[Prudence]

I'm of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I dislike every sitting in on every faculty search while they try to decide if applicants are sufficiently ethnic based on their names. Why? Because every time we submit grant applications to certain *federal* agencies they require us to document our attempts to hire "diverse" faculty, how many applied, how many were interviewed, and how many were hired.

It's doubly frustrating in this particular work environment, because in nursing men *are* a minority. Male nursing students regularly complain that there's "no one who looks like them" on the faculty. But we get dinged for every man we hire because we're supposed to be hiring women.

At the same time, I still get irritated when I think about the time a potential employer called to tell me that they just didn't feel comfortable hiring me because the job involved a lot of computer use and therefore they really wanted to find a man to do the job because men are usually better with computers.

So, while most of my experiences are gender and not race based, it has given me some insight into the pros and cons of affirmative action and similar policies.

I suppose I think it would be healthier for all if we admitted we all have biases in some form or another, and then worked out how to prevent those biases from playing a role in our professional lives.

For example: hire/promote/fire/demote whomever you want, but you'd best document your actions and they'd best support your actions. If you're all green cats and out of 20 applicants you hire the one green cat because they have twice the experience of the 19 red dogs, I wouldn't see a problem. If you hire the green cat and that green cat has half the experience of the 19 red dogs, I get suspicious.

(for the record, in my personal case it was a job as a state employee in a tax payer-funded position. as a tax payer, I want them to hire the most qualified person, not the person the feel most "comfortable" with. fvck comfortable and get the job done already.)

I'm totally blathering again. Sorry.