Risk a Lot to Save a Lot: How Firefighters Decide Whose Life Matters

Sociological Forum, Vol. 32, No. S1, December 2017 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12363 © 2017 Eastern Sociological Society Risk a Lot to Save a Lot: How Firefighters Decide Whose Life Matters1,2 Roscoe C. Scarborough3 Firefighters make life-or-death decisions based on shared understandings of whose lives matter. Drawing on three years of participant observation as a volunteer firefighter and 30 semistructured interviews, I examine tensions surrounding the value firefighters place on their own lives and the lives of the public they serve. There is a tension between firefighters and their officers over the value of a firefighter’s life. Firefighters tend to be cavalier in their willingness to endanger their own lives in high-risk situations, while fire officers feel responsible for protecting the lives of their crew. A second tension exists between prejudiced individuals and an institutional culture of public service. Some firefighters harbor individual prejudices, which are at odds with an institutional culture of egalitarian service. Fire service, state, county, department, crew, and peer cultures suppress individual prejudices. This case study suggests that deep integration into an institutional culture of public service mitigates discriminatory behavior. Instead of evaluating discrimination among first responders as an individual-level trouble, bias and its associated dysfunctions can be reframed as a social issue to be ameliorated through cultural reform. KEY WORDS: Culture; decision making; ethnography; Implicit Association Test; implicit bias; race. INTRODUCTION “Risk a lot to save a lot. Risk a little to save a little. Risk nothing to save nothing. We’re all here to help people. . . but you need to have your priorities straight: life safety first, incident stabilization second, and property conservation last.” These are Chief Lampkin’s4 opening words to new cadets on the first evening of fire academy. There are many guiding principles and acronyms concerning fireground operational priorities, but the common denominator is that firefighters’ number one objective is the preservation of lives. Underlying a practical curriculum of throwing ladders, packing hose, and rehearsing fire attack, fire academy is an institutional vehicle for instilling other-oriented values of brotherhood, respect, and 1 Editor’s Note: This article is part of a special issue of Sociological Forum titled “Whose Lives Matter? Violence, Social Control, and the Racial Divide.” For other articles featured in the issue, see Auyero and Sobering (2017), Carter, Parker and Zaykowski (2017), Cerulo (2017), Henricks and Harvey (2017), LeCount (2017), Ray, Marsh, and Powelson (2017), Roschelle (2017), Ruane (2017), Scarborough (2017), Sykes, Piquero, and Gioviano (2017), and Torres, Cannito-Coville, and Rodriguez (2017). 2 I would like to thank Allison Pugh for mentorship throughout the research process. Additionally, I thank Karen Cerulo, Michele Darling, Molly Petry, Russell Scarborough, and the anonymous reviewers for providing thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Finally, I thank all of the firefighters for their service and for inviting me into their social world. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2017 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society. 3 Department of Sociology, Franklin and Marshall College, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17604-3003; e-mail: [email protected]. 4 Pseudonyms are used to protect the identity of all individuals and organizations. 1073 1074 Scarborough service. Deep immersion into an institutional culture of service shapes how firefighters value their own lives and the lives of the publics they serve. As part of a larger project on how culture shapes behavior, I examined the calculus of how firefighters determine whose life matters. I conducted three years of participant observation at Monacan Volunteer Fire Department and interviewed 30 firefighters. I completed the requisite state and in-house training and served as a volunteer firefighter. I spent my days training, eating, and sleeping in the firehouse, and, of course, responding to motor vehicle crashes, medical emergencies, and fires. Both in the field and in interviews, I looked for prejudicial statements and discriminatory action, and I noted when firefighters put their own lives on the line.5 Two enduring tensions define the value of life at Monacan Fire. There is a tension between firefighters and their officers over the value of a firefighter’s life. Officers feel responsible for protecting the lives of their crew, while firefighters are willing to put their lives on the line. There is also a tension between prejudiced firefighters and an organizational culture of public service. A subset of Monacan firefighters displays racist or classist prejudices, which exist in a state of tension with an institutional culture of class and color-blind service. Deep immersion in a culture of public service allows Monacan firefighters to deliver services to various publics in an egalitarian manner. Individual prejudices are suppressed by participation and integration in the nested tiers of fire service culture: national, state, county, department, crew, and peer. This strong organizational culture, upheld by institutional policies and informal practices that value service, implores biased firefighters to serve diverse publics equitably. In the spirit of Mills’s (1959) “sociological imagination,” I assert that prejudice among emergency responders cannot solely be understood as an individual-level, personal trouble; rather, mitigating prejudice can be reframed as a cultural or social issue. The case of Monacan Fire suggests that a strong institutional culture of service can suppress individual prejudice. Academic researchers and policymakers alike would be mindful to transcend a myopic focus on implicit bias. If the objective is quelling discriminatory behavior, emergency services organizations should focus less on screening for biased individuals and more on changing institutional culture. INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS OF DISCRIMINATORY BEHAVIOR C. Wright Mills (1959) challenges readers to use their “sociological imaginations” to evaluate social problems as both “personal troubles” and “social issues.” Mills promises that by considering individual and social explanations of behavior, it is possible to chart paths toward progressive social change. Psychologically, discriminatory behavior can be explained as a result of an individual’s implicit bias or explicit prejudice. Yet, this narrow individualistic focus precludes a comprehensive examination of the social and cultural factors that facilitate or inhibit discriminatory action. 