June 04, 2004

I saw this one at Discriminations and decided to pluck the cool part from the middle of the post. Without the opening and closing paragraphs it's pretty sane.

A number of months ago the husband of a maternity patient prevailed upon hospital administrators to keep blacks out of his wife's room.

For several days in September, supervisors told African American employees to keep out of a woman's room because her husband, who was white, insisted that only white employees assist in the delivery of his child.

Staffers said they were only trying to prevent a confrontation with the man. But the decision violated the hospital's antidiscrimination policy and prompted outrage among employees and community groups.

The hospital apologized, as it certainly should have done; the ususal suspect consultants on multicultural sensitivity were called in to conduct focus groups and surveys; and their report will soon "dictate terms of a 'cultural competency' training program, which will be mandatory for the hospital's 4,600 employees." The goal, said hospital vice president Meg McGoldrick, is to "ensure that diversity exists in our hospital, and that we're handling these issues appropriately."

It seems to me that the only cultural incompetence on display here is the hospital administrators' inability to recognize that what they need to do is simple, not complicated. They do not need to worry about such politically correct gaseous euphemisms as "cultural competence" or even "diversity." Instead, they should simply enforce their already existing non-discrimination policy.

There is such a thing as overkill. What's going to happen here is, everyone who was not involved in the stupid decision is going to see this training program as a kind of punishment for someone else's misdeeds. Actual repercussions falling visibly on the ones responsible for the decision…NOT scapegoats, that's all too readily recognizable…would be a more effective educational mechanism.

Posted by P6 at June 4, 2004 06:48 AM
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