It isn’t just a problem with the “wrong” colored individuals being denied promotion. Talk show host Mike McConnell received a call last week from a man whose father was a fireman in a big eastern city (Pittsburgh?). Sometime in the recent past a fifty-two year old woman applied to become a fire fighter in the city’s fire department. The department was forced to give the woman the test. The woman could not identify most of the basic pieces of fire fighting equipment. (The caller described it as like someone taking a test to be a chef, and not being able to distinguish a ladle from a strainer.) But the city put pressure on the fire department to find a test the woman could pass. This country is run by morons and will be the death of us all.
Sadly, what you described is becoming all too typical. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so absurd. Firefighters need to have a basic knowledge of chemicals, how they interact with air and water, some knowledge of structural stress and design, etc. Another absurdity is that the PC people try to deny the very real biological differences between men and women. For example, all things being equal, men have much greater upper body strength than women. We all know that the physical strength demanded of firefighters on many occasions is tremendous and can mean the difference between life and death. What makes such idiocy as you described so insane is that it’s endangering the lives and property of us all.