5 I operationalize bias as unconscious (implicit) or conscious preference. I define prejudice as explicit bias, preconceived opinion, or expressed preference for a group. Finally, I operationalize discrimination as inequitable treatment of a category of people. Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1075 Implicit Bias Much human behavior is, in some part, a result of unconscious psychological dispositions (Greenwald and Krieger 2006). In other words, people have “blind spots” where hidden biases are housed in the mind (Banaji and Greenwald 2013). These implicit evaluations are relatively insensitive to new information that contradicts prior learning and often differ from explicit opinions (Cone and Ferguson 2015). A meta-analysis of social psychological research shows that implicit associations predict a range of everyday behaviors (Cameron, Brown-Iannuzzi, and Payne 2012). These implicit biases can produce “societally large effects” (Greenwald, Banaji, and Nozek 2015) that aggregate into socially consequential outcomes (Ridgeway and Correll 2004). In certain fields, biases can have life-or-death consequences. Implicit class and racial biases are common in the healthcare field (Green et al. 2007; Teachman and Brownell 2001). Despite reporting no explicit preference by race, physicians hold unconscious biases against minority patients that impact diagnoses (Stepanikova 2012) and contribute to disparities in their likelihood of treating disorders (Green et al. 2007). There are significant variations in the rates of medical procedures and healthcare services by race, even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable (Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2003). Similarly, the race and education of parents has a significant impact on whether physicians select children or parents to answer questions (Stivers and Majid 2007). Even in the absence of overt prejudice, individuals working in health care fail to deliver equitable services. Implicit racial and ethnic biases also influence the actions of those working in America’s criminal justice system (Lynch, Patterson, and Childs 2008). Cognitive bias, stereotyping, and prejudice all shape the actions of police officers (Warren et al. 2006). Implicit racial bias among law enforcement shapes decisions to use force, but existing research reveals a nuanced empirical reality. Officers show “robust racial bias” in decisions to shoot black or white targets (Correll et al. 2007). High-definition video, laboratory simulations of deadly force scenarios show that police, military, and civilians are more hesitant to shoot black than white suspects (James, Vila, and Daratha 2013). There may be a “reverse racism effect” among police (James, James, and Vila 2016). Context also shapes decisions to use deadly force. Police are more likely to tase than use soft empty-hand control with black subjects, but this effect disappears in high-crime areas (Fridell and Lim 2016). Police utilize more extreme force with black than white suspects, yet this effect disappears when researchers control for neighborhood disadvantage (Terrill and Reisig 2003). Racial bias shapes decisions to shoot in safe contexts, but this effect disappears when contexts signal danger (Correll et al. 2011). There is value in accounting for social psychological work on implicit bias (Quillian 2006), but the link between unconscious bias, as measured by Implicit Association Test, and biased behavior is under scrutiny (Bartlett 2017). The Implicit Association Test provides little insight into who will discriminate against whom and provides no more insight than asking people if they are biased against a particular group (Oswald et al. 2013). A meta-analysis of recent research (Forscher et al. 1076 Scarborough 2016) suggests (1) the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior is weak and (2) there is little evidence that changes in implicit bias are related to changes in behavior. While academic debates over the capacity of unconscious bias to shape behavior will continue, this dogmatically individualistic approach turns a blind eye to the cultural and interactional conditions that produce discriminatory behavior. The Influence of Culture Moving beyond individual explanations of discriminatory behavior, sociologists are uniquely equipped to place culture center stage. Culture, shared narratives, emotions, and the inner meanings held by individuals shape behavior (Alexander 2003; Alexander and Smith 2001). People inhabit “landscapes of meaning” (Reed 2011:109) that guide their beliefs and actions. Examining “cultural processes” (Lamont, Beljean, and Clair 2014) and developing “endogenous cultural explanations” (Kaufman 2004) are fruitful vehicles for conceptualizing how culture affects behavior. Endogenous explanations focus on “causal processes that occur within the cultural stream: mechanisms such as iteration, modulation, and differentiation, as well as processes such as meaning making, network building, and semiotic manipulation” (Kaufman 2004:336, emphasis original). This theoretical position and associated empirical work (Abbott 2001; Lieberson 2000) demonstrates how group culture, or “idioculture” (Fine 1979:734), impacts behavior. Restricted social systems possess cultural groupings and hierarchies that are relatively independent of macrosocial institutions. Group culture shapes beliefs and behaviors. A shared “group style” (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003) filters possible cultural meanings in face-to-face interaction. For example, suburban activists’ behavior is mediated by a group style of “timid affiliation” (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003:747–758), which makes participants more tentative about supporting their cause publicly while simultaneously unifying the group through a common worldview. Similarly, bar patrons’ group style of “active disaffiliation” (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003:759–771) allows patrons to avoid serious explorations of opinion and focus on conversation about external institutions. Group style can also uphold social inequalities, such as among high-earning professions that embrace a culture of competition (Conley 2009) and the high-risk and high-reward culture of investment bankers (Ho 2009). It is necessary to examine how taken-for-granted interactional processes rewrite inequalities into new institutional arrangements (cf. Ridgeway 1997). Greater attention is needed to map how culture produces solidarity and inequality (cf. Holt 1997, 1998). Sociologists have much to gain by considering the plurality of ways that culture shapes behavior in face-to-face encounters (Goffman 1983; Lareau 2015; Ridgeway 2014). Channeling the spirit of Mills’s (1959) “sociological imagination,” it is essential to consider individual and social explanations of behavior. If the goal is to identify the social causes of discrimination, sociologists must avoid the pitfall of a myopic focus on individualistic, psychological explanations of implicit bias and overt prejudice (cf. Goffman 1967:3). Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1077 ON BEING A SOCIOLOGIST-FIREFIGHTER The data for this study were drawn from three years of field observations at Monacan Volunteer Fire Department and 30 interviews with firefighters. Late-night discussions on the bumper of the fire engine, observations of firefighters’ interactions with citizenry on calls, and individual perspectives from interviews provided insight into how firefighters valued their own lives and the lives of the publics they serve. Triangulating data and methods (e.g., Downward and Mearman 2007; Golafshani 2003; Whyte 1997:73–76), I examined how Monacan firefighters understand whose lives matter. Becoming One of the Guys: Ethnographic Observation As part of a larger project examining solidarity and inequality in the fire service (Scarborough 2015), I joined Monacan Volunteer Fire Department, completed the requisite classes to become certified as a firefighter, and served over 3,000 hours as a member of the fire company. I spent time training, responding to routine calls, fighting fires, and socializing around the firehouse. My field observations—details of what firefighters did in real-life encounters—were invaluable for understanding how emergency responders value their own lives and the lives of those in their community. Participant observation in the everyday experiences of firefighters offered insight into the risks that firefighters take in service of various publics. Whether it was two minutes into a shift or at 4:30 a.m., firefighters were called into action to face a variety of emergencies involving people from all walks of life. During my three years in the field, I collected data on routine and exceptional social interactions. I paid particular attention to encounters that involved firefighters making judgments about the value of life. This focus included being attentive to the patterned meanings, expectations, standards, and values of firefighters. I noted how social processes, interactional contexts, and the social composition of interactions generated various lines of action and commentary on whose life matters. In particular, I was attentive to encounters in which the “group style” of the firefighters was violated (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003), when cultural missteps challenged standard group practices (cf. Scarborough 2012, 2013), and moments when “outsider” status was bestowed on an individual (Becker 1973 [1963]). After innumerable hours of training and hundreds of calls, I gained acceptance and insider status as a member of the department. This provided access to the unfiltered beliefs and backstage actions of firefighters. Looking beyond “the exotic and weird” elements of these social worlds, I applied a cultural sensitivity that was earned through prolonged firsthand experience to detail “daily and taken-forgranted” interactions (Luker 2008:156) to “conceptually order” (Strauss and Corbin 1998:19–21) how firefighters bestow value on life. On shifts as long as 48 hours, I took part in hundreds of informal conversations that offered insight into how firefighters value their own lives and the lives of the public. Free-flowing conversations occurred on the bumper of the fire engine, smoking and gossiping on the station’s 1078 Scarborough catwalk, and “fourth-mealing” after a late call. In these encounters, firefighters spent a considerable amount of time recounting war stories of memorable calls, reflecting on the character of recent happenings, and discussing boastful scenarios about how they intend to conduct themselves on the “big one.” In these behind-thescenes exchanges, firefighters often shared crude backstage perspectives on the citizenry, peers, and their own lives. Accessing Individual Perspectives: Interviewing Firefighters After becoming acquainted with the workings of the department, developing sensitivity for the group culture, and building trust with the firefighters (Whyte 1997:25), I conducted 30 interviews with current Monacan firefighters, former firefighters, and those from surrounding departments. Interviews lasted between 45 and 150 minutes and were recorded with a digital recorder in one-on-one meetings. These interviews provided perspective into the calculus of how firefighters determine whose lives matter. I engaged in “theoretical sampling” of interviewees (Strauss and Corbin 1998:201), which allowed me to “maximize opportunities to discover variations among concepts and to densify categories in terms of their properties and dimensions.” I interviewed individuals who I thought would offer insights on how prejudice shapes acceptable risk on the fireground. My sample varied by length of service, depth of involvement, race, gender, and frequency of prejudicial rhetoric use. Allowing the interview to flow like “an inquisitive conversation” (Luker 2008:169), I focused on certain themes rather than a fixed set of questions (Whyte 1997:25). As part of a more comprehensive interview, I asked participants to share their perspective on why they volunteer for a high-risk activity, their opinion on the department’s approach to firefighting, their thoughts on risk, and perceptions of the citizenry.6 Many interviews began with “honorable” narratives (Pugh 2013) and belief statements that departed from what I observed in the firehouse and on calls. I pressed interviewees to discuss real-world accounts and, when possible, we discussed incidents that I witnessed. This approach pushed interviewees beyond idealized normative statements to a discussion of actual behavior at Monacan. Coding and Analysis I employed a process of coding, memoing, and data analysis to examine the ethnographic and interview data from my field notes and interviews. I applied the inductive logic of grounded theory to analyze these texts to identify patterns associated with how firefighters at Monacan value life (Strauss and Corbin 1998). To 6 A number of questions from the comprehensive interview schedule prompted responses relevant to this article. These questions include “Can you tell me the story of how you got involved here?”; “Can you tell me about the most difficult situation that you’ve faced here?”; “How does one fit in around here?”; “Can you tell me about someone who doesn’t fit in here?”; “Is there a moral code of conduct here?”; “Can you tell me about someone who you look up to here?”; “How are you different in this context compared with others such as at home or with friends?”; and “How has your perspective on this institution changed since you’ve been here?” Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1079 analyze the textual accounts of my ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, I adopted an open coding procedure to identify perspectives on how firefighters value life, beginning with an “emergent or experimental posture” (Lofland et al. 2006:190). My categorization scheme emerged inductively from my textual analysis of field notes and interview data. I coded interview and field data separately. As my coding advanced, I revised my codes and moved toward identifying patterns. In particular, I noted how stated beliefs did or did not align with actions in the field. I devoted special attention to moments when firefighters expressed opinions or made life-or-death decisions regarding their own lives and the lives of the public. Arlie Hochschild (1994) refers to these instances as “magnified moments,” defining these as “episodes of heightened importance, either epiphanies, moments of intense glee or unusual insight, or moments in which things go intensely but meaningfully wrong. In either case, the moment stands out; it is metaphorically rich, unusually elaborate and often echoes” (Hochschild 1994:4). These magnified moments present an opportunity to examine and highlight the significance of events that may have taken place quickly or rarely in the field but meaningfully illuminate aspects of social reality that a systematic approach might overlook. Memos allowed me to think broadly about a wide range of topics and engage with data in unconventional ways. These afforded the opportunity to examine recurring themes, move from coded data to conceptualized relationships, and generate “relational statements” about the characteristics of individuals or social conditions associated with valuing life in a particular manner (Luker 2008; Strauss and Corbin 1998). This process helped me relate my findings to existing theory and contemporary social issues. MONACAN VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT Monacan Fire is a volunteer fire department that was founded to provide fire protection and emergency medical services to a growing suburban area. The department responds to more than 2,000 calls a year, making it one of the busier volunteer fire companies in the American South. In the shadow of an expanding career firefighting organization, 60 active volunteers serve as firefighters. On any given shift, between 3 and 14 firefighters staff the firehouse. The volunteers are 90% white, 85% male, roughly 70% are 18–25 (junior firefighters can join at age 16 and the oldest members are in their 60s), and the average length of service is three years. Monacan’s identity is an alloy of American, Southern, and fire service cultures. The department has a distinct working-class, white culture at its core, like many fire companies across America (cf. Desmond 2007; Smith 1972) and internationally (Thurnell-Read and Parker 2008). Though the department has a working-class nucleus, about a third of the membership has ties to a local university. Despite these class and educational differences, everyone eats together, sleeps in the same station, and fights fire together. Thus, people from very different walks of life find deep meaning in their shared Monacan affiliation. Monacan serves a commercial and suburban area that is located on the outskirts of a metropolitan hub with a burgeoning population. Urban downtown 1080 Scarborough revitalization nearby has placed Monacan’s mixed-class suburban mosaic of apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes into a state of economic, racial, and ethnic transition. Working- and middle-class whites are moving away, and there is an influx of African Americans and immigrants from Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Thus, the fire department is experiencing a shift from serving a homogeneous public to serving a plurality of populations that are diversified by race, ethnicity, and class. ON NOZZLEMEN AND OFFICERS: THE VALUE OF A FIREFIGHTER’S LIFE There is a perennial tension in the fire service over the value of a firefighter’s life. On the scene of any emergency, a firefighter’s life is in some degree of danger. According to the motto “Risk a Lot to Save a Lot,” firefighters should only risk their life to save a life. Yet, most firefighters take great pride in their willingness to lay their lives on the line in service of the community. Officers—chiefs, captains, and lieutenants—assess firefighters’ lives using a different calculus. Officers tend to take a more conservative stance toward life safety, seeing it as their central duty to make sure “everybody goes home.” Due to rank and the associated responsibilities of one’s position, officers and their firefighters exist in a state of perpetual conflict over how much should be risked on the fireground. “Fight Fire Like It’s Your Family Inside” When an alarm for the “big one” comes in—a structure fire—firefighters “move with a purpose.” Firefighters, especially freshly minted firefighters, long to be “first on scene,” the “first line in” (first hose line in the structure), or “on the nozzle.” After a lethargic performance in a training exercise by the “probies,” or new probationary members, Firefighter Jones gives an idealistic lecture: I don’t know what that was, but it looked like dog shit. Is that what you’re going to do on a call? You guys need to train and fight fire like it’s your family inside. If it was your mother or your daughter inside, how would you want the fire crew to respond? Not like that. You may think, “This fire is bullshit,” but you never know when there’s gonna be somebody inside or when shit’s gonna hit the fan. As a champion of aggressive firefighting, Firefighter Jones’s monologue aims to socialize the probies to embrace his worldview. Through formal training and informal time socializing in the firehouse, Monacan firefighters learn that it is a moral act to put one’s life on the line. No one wants tragedy for anyone in the community. Yet, if there is a structure fire or a vehicle accident with entrapment, most firefighters want to be on the call, preferably on the nozzle doing fire attack or operating the hydraulic spreaders on a motor vehicle crash. Opportunities to fight fire are limited in an era of sprinkler systems, automatic fire alarms, enforced building codes, and formalized standard operating procedures. Sitting on the bumper of Engine 2, waiting for an alarm to sound, Firefighter Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1081 Lawrence vents to other firefighters on C-shift about conservative firefighting practices in the county: This county is soft. