a read and see what you think”. As my husband points out, he cannot comment on the tone unless he is allowed to read what is written.

    So last night he read this piece. He had a just a hint of a smile on his face. Then he clicked off. Well, what did he think?

    He thought I was wasting my time. The man knows his own mind and you are not going to change it. When pressed about whether he actually agreed with you he was initially non-committal, but he was put on the spot.

    He thinks that you are essentially right, but crucially wrong. He has the advantage of having a wife who is physically stronger than he is but then, like he says, he’s a weed. Importantly he has a daughter who can hold her own with her brothers who are all around the six foot mark, and he loves that she has always done that.

    If it annoys you that much just don’t read it. That is the message.

    He is a writer himself. That is, he can write very well, not that he writes a blog or aspires to produce a bestseller. He just has a bit of a way with words, in common with a lot of clever people. I don’t think that his words would chime with yours, so I asked him if he would like to say something here. The answer was no.

    Posted May 13, 2015 at 12:37 am | Permalink
  10. JK says

    As my husband points out, he cannot comment on the tone unless he is allowed to read … When pressed about whether he agreed he was initially non-committal, but he was put on the spot.

    He has the advantage of having a wife who is physically stronger than he is but then, like he says, he’s a weed.

    I asked him if he would like to say something here.

    “[Y]ou are essentially right, but crucially wrong.”
    _______________

    He had a just a hint of a smile on his face.

    Posted May 13, 2015 at 8:45 am | Permalink
  11. Malcolm says

    Musey,

    Forgive me, but “essentially right, but crucially wrong”, and “The man knows his own mind and you are not going to change it” sounds to me like “I can’t refute anything here, but I refuse to accept the conclusion,” or “my mind’s made up, so don’t confuse me with the facts”.

    If an aspiring female can pass the physical test that the men have to take, without lowering standards, there would be no obstacle to her admission. This is so rare, statistically, however, that to insist upon it violates the central tenets of the insane, egalitarianist religion that has taken control of most of the West these days — and so the standards themselves must be lowered. I believe this is dangerous idiocy, and obviously so.

    (As a traditionalist sort of man, I was also struck by “He has the advantage of having a wife who is physically stronger than he is”. “Advantage”?

    At any rate, I’ve long been well aware that there are many whose minds I will not change, however solid my argument. (Our friend the “One Eyed Man” is a familiar example.) Arguments create theorems, but for that to work we first must share our axioms. My axiom, as regards fire-fighting, is that the only purpose of the Fire Department is to save lives and property, not to serve as a publicly funded self-actualization program for frustrated women.

    Long ago, the German scientist and satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote:

    I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.

    Posted May 13, 2015 at 9:23 am | Permalink
  12. Georg Christoph seems somewhat cryptic. But since a physicist was Lichtenberg — figures.

    Posted May 13, 2015 at 11:43 am | Permalink
  13. Martin says

    Revise the “can’t refute”. Let’s go with can’t be bothered. Really.

    JK. do you have a point to make? What is it?

    My wife is not a frustrated woman. Is yours?

    Maybe the physics “Prof” can come round to put out your fire, seeing as he has cognitive abilities that conform to your standards? I couldn’t be less interested in your this one is better than that one game.

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 2:33 am | Permalink
  14. Malcolm says

    Hi Martin, and nice to meet you.

    I’ve never much minded not-being-refuted, so that’s fine.

    Regarding JK: There’s almost always a point in what he writes, but it can be devilishly hard to get at. Any translations or decryptions you can manage would be welcomed by all the rest of us.

    I hadn’t suggested that your wife was frustrated; I was referring to distaff fire-department applicants who can’t pass the test. (My own wife seems very happy, thanks.)

    I’m sure you understand this already, but fighting fires requires both cognitive and physical abilities. Henry’s certainly intelligent enough (I assume that by ‘the physics “Prof”‘ you mean Henry), but he’s getting on a bit, and even if he were interested in a new career as a firefighter I think he might be too advanced in years to be accepted as a “probie”.

    Despite your disinterest, the stubborn fact remains that all things, and all people, are not the same — in ways that, despite the claims of our prevailing secular orthodoxy, actually matter. When it comes to firefighting, the stakes of the “game” you refer to are human lives.

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 9:55 am | Permalink
  15. JK says

    Hi Robert.

    Your wife said (she’s very much not frustrated by my lights incidentally

    I asked him if he would like to say something here.

    You’d apparently demurred).

    I helped.

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 3:11 pm | Permalink
  16. JK says

    Oops. Not Robert.

    Martin.

    Hi Martin I meant.

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
  17. “…, but he’s getting on a bit, …”

    I resemble that remark. But I was never a Professor (like Kevin and HJH). I was a nuclear physicist at LANL, now retired.

    Nevertheless, ever since I was a kid living on Long Island, NY, I have always wanted to be a cowboy. If my wife’s research career ever takes us to Texas, I am definitely buying a horse and a six-shooter (I already have the hat and the boots). I might have to get some spurs and chaps; and a lariat …

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 4:47 pm | Permalink
  18. JK says

    Martin?

    Posted May 14, 2015 at 11:25 pm | Permalink
  19. JK says

    Musey?

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 4:35 am | Permalink
  20. JK says

    I waited ten minutes and looked forward some timezones.

    Can’t I be, even in these straits forgiven?

    Knowing of course there’ll only be some few visiting here does forgive. The rest I’m suspecting does a damn poor job of just – get over it – I/We don’t you recognize, are so Superior?

    Yep.

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 4:43 am | Permalink
  21. Martin says

    Many apologies. That was boorish, but my very good friend, from childhood, has died. I got the news, literally minutes before my crass response.

    Forgive me.

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 5:09 am | Permalink
  22. JK says

    Understood Sir.

    file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/CEN15FA189_Preliminary%20(3).pdf

    I know what you feel Sir.

    From childhood I think you might … belay that.

    You do Sir.

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 8:41 am | Permalink
  23. Malcolm says

    Martin, I’m very sorry for your loss. The death of any friend is grievous, but to lose an old friend is to lose a part of yourself.

    There’s nothing here to forgive. Please join us again any time, and know that you have our sympathies as you mourn your friend.

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 1:15 pm | Permalink
  24. No offense taken by me, Martin. Sorry for your loss.

    I have never broadcast a thoughtless comment that I subsequently regretted broadcasting. Except when I was in a muddled state of mind. Which, truth be told, seems to occur more frequently as I continue “getting on a bit”.

    Posted May 15, 2015 at 1:30 pm | Permalink
  25. Musey says

    Malcolm, he’s on his way home now to attend the funeral. Evidently, they had an understanding that wherever they happened to be in the world, however inconvenient, or impractical, one would see the other off.

    John was fifty nine years old, and he was born within a week of my husband. They sat next to each other when they were five years old, and they went on to the grammar school together.

    To me, funerals are for the benefit of the living, and we live a long way away so you can’t be expected to go. To him, his friend John, who is a well respected doctor, and not short of mourners, would expect him to be there on the appointed day. He knows that if he had been first to go, that the man would have been there, or here.

    Which is why, I suppose, that when I suggested that it doesn’t make a lot of difference now, I nearly got my head taken off.

    I have no idea why he looked at your blog when he did, but he was in turmoil. I’ve seen him when his father died, and when his SIL met an untimely death, and he was always in control. This is the first time I have ever seen him cry.

    You should probably delete this.

    Posted May 16, 2015 at 6:00 am | Permalink

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