{"id":501821,"date":"2026-03-03T19:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/501821\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T19:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:57:11","slug":"why-are-so-many-nurses-left-wing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/501821\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Are So Many Nurses Left-Wing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Nurses United has a message for the White House: \u201cICE messed with the wrong profession.\u201d After intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti was killed in Minneapolis last month, the union\u2019s members called<\/a> U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement a \u201cfascist, terrorizing, and lawless paramilitary force violently enforcing a white supremacist agenda.\u201d In another statement, the union called federal immigration enforcement agencies one of America\u2019s \u201ctop public health threats<\/a>,\u201d adding to a string of similar declarations it made about racism<\/a>, climate<\/a> change<\/a>, and Israeli \u201capartheid.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The helping professions\u2014occupations like therapy, social work, and nursing\u2014have increasingly drifted from their traditional roles as carers and embraced social-justice advocacy. These fields have long leaned left and female<\/a>, but the skew has recently intensified, following broader trends in academia<\/a>. Progressives now vastly outnumber<\/a> conservatives, creating an echo chamber that has radicalized a segment of the workforce.<\/p>\n

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One reason for the change is the work of Derald Wing Sue, a psychologist whose racialist theories upended his field. His ideology captured professional organizations and accreditation bodies and changed the character of the helping professions.<\/p>\n

Sue\u2019s influence began to take hold in the late twentieth century, as patient populations became more racially and ethnically diverse<\/a>. Therapists faced new challenges that demanded new competencies, and Sue filled the vacuum. His seminal 1981 text, Counseling the Culturally Diverse<\/a>, established him as a leading figure in the emerging field of \u201cmulticultural counseling<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

His book was less concerned with the practical difficulties of cross-cultural therapy than with its premises. Sue argued that conventional mental-health models, rooted in the values and beliefs of \u201cWhite Western Eurocentric culture<\/a>,\u201d wrongly cast individuals as autonomous agents responsible for their condition. Such assumptions were allegedly \u201coppressive and discriminating toward clients of color,\u201d whose psychological and behavioral problems Sue attributed to \u201csystemic factors\u201d such as \u201cstereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and oppression.\u201d The counselor\u2019s role, he believed, was not merely to treat the individual but to eradicate structural oppression.<\/p>\n

Sue later popularized the concept of \u201cmicroaggressions<\/a>\u201d: \u201cslights, snubs, or insults<\/a>\u201d that target \u201cmarginalized\u201d people. Such covert<\/a> bias, he insisted, is \u201cmany times over more problematic, damaging, and injurious to persons of color than overt racist acts.\u201d This unfalsifiable construct made Sue an interpretive authority on \u201cmicroaggressions\u201d\u2014and carved out a lucrative niche for such \u201cexperts\u201d in education and consulting.<\/p>\n

Research<\/a> now suggests<\/a> that microaggression trainings may heighten people\u2019s perceptions of racism in ambiguous situations. After Scott Lilienfeld warned<\/a> of these risks in 2017 and called for a moratorium on such trainings pending evidence of benefit, Sue blithely dismissed him: \u201cthose with power,\u201d Sue quipped<\/a>, \u201cenjoy the luxury of waiting for proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meantime, Sue argued in Counseling the Culturally Diverse<\/a>, minorities were being harmed by \u201cWhite institutions<\/a>.\u201d He rejected \u201ccolorblindness,\u201d denounced policies that \u201cclaim to \u2018treat everyone the same,\u2019\u201d and classified the suggestion that unequal outcomes might reflect factors beyond prejudice as a category of microaggressions labeled the \u201cMyth of Meritocracy.\u201d Instead of individual change, he advocated \u201csocial therapy,\u201d in which helping professionals pursue institutional reform.<\/p>\n

Minorities, in Sue\u2019s scheme, possess little agency, while whites enjoy the \u201cpower to define reality\u201d as a result of their \u201cprivilege.\u201d He compared whites with \u201cfish in water,\u201d oblivious to how their \u201cWhiteness . . . intrudes and disadvantages people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n