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. They’re content to just let ‘em all burn down because they don’t want anybody to get hurt. All you have to do is look at the sticker printed inside of all of our helmets: “Firefighting is an inherently dangerous activity.” No shit. I guess somebody didn’t get the memo. Let us do some fucking work. If we’re not first on scene, forget it. We’re going to be goddamn yard gnomes watching that motherfucker burn to the foundation. That’s not what I signed up for. Firefighter Lawrence’s comment expresses discontent with conservative approaches to fire attack. Like most firefighters manning the nozzles of fire apparatus across America, Lawrence is willing to risk everything, including his life, on the “big one.” This worldview reflects a tradition of public service that is sacred to the firefighters at Monacan. “Your Guys Are Like Your Family. You Do Whatever It Takes to Keep ‘Em Safe” Firefighters want to fight fire, but fire officers must keep their crews safe. Chiefs and line officers work to temper their firefighters’ eagerness to rush into burning buildings. Officers are tasked with having the situational awareness and professional experience to make split-second assessments of complex situations to evaluate when it is prudent to put a firefighter’s life on the line. “Everybody goes home” is the number one priority of any commanding officer. This focus on firefighter life safety is codified in standard operating procedures that guide action on all types of emergency incidents. In a course designed for new officers, Chief Butler frames leadership as a responsibility for the lives of firefighters serving under one’s command. Butler, a current volunteer chief and a retired chief from a major metropolitan fire department, begs the audience to reevaluate an aggressive stance on firefighting: One day you roll out to a fire with five guys, it might just be an alarm activation, and then you come back with four. And you have to live with that for the rest of your life. It’s a cool thing to get the promotion, to ride in the front seat, to tell guys what to do, but we don’t think of the responsibility that comes with it. For the rest of your life, you’ll be asking yourself, “Did I do enough to make sure my people went home at the end of the day?” Chief Butler goes on to say that “failed leadership is a failure to implement systems,” which results in investigations, lawsuits, injuries, and death. In a culture where death is understood to be an individual failing (Desmond 2007), a key responsibility of leadership is to make decisions and implement procedures that maintain the safety of firefighters. At a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion of Monacan’s station, Chief Emeritus Johnson reflects on the responsibility that an officer feels to protect the lives of those who serve under their command. Talking to several freshly minted firefighters, he comments on the most challenging situation that he faced as a firefighter: The most stress I ever had in all my years in the fire service was a fire with confirmed entrapment. Some woman called [911] from inside the house and was on the phone with the 1082 Scarborough dispatcher, from inside the building with active fire. It ended up being a fatality. I wasn’t on scene, and I was driving back into town. So, I got the text [text message with information about the incident], but I couldn’t hear the radio traffic. I was so scared that someone was going to make a bad decision and get their company hurt. I know we all want to go save a life, but you need to be smart. That was the toughest situation that I faced because there was nothing I could do. The chief’s comments speak to the paternalistic dread of being helpless to safeguard “his men.” All firefighters who serve long enough run fatal fires, motor vehicle crashes with gruesome traumas, and attempt resuscitations of patients in cardiac arrests. Encountering civilian deaths is an unavoidable component of firefighting, but effective leadership mitigates the risk of firefighters joining the casualty list. Contrary to the cavalier attitudes of their crews, fire officers have the responsibility of ensuring that their firefighters only “risk a lot to save a lot,” “risk a little to save a little,” and “risk nothing to save nothing.” The Contested Value of a Firefighter’s Life Fulfilling one’s role as a nozzleman or an officer ensures that the organizational mission of Monacan Fire is achieved. Firefighters seek to enact their physical and technical competence in the field, while officers keep those who serve under them safe. These divergent understandings of the value of a firefighter’s life are a source of tension. While responsibility comes with rank, the threshold of acceptable risk a firefighter should face is contested. For example, Chief Turner is a hero of common firefighters. He is celebrated by many at the station as “a firefighters’ chief,” due to his record of lobbying against additional bureaucratization, regulations, and burdensome safety restrictions. He laments frequently: “I’ve watched the pussification of firefighting in this county during my career.” This leads to routine conflict with Captain Young. Young advocates for adoption of National Fire Protection Association standards and progressive changes to departmental safety practices. Several firefighters who serve under Captain Young share his perspective, often enacting supplemental safety precautions that have not been adopted across the department. Behind closed doors, firefighters who do not share Young’s progressive vision refer to him as Captain Useless. Similar tensions play out in fire departments across America. Conflict over standard operating procedures and appropriate fireground actions are undergirded by tensions over the appropriate level of risk. Often patterned by rank, a dialectical tension over the value of a firefighter’s life plays out between those who support aggressive, traditional firefighting and those who call for progressive, safety-oriented firefighting. PREJUDICE AND A CULTURE OF SERVICE A second tension exists between prejudiced individuals and an organizational culture of egalitarian public service. Prejudices based on age, race, gender, ethnicity, and medical condition shape some Monacan firefighters’ individual perceptions of whose lives matter. These prejudiced views are at odds with the institutional goal of Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1083 providing optimal service to all of the publics that are covered by the department. Below, I will review common individual prejudices among Monacan firefighters, show how a tiered culture of service suppresses discriminatory action, and reflect on the power of culture to shape behavior. Prejudice in a Southern Volunteer Fire Department As a Southern, mostly male, mostly white, largely working-class department serving a diversifying population, a subset of Monacan’s membership holds explicit biases and engages in prejudiced