I have many firefighter clients -- most of them retired captains by now -- and I respect the everyday heroism of all first responders.  At the same time I can respect the heroism of those who oppose nepotism, racism and sexism in our government institutions.  

"David Goldberg’s Black Firefighters and the FDNY [2017] is a fascinating work chronicling the long history of activists trying to end the exclusion of blacks from what has remained the whitest municipal agency in the city and one of the least diverse large city fire departments in the nation.  But as the Vulcan Society, a caucus of black firefighters pursued a number of avenues to end the exclusion of blacks in the department, white fire fighters, under the leadership of their union, the FDNY, and, city officials launched a crusade to maintain a lily white and practically all male agency."

http://newyorklaborhistory.org/web/?page_id=1714