Don’t miss Sharon Emery’s op-ed, “End the bias on hiring people with disabilities” in today’s Detroit Free Press!
One of the earliest, most painful memories of my working life was taking a call from a customer who asked repeatedly if she had reached the right department. When I reassured her that she had, she seemed flustered: “I didn’t think they hired people like you.”
I’d like to report that I responded with a zinger, but I’m quite sure I didn’t say anything. I do know I felt dreadfully exposed to the kind of prejudice against people with disabilities that my young, idealistic self was trying so desperately to overcome by aspiring to a career in communications.
That was then. As a stutterer hell-bent on the notion that communication isn’t solely about fluency, I have since been a newspaper reporter and editor, a university instructor and currently vice president of a strategic communications firm. I met people along the way who couldn’t tolerate my speech and so couldn’t abide me, no matter my other skills. Luckily there were others who saw more.
Most people have not had my good fortune. The unemployment rate is 70.5% among Michigan’s more than 730,000 people with disabilities ages 18 to 64.
Obviously, Michigan can’t underutilize half a million people and not suffer the consequences. People with disabilities must be part of Michigan’s competitive strategy — they need opportunities to work.
Unfortunately, employing people with disabilities is hard, because our prejudices keep messing with our ability to act in our own self-interest. In this economy, that’s a big negative, and in Michigan it’s getting bigger. Disability discrimination complaints have overtaken gender-based complaints and are now 20% of complaints filed with the state Department of Civil Rights, second only to race.
The public sector can do more to ensure that essentials like health care and transportation are addressed. But ultimately employers must recalibrate their thinking to focus on the value people with disabilities bring to the workforce.
Consider Aspiritech, a start-up in Highland Park, Ill., that hires people with autism to test software. As Think Beyond the Label blogger Debra Ruh recently noted, the traits that make great software testers are also the characteristics of autism — intense focus, comfort with repetition, memory for detail.
There are 15,000 schoolchildren with autism in Michigan. Hopefully they will graduate with marketable skills, but employers must understand that these potential workers still have autism, and that that is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing would be if they cannot find work as adults. That would cost taxpayers $14 billion in lifetime support.
Gov. Rick Snyder’s Global Michigan Initiative pushes us to overcome our misconceptions about immigrants and instead welcome their talents to fuel Michigan’s economy. But what about Michigan residents with disabilities who get government benefits pushed on them instead of jobs? Obviously, some cannot work and need those benefits. But for thousands of others, Michigan must do better.
How about an Inclusive Michigan Initiative? It may be human nature to follow our comfort levels, but it’s time Michigan employers got uncomfortable — for their own good.
The days of lip service to diversity are over. It’s time to wallow in our discomfort until we make it to the other side — to a whole new perspective on what ability looks like when we see, and listen, without prejudice.
