Yet another wacky anti-equality argument from a Detroit Free Press columnist, Desiree Cooper.
I love the way the column begins, which parodies the argument against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) far better than I can (and it isn’t even trying, which I do):
If you’re an unemployed male autoworker, one day there might be a targeted program to help catapult you into a new career. But first, a proposal to ban affirmative action in Michigan must be defeated in November.
Here’s the deal: We have a surplus of autoworkers who, odds are, will never again have a stable career in the automotive industry. At the same time, there’s a field that is in desperate need of new workers.
The field? Nursing. By 2015, the shortage of registered nurses in the state will reach 18,000, according to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth.
Why not devise a way to affirmatively move the displaced autoworkers into the nursing profession?
Well, why not? Go ahead. The passage of MCRI would have absolutely no effect on the ability of any organization, even state hospitals or nursing schools, to go whole hog in recruiting ex-autoworkers.
But what about Ms. Cooper’s smoking gun?
The Michigan Center for Nursing is devising a poster that will help make men aware that nursing is a viable career option.
….
But if voters approve Proposal 2 in November, it may seriously hamper the nursing industry’s ability to attract underrepresented groups, including men, into the profession.
I don’t know (or care) whether or not the Michigan Center for Nursing is a state agency, but even if it is MCRI’s passage would not prevent it from devising all the posters it wants informing men that they can be nurses, too. (But wait; I thought the focus was on ex-autoworkers, surely not all of whom are men. Oh, forget it.) That sort of recruiting is called, among other things, “affirmative action,” and it would remain untouched by the passage of MCRI, which would bar on preferences based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
In fact, maybe somebody in Michigan should be telling women that they can be autoworkers, too.
Wow, John, that’s serious desperation. I am having particular difficulty reconciling the bizarre claim that the MCRI would ban posters drawing men’s attention to nursing as a career path, thereby depriving Michigan of badly-needed nurses-in-training, with this:
Training more people has been problematic, because “there just aren’t enough professors or clinical programs to accommodate them all,” [Stacy] said.
So the problem with the MCRI is that the already-glutted nurse training programs aren’t sufficiently glutted yet?
Later down:
If you vote yes on Proposal 2, you may not realize that you’re calling for an end to countless gender-based programs that get state support, like those that target girls for medicine and boys for nursing and gender-focused programs for diseases like breast or prostrate cancer.
Can we please “target” girls and boys alike for any jobs worth doing? Just sayin’ here.
John was too kind to draw attention to it, but Ms. Cooper (or her editor) evidently thinks there’s a gender-specific disease called “prostrate cancer.” I imagine it afflicts the parts of the body involved in lying flat.
Cooper wrote: “And finally, the profession is worried about the lack of diversity among nurses. “If we’re going to be recruiting and training a lot more nurses, we’d love for them to be more reflective of the population — that would include more African Americans, Latinos and men.”
Imagine. You’re in the hospital. It’s 3:00 am. You need your pain shot. TEN FRIGGIN’ MINUTES AGO.
Do you really care about the diversity of the nurse?
Or, if you do care about the race of your nurse, and, say, only want to be treated by a nurse of your same race, will the hospital share this concern and act on it? Hah.
Take a look at my analysis of this op-ed a couple days ago. I won’t repeat it, but the op-ed is shameless at multiple levels.