I watched the last of John Leguizamo’s six-part TV series Leguizamo does America this evening. Near the end of the last episode set in Los Angeles, focusing on Latin American representation in the movies and media, he remarked that there is a pipeline of white content, half of which never airs and three quarters that which does air actually fails.
There is no such pipeline of Latin American content, he asserted. If you happen to be white, you are allowed to FAIL. And your presence in a failed offering (a movie, a TV series, etc.) may be how you get a subsequent, successful opportunity. You have a chance to fail upward, Leguisamo commented. Such opportunities do not often lie in the career paths of minority actors – Latinos, Blacks, and Asians.
This particular diatribe struck me because I have witnessed it in my own life. When I went to work for United Healthcare, I was assigned the role of market medical director for the Austin and Corpus Christi markets. These were two among four Texas markets in which the company held Medicaid managed care contracts. Houston was the largest and most well-established of the markets. Dallas was a large, new area that had no history and whose contract had been recently negotiated with the State of Texas. My two areas were also new, but small, and designed after the Houston model.
Over the first couple of years of my employment there, my little areas of responsibility did respectably well. That is, we made a profit. Houston didn’t do as well as it might have – it lost money. Dallas, with a contract negotiated with a “lowest bidder” mentality, was a financial black hole – it lost millions.
Over the next couple of years, the CEO of the Dallas unit was dismissed, and the CEO of the Houston market was given the reins of the Dallas market. This promotion was what one might characterize as a career ending opportunity. It didn’t go well. Okay, it was an enormous financial failure. Sigh.
The Houston CEO was promoted to the UNH Central Office, and my CEO, previously tasked only with Austin and Corpus areas, was given the additional responsibility for Dallas. It was a sad day in Mudville.
As we chatted one afternoon, my CEO commented on the impossibility of rescuing the Dallas operation from the $14 million loss that it had incurred the previous year. I think that our own little operation had made a couple of million during the same period.
“They’ll probably let me ago at the end of the year,” she said resolutely.
“Bullshit!” I answered. “If you can manage a $10 million dollar loss this year, you’ll get a promotion. Hell, they’ll send you to the Central Office.” That’s failing upwards.
I have no other experience with failing upwards; perhaps I never accepted a challenge that I knew must end in failure. Or perhaps, like James T. Kirk, I always managed to find a way to live to fight another day. I don’t know which. All that I know is that I never saw a pipeline for Latino or Black or Asian physicians glutted with qualified candidates ready to try and to fail at the helm of American healthcare enterprises.
Yes, there were a few of each, me among them, but there was no pipeline.