rhetoric. While it is difficult to gauge implicit bias through ethnographic observation, racist or classist comments are common in faceto-face encounters that are secluded from outsiders. Monacan firefighters often exchange stories and opinions about calls from the field as a means to bond and decompress. Neighborhoods are categorized as “good” and “bad” based on the cost of housing and an oral history of recent calls. In these discussions, race and class are often conflated (cf. Smith 1972:169); race becomes a scapegoat for social problems associated with poverty. After a crescendo of racist and classist storytelling one-upmanship on the bumper of the fire engine, Firefighter Gordon declares: Green Village is the worst because you’ve got all those Mexicans who don’t fucking speak English. At least at Friendship Haven, you can say, “Listen, bro, I’m gonna call the fucking cops,” and they scurry off. [He simulates running, while holding up pants] These fucking Mexicans don’t speak English, so they’re a pain in the ass. Those Jose Cuervos think they are doctors. There was that one call at Green Village, where there was this woman. It was toned out [dispatched] as a cardiac arrest, but we got there and the woman was having a seizure. Anyway, it was me and Kelly and we pulled her out of the bed to this little spot on the floor between the bed and dresser and her two sons were like standing over her. One was flashing a light in her face, like a flashlight. And she was fat, obviously. And the other one was pulling her shirt down to cover up her fat, while yelling, “She dead. She dead.” The woman was fine. I walked out and called police on that fucking Beaner. If I would have had a gun, I would have shot those two Speedy Gonzalezes. Capitalizing on a comedic mood set by comparable tales, this over-the-top story gets a raucous laugh. Jokes or conversations that draw on cultural, racial, and class stereotypes are common sources of solidarity among select Monacan firefighters. On another occasion, Monacan gets an alarm for a “residential structure fire” with confirmed smoke in the structure at Friendship Haven Apartments, a lowerincome, predominantly African American neighborhood. The firefighters run down to the engine bay, gear up, and are on the road within 90 seconds of dispatch. The engine violates “standard operating guidelines” by running two red lights on the way to the call. On arrival, I deploy our 300-foot apartment line to the rear of the apartment, while two others force entry and investigate. On this alarm, it is just burned food on the stove that has filled the apartment with smoke—an anticlimactic call. Crews begin ventilating the structure and packing up. A few moments later, a black woman in a hijab arrives at the residence, has an emotional outburst, and is held out of the apartment by a chief. Leaving the call, the crew exchanges jokes in the engine. Firefighter Guthrie comments, “Look, even the stop signs are black 1084 Scarborough here.” Laughing, Firefighter Lawrence asks, “Did you see what they were cooking? There were bones in that pot.” Firefighter Guthrie responds, “What was it? A cat? Rats? Hamsters?” Everyone in the engine laughs. On C-crew’s next shift, Firefighter Gordon brings up additional details about the alarm: “Remember we were at that fire last weekend, over in Africa, and that woman slapped the shit out of that guy?” Lieutenant Smith replies: Yeah, it was hilarious. The guy came home in his car, and I guess the woman was already around somewhere. Anyway, she came running up to his car and was yelling [performs a caricature of stereotypical African speech, while stomping one foot]. She was stomping her foot on the ground and she was yelling and really going off on him in black. Firefighter Gordon can barely catch his breath from laughing so hard. After a long laugh, he is able to get out a phrase, “Yelling at him in black? That’s hilarious.” Taking a more serious tone, Smith comments on the neighborhood: “Friendship Haven can burn down and I wouldn’t give a fuck. Fuck. That. Hellhole.” These sorts of emotionally charged, humorous exchanges provide a vehicle for firefighters to unwind and connect in safe spaces hidden away from outsiders. In all of these encounters, white, male, working-class firefighters cope with stress and forge solidarity. A fraction of Monacan firefighters take part in these racist and classist exchanges, though a larger percentage laughs along passively, and only a few individuals would intervene to reprimand this sort of exchange (cf. Tatum 1997:11). These overtly prejudicial exchanges might escape formal and informal reprimand because they are kept on the backstage in the absence of any instrumental organizational task, while a front of professionalism is maintained for the community, for firefighters from other crews, and in the presence of officers (Goffman 1959). An Institutional Culture of Service The cultural conditions of Monacan Fire compel firefighters to engage in actions that contradict their prejudiced beliefs. A strong institutional culture of service suppresses discriminatory actions and allows firefighters to serve racially and socioeconomically diverse publics. Firefighter behavior is shaped by national, state, county, department, crew, and peer cultures that uphold the idealistic value of egalitarian, selfless service. This culture has tiered and nested qualities that inhibit prejudice from graduating into discriminatory behavior. Nationally, there is an American “fire service” culture, historically rooted in community volunteers organizing to protect their property. In the national curriculum of fire academy, the first objective is “Describe the history and culture of the fire service.” The symbolic placement of this topic as the introduction to a lifetime of fire training is an institutional effort to socialize firefighters into a common worldview. Formal rituals, shared superstitions, traditions, and material culture such as leather fire helmets are symbols of underlying values of teamwork, service, and respect. For many, the fire service is understood to be a “brotherhood” or a “calling.” Mass media influences, such as Hollywood movies like Backdraft and Ladder 49, also provide common narratives for those in the American fire service. Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1085 In addition, the events of September 11, 2001 and the associated 343 firefighter deaths expanded existing notions of brotherhood to solidify a quasi-militaristic culture of nationalistic service. The state’s department of fire programs and the county’s umbrella fire-rescue organization provide uniform curriculum and evaluation. The policies of these organizations provide bureaucratic constraints and a cultural compass. The 50 meetings of fire academy, operated by the county and evaluated by the state, focus on indoctrinating new firefighters to the values of the fire service. Much emphasis is placed on “unity of command,” “team work,” and performing all actions with “integrity,” including mundane tasks like packing hose or cleaning equipment. Like most volunteer fire departments, Monacan Fire evolved out of a communal need for fire protection and a grassroots desire to serve the community. A departmental culture of service persists and plays an active role in maintaining egalitarian delivery of services to the public. Rigorous training standards, including timed practical skills—donning personal protective equipment, making a hydrant connection, or practicing hose deployment—institutionalize a culture of excellence at firefighting activities. Additionally, institutional standard operating procedures, such as responding en route to a call within 90 seconds of dispatch lead to equitable response times. While some departments demand only loose affiliations, Monacan’s duty crew schedule of 96 hours per month has a polarizing effect; this organizational immersion either results in cultural conscription or alienation. Most members “drink the Kool-Aid” and immerse themselves in the departmental culture of selfless community service. Line officers fulfill on-the-ground management, administration, and human resource functions. This includes resolving conflicts and ensuring that institutional standard operating procedures are followed, including policing crews for discriminatory behavior that is not aligned with Monacan’s values. Within Monacan, crew “idiocultures” (Fine 1979:734) have a powerful capacity to shape behavior. Even though swapping shifts is common, most crews spend roughly six nights a month together—a significant commitment. I served most of my time on C-crew, which earned a reputation for eating well, maintaining a light training schedule, working out regularly, sharing a pragmatic approach to firefighting, and “taking care of business on calls.” After a speedy response to a house fire in a neighboring department’s “first due” response area, C-crew adopted the informal slogan of “Putting Out Fires in Your First Due.” The crew takes pride in excelling at fireground tasks, such as performing initial fire attack and extrications of victims on significant motor vehicle crashes. This grassroots tradition ensures optimal public service by valorizing fireground excellence. Finally, peer idiocultures, commonalities rooted in personal lives outside the fire service, ensure egalitarian service. These peer groups often structure action in encounters lacking instrumental institutional functions, such as during downtime around the station. Two peer cultures exist at Monacan: Townies and student firefighters. The Townies—a working-class, locally raised, politically conservative peer culture—dominates the social space. These firefighters are always socializing on the bumper of the fire engine or on the station’s catwalk. The Townies often engage in prejudiced rhetoric, but this same group is also highly invested in firefighting as a calling. They push others to be proficient at their skills and criticize those who do 1086 Scarborough not prioritize firefighting over other aspects of their lives. For the Townies, prejudiced beliefs take a back seat to enacting excellence on the fireground. Meanwhile, the student firefighters are an ever-present counterculture within the station. These young men and women are often attracted to the fire service to gain patient care experience and enter health services professions after college graduation. The student firefighters tend to hold more liberal values and seldom engage in prejudicial rhetoric. A shorter tenure due to graduation, the constant burden of homework, and a weaker commitment to firefighting keeps this group in a state of relative marginalization. National, state, county, departmental, crew, and peer cultures all reinforce the value of egalitarian selfless service at Monacan. These tiered cultural influences inhibit discriminatory action on the fireground. When the alarm sounds in the firehouse, the prejudiced individual is transformed into a model public servant—a Monacan firefighter. The Capacity of Culture to Suppress Discriminatory Behavior This research presents a quandary for those utilizing psychological or individualistic explanations of human behavior. Empirically, why are overtly prejudiced volunteer firefighters willing to risk their lives crawling into burning buildings to help those they purport to hate? At least at Monacan Fire, national, state, county, departmental, crew, and peer cultures suppress discriminatory behavior on the fireground. While demographics of victims do not produce significant variation in behavior on the fireground, other characteristics of an alarm shape response times and emotional reactions. The Friendship Haven fire, discussed earlier in the article, is an example of firefighters engaging in selfless service despite many on C-crew having negative preconceptions about the neighborhood and biases toward its residents. The facts communicated by the dispatcher activate the response of three engines and a ladder company. Within 90 seconds of dispatch, Monacan has two engines on the road. After four minutes, the engines are on location and Captain Burns establishes command. At six minutes, a water supply is established, a 300-foot hose line is deployed to the rear of the structure, and the hose line is charged. Finally, the fire attack crew forces entry into the structure, the source of the smoke is located, and firefighters search the apartment for victims. Over the course of my three years in the field, I observed no significant variation in tactics or response times based on the demographics of the neighborhood. When the alarm sounds, firefighters run to the engines and speed off to the call, despite some firefighters harboring individual prejudices. While the demographics of the neighborhood did not impact behavior, other characteristics of the alarm shape the speed of the response. An institutional standard is ensured by a department policy of “marking up” as responding to all calls within 90 seconds of dispatch. Fires, cardiac arrests, and vehicle accidents with entrapment get a faster response. Meanwhile, calls in the middle of the night get slower responses due to crews needing to awaken from sleep. Medical calls comprise Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1087 over half of Monacan’s call volume. The ailment often shapes the speed of response; cardiac arrests or egregious traumas engender the quickest responses. With the exception of speedier responses for calls involving children, demographics of victims do not shape the character of the response. However, individuals who abuse emergency services by calling 911 for nonemergencies—“frequent