A top FDNY official says it’s “most definitely” acceptable to exclude a white firefighter from a ceremonial unit based solely on his skin color, The Post has learned.
Cecilia Loving, the department’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, is defending a decision to kick Lt. Daniel McWilliams — one of three firefighters in the iconic 9/11 Ground Zero flag-raising photo — off a color-guard procession so it would be all-black.
Loving testified at a state Divsion of Human Rights trial on McWilliam’s complaint that he was the victim of racial bias.
When McWilliams showed up at a 2017 memorial mass to honor deceased members of the Vulcan Society, a fraternal group of black FDNY firefighters, he was barred from holding a flag in the color guard.
Regina Wilson, then Vulcan Society president, asked McWilliams to “help in a different capacity” because he is not black.
Loving, who is black, testified there is nothing wrong with that.
“So, a request for an all-black color guard is not discriminatory?” McWilliam’s lawyer, Keith Sullivan, asked in the trial.
“No, it isn’t,” Loving replied.
Asked if it’s acceptable to request an all-black color guard, she said, “Most definitely.”
Loving said it’s okay to replace a white member with an African-American to “uplift our identities and our separate ethnicities in order to instill a sense of pride and community and support for one another.”
In a written brief, Sullivan called the rejection of McWilliams “deplorable,” and evidence of a stark double standard in the FDNY.
“If you’re black and you discriminate against a white person in the workplace, you get a slap on the wrist at best,” he wrote. A white person who discriminates gets “heavy-handed discipline and punishment.”
this is one of the main markers of marxism-destroy current and past history to
re write a new biased history.
-so the only black people raised that flag? maybe loving needs to be fired as a bleeding heart communist. her arguments are stunningly racist and very old school. -dealing with people as illiterate are her is like talking to a three y/o who thinks they can fly..it would be interesting to see her credentials for this job? obviously a “cracker ” hater
If the gutless media wasn’t working solely for the left and Democrats, no one would ever even attempt to do something like this, much less do it and get away with it. Racism is perfectly OK as long as the approved racists commit it.