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.”