Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [81]
I don’t like this prejudice, but I understand it. Firefighters know that one out of seven people in this town are on welfare. They know that ninety percent of those are black or Puerto Rican. They know that half the people in this community are black and the other half are Puerto Rican. Like most lower middle-class people, firefighters cannot reconcile the fact that so many people are being subsidized for doing nothing while they work hard and can barely make the payments at the end of the month. They look at the Fire Department statistics and see that the busiest areas of the city—where the false alarms are greatest, the garbage fires greatest, and the incidents of harassment are greatest—are where minority groups live. There is no doubt that the firefighters’ job is more difficult, and more dangerous, in black and Puerto Rican areas than in other parts of New York City.
What most firefighters do not know, however, is that a good case for economic determinism can be made to explain this prejudice, that those one rung up from the bottom of the status ladder traditionally resent those below them. Nor do most firefighters know that conditions make their job tough, not people. People only reflect the conditions. Poverty is manifested in fire statistics—that’s a safe generalization.
But, many of the men came to the block party. Some came as a favor to Captain Frimes, some came because they were genuinely interested. Billy-o was there, and McCartty, Royce, Carroll, Knipps, Kelsey, and others. And the black firefighters from the big house, Horace Brewster, Juan Moran, Melvin Henderson, Eddy Montaign—men truly committed to developing better rapport with their brothers and sons.
The day passed quickly. We listened with black children to the dream-like sounds of soft hammers hitting steel drums, and we watched an African dance troupe move to the rapidity of the bongos. The white firefighters had a fascinating lesson in black culture, and black children held hands with white firefighters, feeling an unspoken friendship.
The time came to disburse the ice cream, and we had a terrible time trying to keep the kids in order, for where is there order when free ice cream is being given to children? There were over two hundred kids, and one truck. Those not fortunate enough to be in the front of the line refused to accept their misfortune, and crashed to the front. It was a mass of pushing children hungry for the cold sweetness of ice cream. It took great effort to regain order, but finally, under the half-serious threat of closing the rear doors of the truck the children quieted. And then we heard the sound of the approaching sirens. In the confusion someone had pulled the alarm box at the corner—in the midst of the Fire Department’s party. The firefighters who responded had harsh things to say about community relations that day, and they kidded those of us who were there unmercifully, but, aside from the false alarm, it was a day of victory for the community relations program. The children were stuffed with ice cream, and satisfied.
As I think of those anxious, laughing children now, I regret that some of the firefighters chose not to take part in the party. They let the banality of prejudice interfere with what could have been a happy experience for them. I do not understand how a man can risk his life in a blazing tenement to save one black child, and refuse to see, to be a part of, two hundred black kids eating ice cream.
10
IT’S hard to keep my eyes on the road this morning. The colors of summer are beginning to turn to those of fall, and the early Friday sun makes the leaves seem even brighter than they are. The annual transition from quiet greens to exploding golds and purples has been going on for a week now. It’s comforting somehow that nature’s changes are the same from year to year. It makes it easier to think of the world in terms of millions of years and it helps to keep my mind from the day to day nature