A Black woman who went viral after she posted a video showing her graduating from a firefighting academy this month recently spoke out about the comments she received online that dubbed her a “DEI hire.”
Jazmin Alston is a certified EMT and firefighter in northwest Georgia.
She started at her local firefighting academy in September 2024, where she endured rigorous physical training for eight months to earn certifications for both roles.
She said that on her first official day as a firefighter, she cried.
“I was just like, I did it. I got accepted into the academy in June 2024. I’m here, I did it. Everything I spoke to myself, all the nights crying, just vigorous training, being sore, being sick,” Alston told Atlanta Black Star. “I did it.”
But some sought to undermine her achievements on social media.
After Alston posted a video of herself on her X account at her firefighting academy graduation last week, the post went viral and drew just as much contention as it did praise. Several people began posting sexist and bigoted comments that pegged her as a hire who was solely meant to boost diversity in her ranks.
“That’s a dude’s job,” one X user commented.
“DEI hire,” another comment read.
Someone else wrote:
“–I have no problem with this but,
–I seriously doubt she could climb up a ladder, go into a building, grab an adult male,
–Then, carry him out and then while carrying him go back down the ladder.
–Every firefighter should be able to do this & I doubt she could.”
Alston checked the misogynistic commentary, saying that many people are uninformed about firefighting practices and the identical physical standards that female and male recruits must adhere to and maintain. She added that her class consisted of three Black females and one white female, who all made it to graduation.
Alston herself was hand-selected by one of her battalion chiefs to join his shift, and she is the only Black female member on her crew.
“There’s a lot of training we had to do,” Alston remarked. “They didn’t just slap me this badge and made me swear and do an oath that I was gonna protect the citizens when I couldn’t do the job. That’s crazy.”
She said she and her fellow recruits trained under firefighting vets, running miles every day, racing up and down several flights of stairs, and undergoing live fire simulations every week in which they went into buildings set ablaze in full gear and had to rescue their instructors posing as victims, by pulling them out of buildings or hoisting them down ladders.
Alston said she had to surmount all that endurance training on top of learning to carry ground ladders on her own and 40 pounds of firefighting gear. This is all to prepare recruits for the state and national registry tests.
Some comments even body-shamed Alston, suggesting that her body shape somehow disqualifies her from firefighting. One X user wrote, “Doesn’t firefighting require being in shape?”
But the remarks didn’t faze Alston.
“It doesn’t bother me because I’m comfortable in my skin. I’m just a curvy female. Not only am I comfortable in my skin, but me going through the training I went through gave me another sense of confidence,” she said. “I still went through this rigorous training, I didn’t fail anything, I took the same physical tests as my male counterparts and I still passed, and I didn’t have low passing rates either.”
Alston says that while she’s gotten some hate, the support she’s received in contrast has been overwhelming. She says that now that she’s certified, one of her goals is to become a fire sergeant in the next couple of years, a role that would allow her to drive a fire engine.
“There are a lot of people who think I got the job because I am Black and I’m a girl and they needed diversity,” Alston said. “Fire doesn’t care about if you are Black, white, female, male – fire doesn’t care about that. So while everybody is trying to say, ‘she’s a DEI hire’ and ‘so many lives are gonna be lost,’ it goes in one ear and out the other. Either you can do the job or you can’t.”
Alston said that no one can invalidate her achievements because she, her crew, and her department know how hard she’s worked.
“The sky is the limit for anybody. You just have to be willing to put the work in. Faith without works is dead. You can do anything you put your mind to.”
