18 Jan 2015 Race-Conscious Public Policy Puts Public at Risk in Buffalo, NY

Discussing the organization’s participation in a racial preference case that was recently argued before the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, Project 21 Co-Chairman Cherylyn Harley LeBon said actions by city officials in Buffalo that denied firefighters promotions because the candidates were all white distorts “laudable goals” of preventing discrimination and sidelines the community’s need for first-responder advancement that is “based on merit and ability.”

Cherylyn bluntly surmised: “I want someone… to lift me out of a burning building who is qualified to do that regardless of what their color is.”

On the 1/14/15 edition of the One America News Network’s “The Rick Amato Show,” Cherylyn explained about Project 21’s legal brief that was submitted to the court in the case of Margerum v. City of Buffalo:

We discuss the difference between the disparate impact theory and the Equal Protection Clause [of the U.S. Constitution] because [it’s] wrong… when you want to combat racial discrimination by discriminating against another race.

Diving deeper into the heart of Project 21’s Margerum brief, Cherylyn noted:

In the earnestness to be concerned about the black firefighters and their ability to be promoted, you are then denying the white firefighters the ability to get promoted because they were the next ones in line.  And here’s the important thing… You have these bean-counting politicians who are so [politically correct] and worried about, you know, the effect on the black firefighters that, in essence, they are making the decision to who is gonna be hired and fired and it’s not based on merit.  And that, I think, really goes against the grain of what our country stands for.