Cleveland: Slinging stereotypes does little to dispel them
I’m not sure yet whether Nashville needs a medical trade center, but I do know that the city is well-known nationwide as a major health care capital. It’s very clear that Peter Lawson Jones, commissioner of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, doesn’t think of hospitals when he thinks of Middle Tennessee:
“I’m not terribly worried about the boast and the brag of those from Nashville. If we were building something for the Grand Ole Opry, they would have the edge on us. But Nashville is not known as an epicenter for health care as we are.”
I agree with Walker Duncan that Jones’ inflammatory comments were at best unnecessary, and they would certainly appear uninformed to most people with significant knowledge of America’s health care industry.
It seems disingenuous that a public figure from a city that has struggled for decades to escape negative public perceptions would resort to tired stereotypes when describing another community. If Cleveland expects the nation to respect the progress it is making as a city, Cleveland should do the same for the rest of the nation.
