Yes, Los Angeles Is Burning. No, DEI Is Not to Blame.

By the time Kristin Crowley was named fire chief of Los Angeles in March 2022, she had been with the department for almost a quarter of a century. During her 22-year career there, she had been a firefighter, a paramedic, an engineer, a fire inspector, a captain, a battalion chief, an assistant chief, and the deputy chief. In the 1990s, when she first took her firefighter exam, she’d ranked in the top 50 out of 16,000 applicants, according to Newsweek. 

In other words, when Kristin Crowley took the oath of office almost three years ago, she was unquestionably qualified for the job. 

As it happened, Crowley was also the first woman and first LGBTQ+ person to serve as fire chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department. She was nominated for the role after the former fire chief Ralph Terrazas quit amid accusations he had not done enough to eradicate sexism and racism in the department. Several lawsuits at the time alleged hazing and harassment. Federal investigators found evidence of discrimination.

According to The Los Angeles Times, a survey back then found that half the uniformed women in the department—as well as 40% of Black, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders individuals who worked in it—felt that harassment was a problem. 

So, upon assuming her new post, Crowley immediately vowed to make changes radically and swiftly. Her goal, she told The LA Times, was to make sure that all employees of the LAFD “come to work and feel safe and feel heard.” Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles at the time, welcomed this pledge and praised Crowley as “a leader of exceptional character,” noting that it was her “brilliance” and “commitment” that had “propelled her rise through the ranks of the LAFD.” Others hailed her as a role model for women aspiring to be leaders in the fire department. 

But last week, as flames burned tens of thousands of acres of the Los Angeles area to the ground, destroying lives and livelihoods, Crowley found her leadership and priorities under intense scrutiny. 

On Friday, she engaged in a public spat with the city’s government, claiming that budget cuts had made it harder for her department to do its job. She blamed the city for a water shortage that saw about one-fifth of fire hydrants run dry, accusations that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has since disputed. 

“I'm not a politician, I’m a public servant,” Crowley told CNN.  "It’s my job as the fire chief for [LAFD] to make sure our firefighters have exactly what they need to do their jobs,” she told CNN.

The Blame Game Begins

In times of crisis, it’s normal to cast around for something—or someone—to blame; it’s a natural response as we try to come to terms with an ugly truth. Crises, too many to count, have been followed by finger pointing. It’s human nature. 

Within a day of the first of the deadly wildfires setting Los Angeles ablaze, right-wing influencers and conservative media outlets pointed fingers not at arson, or campfires, or equipment malfunctions, or discarded cigarette butts, or strong winds, or droughts, and certainly not at climate, or at any other reason that is widely accepted as a common cause for wildfires. No. Instead, fingers were squarely pointed at DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

"When you focus your government on diversity, equity, inclusion, LGBTQ pet projects, and you are captured by environmentalists, we have been warning for years that you are worried about abstractions, but you can't do the basic stuff," Charlie Kirk, founder of the Trump-aligned nonprofit Turning Point USA, said on his podcast, according to NPR. His comments amount to a thinly-veiled but direct attack on Crowley and her efforts to improve culture within the department.

On Wednesday, the conservative TV personality Megyn Kelly added to the Crowley pile-on. “In recent years,” she opined, LA’s fire chief hasn’t made filling fire hydrants a top priority, but diversity. (She also took aim at LA’s mayor Karen Bass for the same reasons.)

And—inevitably—Elon Musk, the billionaire who has done his best to dismantle DEI as a best practice, quickly joined the fray taking to X to retweet screenshots of the LAFD's racial equity action plan and declaring that the department had “prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes.”

This is hardly the first time DEI has been weaponized in the wake of tragedy. Remember the story right-wing media outlets gorged on in the aftermath of last summer’s attempt to assassinate Donald Trump on the campaign trail? It wasn’t a 20-year-old Pennsylvanian gunman who was to blame for the shooting. No, no, it was the incompetent women in Trump’s security detail.

There are other examples too. “DEI has been blamed for the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, for doors flying off Boeing airplanes, for the collapse of the Baltimore bridge, the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, and now the Pacific Palisade fires,” Mita Mallick, the author of “Reimagine Inclusion,” told me when I asked her about this. 

"When we blame DEI for negative outcomes, or even life and death situations, [that] distracts from the root cause of the issue at hand,” she added. “Leaders could take accountability by asking questions: Why did this event happen? Are there systemic issues at play? How do we ensure this doesn’t happen again?"

Ruchika T. Malhotra, the author of “Inclusion On Purpose,” echoed this. “It's a disappointing and willfully malicious argument to bring DEI into this," she said. "It sows doubt, confusion and hatred at a time when we should be coming together as a community.”

In an interview with NPR, meanwhile, Mike Beasley—who heads up the board of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology—said that in his 40 years of firefighting, he’s learned a lot about the causes of fires and how to deal with them. There are a number of legitimate discussions these fires should raise about climate change, firefighting budgets, water management, housing development, insurance and outdated infrastructure, he said. 

But also: "No fire agency is going to sacrifice training and fundamental fire control and fundamental operations at the expense of DEI training.” In fact, he said, there’s plenty of evidence that diverse teams are better at tackling complex problems, at working under pressure and at fostering community during emergencies.

Finding Hope? 

As companies—including Walmart, Ford, McDonald’s and Harley Davidson (to name just a few)—roll back their DEI initiatives, and as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaire bros explicitly or implicitly extol the virtues of “masculine energy,” Beasley’s words feel profound. Screaming from the rooftops that diversity is good for everyone is urgently necessary but the message always gets lost in the wind. It doesn’t help that many people seem not to want to hear it. 

For now, the hope I’m clinging to is that even as formal commitments to enshrine diversity and inclusion in organizations falter, individuals who are committed to affecting change will persevere. 

And Malhotra reminded me that there are at least a few companies that are standing firm against the rollback of  DEI. Costco, she says, is one example. The retailer's board of directors unanimously urged shareholders to reject a proposal brought by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, to curtail its DEI policies. The board of Apple has done the same. 

“I'm hopeful we'll see more of that,” Malhotra said. “It's good business along with being the right thing to do."