flyers”—get slower response times based on their personal reputations. The demographics of a victim shape the emotional tone and resonance of an incident. For example, cardiac arrests and associated cardiopulmonary resuscitation on seniors are a relatively routine occurrence. Firefighters on C-crew treat chest compressions as a silent competition to maintain an elevated blood oxygenation level by performing deep, efficient chest compressions. Conversely, the emotional experience is amplified when a victim is a child, when the victim is known to the firefighters, or when emotional family members are present. These incidents are understood to be serious events worthy of emotional expression and deserving of consolation. Although the emotional resonance of a call varies depending on the demographics of the victim(s), Monacan provides equitable services to their various publics. Individual firefighters’ overt racial or class prejudices do not yield discriminatory actions in the field. Firefighter Johnson characterizes this approach to service: “That’s what we do, serve the community, even the parts that we should let burn down.” Explicit prejudices and implicit biases may shape many Monacan firefighters’ perceptions of whose lives matter, but the reinforcing culture of service inhibits these prejudices from culminating in discriminatory delivery of fire and medical services. Though these tiered cultural influences suppress discriminatory action in instrumental encounters, prejudicial rhetoric emerges in unstructured encounters. Instrumental encounters that align with accomplishment of essential organizational functions, such as advancing a hose line into a building or completing a public education event, are seldom impacted by individual prejudices. Alternatively, prejudiced rhetoric occurs during downtime, such as when firefighters gather on the station’s catwalk at night to eat a fourth meal and smoke tobacco. Individual prejudice emerges in unstructured interactions, while discriminatory behavior is suppressed during delivery of fire and emergency medical services. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH This research examines tensions surrounding the value firefighters place on their own lives and the lives of the citizens they serve. Most firefighters are willing to “risk a lot” on the fireground. This cavalier orientation is at odds with officers’ conservative and strategic approach to risk. Additionally, there is a second tension between individually prejudiced firefighters and volunteer fire departments’ institutional goal of egalitarian public service. Despite implicit biases and explicit prejudices, Monacan firefighters are willing to risk their lives to save any resident of the community. At least in the case of Monacan Fire, racist and classist discriminatory 1088 Scarborough behaviors are suppressed by an institutional culture of service. This suggests that strong organizational cultures can constrain prejudicial dispositions. Bias, prejudice, and discrimination are hurdles to providing equitable service that all emergency responders—firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians—must face. These challenges are compounded by psychological troubles like posttraumatic stress disorder and other long-lasting consequences resulting from confronting death and injury frequently (Kerasiotis and Motta 2004; Laposa and Alden 2001). It is a tall order to exorcise prejudice from individuals. The task of overcoming implicit bias is even more foreboding. It is necessary to move beyond an individualistic perspective to generate change in the fire service (Woodall 1997). Approaching bias among first responders as an individual-level trouble is a symptomatic treatment. Rather, prejudice and discrimination can be reframed as a social issue that can be ameliorated through cultural reform. Many share a common goal of understanding and addressing the root causes of discrimination to combat its pernicious effects. As contemporary social psychologists temper claims about implicit bias as a central cause of discriminatory behavior (Bartlett 2017; Forscher et al. 2016; Oswald et al. 2013), policymakers should move beyond a myopic focus on individual solutions. Extreme vetting of applicants for personal biases is unwarranted, especially if new staff matriculates into a work culture that tolerates “active” or “passive” racism (Tatum 1997:11). While I do not advocate for elimination of screening for implicit biases or explicit prejudices, this approach must be paired with organizational cultural reforms to quell discriminatory behavior. Educating staff about the populations they serve and teaching nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution are a starting point. Institutional policies that ensure egalitarian delivery of services, such as the mandatory 90-second response time at Monacan, also hold promise. Standard operating procedures that encourage staff to regulate their own behavior and the behavior of peers should also be implemented. Organizational incentives that encourage grassroots competition to provide optimal service or community engagement can stymie discriminatory behavior. Commendations for model conduct are another way that organizations can facilitate change. Organizational cultural shifts are a challenge to engineer, but efforts that push for adaptations in multiple levels of institutional culture—national, state, county, department, crew, or peer—are more likely to impact behavior. This research showcases how organizational culture suppresses discriminatory behavior. Certainly, the strong institutional cultural apparatus that I documented at Monacan does not exist in the entire fire service uniformly. There is much cultural variation in volunteer and career departments across the United States and internationally. This research draws on an analysis of one Southern volunteer fire department, yet these findings suggest that deep cultural participation can inhibit discriminatory outcomes. Moving beyond the case of Monacan Fire, additional empirical research is needed to map cultural processes that mitigate the effects of bias, prejudice, and discriminatory behavior. Can these findings be generalized to other emergency services, such as the police? The interactions that firefighters have with the public are qualitatively different than those that police have with the public. For firefighters, “life safety” is the Risk a Lot to Save a Lot 1089 number one priority on the fireground. Police are tasked with a more nebulous goal of “protect and serve,” which involves enforcing laws and maintaining social order. Greater discretion, more autonomy, and the option of using deadly force among police officers raise questions about comparability to firefighting. 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