These radical premises formed the basis of \u201cmulticultural counseling<\/a>.\u201d Sue argued that, to become \u201cculturally competent<\/a>,\u201d white counselors needed to confront their complicity in perpetuating racism<\/a>, acknowledge their \u201cunearned privilege,\u201d and develop an \u201cantiracist White identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In time, Sue\u2019s theories infected professional counseling and psychological organizations. By 1994<\/a>, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs<\/a> (CACREP) had begun integrating his \u201cmulticultural competencies<\/a>\u201d into its training requirements. The American Psychological Association followed suit in 2002, publishing multicultural guidelines<\/a> coauthored by Sue. Twelve years later, the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics<\/a> required educators to \u201cinfuse material related to multiculturalism\/diversity into all courses and workshops,\u201d and subsequently adopted the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies<\/a>, built explicitly<\/a> on Sue\u2019s original 1992 standards. CACREP updated its standards<\/a> again in 2024 to reaffirm that \u201cdiversity, equity, and inclusion . . . are integral to counselor preparation and should be infused throughout the curriculum,\u201d and to require instruction in \u201ctheories and models of multicultural counseling, social justice, and advocacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social work embraced<\/a> similar principles<\/a>. The 1993 National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics<\/a> introduced \u201csocial justice,\u201d which was elevated to a core professional value in 1996. In 2008, immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender identity were added to its nondiscrimination commitments. NASW then published Standards and Indicators for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice<\/a> in 2015, invoking Sue\u2019s language, and issued a 2021 revision clarifying expectations for \u201ccultural competence<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, accredited<\/a> university social work programs must embed \u201canti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion\u201d across curricula. Students learn to recognize their \u201cpositionality, power, and privilege,\u201d confront oppression, and \u201cadvocate at all system levels\u201d to reduce \u201cinequities,\u201d aided by Sue\u2019s widely assigned Multicultural Social Work Practice.<\/a><\/p>\n

Nursing may seem a less obvious target for Sue\u2019s influence. Yet the field enthusiastically embraced his brand of racialism. Accreditation<\/a> is aligned<\/a> with the American Nurses Association\u2019s Code of Ethics for Nurses<\/a>, a document that calls racism a \u201cpublic health crisis<\/a>\u201d; tasks nurses with \u201cdismantl[ing] structural barriers to a good and healthy society<\/a>\u201d; and calls on nurses to \u201ccondemn all forms of oppression<\/a>\u201d and oppose \u201cvoter suppression<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethical codes are blends of enforceable rules and aspirational ideals. But for students, \u201cmulticultural competence\u201d requirements are nonnegotiable. In counseling<\/a>, psychology<\/a>, social<\/a> work<\/a>, and nursing<\/a> education, trainees are judged as much on ideological alignment as on clinical skill.<\/p>\n

Professional psychology graduate programs, for example, consider \u201cgatekeeping<\/a>\u201d\u2014the \u201cinitial and ongoing academic, skill, and dispositional assessment of students\u2019 competency for professional practice<\/a>\u201d\u2014an ethical duty. Faculty are empowered to monitor students\u2019 compliance with ethical standards and to pursue \u201cremediation\u201d or \u201ctermination as appropriate\u201d when they resist dominant orthodoxies.<\/p>\n

Roger Scruton observed<\/a> that human beings are shaped through the giving and receiving of social recognition. The pursuit of recognition is among the most powerful human drives; threats of rejection and ostracism are existential. It\u2019s little wonder, then, that so many students<\/a> in helping fields align their beliefs with progressive norms.<\/p>\n

In higher education, helping-professional programs often consider white students like Alex Pretti inherently \u201cprivileged.\u201d Such students are told that their lives \u201cmust become a \u2018have to\u2019 in being constantly vigilant to manifestations of bias in both [themselves] and the people around you [them],\u201d and that \u201cdealing with racism means a personal commitment to action,\u201d as Sue instructed in Counseling the Culturally Diverse<\/a>. In response, some white students attempt to demonstrate their moral bona fides through \u201cantiracist\u201d activism.<\/p>\n

A generation of counselors, social workers, and nurses have been influenced by Sue\u2019s racialist theories. If accreditation bodies and professional organizations change course, some counselors, social workers, and nurses would, too. But as National Nurses United\u2019s comments after Pretti\u2019s death suggest, change may be a long way off.<\/p>\n

Forest Romm<\/a> is a collegiate associate at Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n

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