Worries over Taylor leading amount to insults
The mention of Dr. Michelle Taylor as being “very articulate,” in a memo summarizing her qualifications to be county health director, offered a clue about what was next.
If anyone is surprised that a Harvard-educated Black person can talk, or view it as compliment when it’s an insult, that means more insults are to come.
For Taylor, who Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris recently chose to lead the county health department, that insult came in a memo in which an interview panel, made up of various honchos in the community, declined to recommend her for the job.
Their reasons?
Taylor, they said, lacked, “administrative acumen,” and “experience leading an organization the size of SCHD and change management skills.”
Oh, the panel also suggested that Taylor would be ideal to fill the vacant physician position at the health department.
Taylor – a woman who, among other achievements, holds a doctorate degree in public health from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a master’s in public administration from Harvard University, and who currently serves as branch chief and division chief for the Office of the Air National Guard Surgeon General.
Still, to the panelists, Taylor’s accomplishments only rated a consolation prize. Not the grand prize.
To be sure, the panel also rejected the other candidate, Derrick Neal, and recommended that more money be found to boost the salary for the position – now at $145,000 a year – to bolster the search firm’s chances of recruiting a stronger pool of candidates.
But chances are Taylor will still become health director – as Harris and the state health department have the final say. And the panel’s objections to her appointment reflect a condescending gaze that can repel qualified native Memphians – and Black native Memphians especially.
Considering that the political firing of Tennessee’s immunology chief, Michelle Fiscus, has put the Volunteer State on the path to becoming a pariah state for many health care professionals, that’s the last thing this city needs right now.
First of all, Taylor does have administrative experience. Got much of it right here, in fact, as associate medical director and deputy administrator for maternal and child health for the health department.
She’s still getting it as Air National Guard Aerospace Medicine Division Chief for the Office of the Air National Guard Surgeon General.
Those skills are clearly transferrable to the job of health department director, said Elena Delavega, assistant professor of social work at the University of Memphis and associate director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change.
“That’s the thing about promotions and moving up,” said Delavega, whose work focuses on poverty in Memphis and racial barriers to opportunity.
“No, you have never done a job above the job that you have. That’s the case for most promotions.
If someone is promoted from faculty to department chair, that person has never been chair. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the tools or skills to do the job.
“If she [Taylor] has served [as a chief] in the military, she also has experience with process and protocol and discipline, and how to run a complex organization … It appears to me that based on the experience she has, and the jobs that she’s done before, she has all the elements and the tools to do this job very well. She’s acquired the pieces of skills and experiences that she needs to do it well.”
To Delavega, as well as members of the Shelby County Commission Black Caucus, the panel’s objections to Taylor are rife with racial and sexist undertones.
“It’s about finding fault with a native Memphian that has tremendous accomplishments,” Delavega said. “Being a native Memphian means she brings a lot of skills and accomplishments that are needed in the community.
“I really don’t understand what the criticism is, other than she’s missing a certain body part that they expect her to have, or that she suffers from excessive melanin.
“Would they be questioning her qualifications if she were a white man? Is a Y chromosome missing?”
Judging from the interview panel’s willingness to overlook Taylor’s considerable accomplishments to conjure silly reasons to not recommend her for the job, reasons that a separate focus group, which recommended Taylor, didn’t see – apparently so.
That’s sad. And that must change before other qualified people with Memphis roots decide to pass on returning to the city.
Especially if they’re greeted with insults at the homecoming.
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com and you can follow her on Twitter: @tonyaajw