HELP! IS THERE A WHITE DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?
Nothing says crazy quite like the idea that someone is better off receiving services from a person who shares the same skin pigmentation.
Obviously, a black accountant is better off having black clients while a white lawyer is better suited to handle cases brought by other whites, this idiotic thinking goes. It is racial preferences run amuck and has taken what is actually a sound idea and extended it to radically ridiculous lengths to serve the interests of racialists, hate mongers, and pea brained politicians who see political advantage in trying to curry favor with “victims of white oppression” or in playing up racial differences.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration would want to see that “underrepresented” minorities in the health care field would become part of what Linda Chavez calls a “racial spoils system” that will give educational preference to minorities in health care fields because everyone knows that people will be healthier and get better treatment if their doctors share their racial and ethnic background.
In 2002, the Institute of Medicine released a study entitled “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” that sparked a flurry of accusations that minority patients, especially African-Americans, receive bad health care because their doctors were biased.
The study said that “some evidence suggests that bias, prejudice and stereotyping on the part of health-care providers may contribute to differences in care.” But as Dr. Sally Satel, a highly respected physician and author, observed at the time, the “evidence” in the study was thin. ” ‘Some,’ ’suggests’ and ‘may,’ ” she wrote, “are all the kinds of words authors use when the data are flimsy and reputations are at stake.”
There is no question that African-Americans, on average, die younger and have poorer health than whites. What is less clear is why that is the case. Socio-economic class and behavior both play an important role. Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black males between the ages of 15-24, for example. Obesity, drug and alcohol use, and other behavioral factors play an important role in determining overall health. But will insisting on preferences for African-American students applying to medical-school admission improve health care for blacks? Not likely.
There is not one scintilla of evidence that black doctors treating black patients will make black people healthier. But when have facts ever stopped the racialists from seeking preferences based not on ability or aptitude, but rather the color of one’s skin? You either have what it takes to be a doctor or you don’t. The same is true for nurses, and anyone’s hands I am forced to entrust with my mortal coil.
I don’t care if my doctor is black, brown, green, or six shades of chartreuse. I don’t care whether the physician is from Delhi, India, Peshawar, Pakistan, Colombo, Sri Lanka, or Dixon, Illinois. When I’m in an emergency room after being involved in a car wreck, I just want to be assured that the attending physician knows my shin bone from my elbow bone, is fully qualified as a result of a medical meritocracy, and isn’t the recipient of preferential medical school policies that promote based on the accident of birth that gave one person more melanin than someone else.
I support affirmative action as it was originally intended. But the idea that all things being equal in educational or employment opportunities, preference should be given if at all possible to those who have been the historic targets of discrimination has fallen by the wayside in favor of out and out quotas by schools and large corporations who fear being sued for discrimination more than they value fairness and merit based policies. And this cockamamie idea that preferential consideration should be given applicants not due to ability but due to skin tone or whether one’s loins are cloven, not cleft, is a rank injustice against all Americans.
A society that recognizes historic differences in equal opportunity but seeks to overcome disadvantages for some by disadvantaging others is not the kind of society envisioned by the Founders nor those who fought so hard to make the Constitution’s words about equality be a source of inspiration and not hypocrisy. Martin Luther King and most of the mainstream civil rights activists at the time believed in an Affirmative Action that recognized merit first, race second. Today’s race baiters and hate mongers have that notion switched around entirely and instead, use Affirmative Action as a club to make a mockery of merit altogether.
The notion that a white doctor can treat me better than a black doctor, and vice versa, is so nonsensical as to be beyond belief. I either have the flu or I don’t. The same goes for just about everything else connected with medical care. Medicine is a science that makes judgments as a result of empirical facts based on testing and experience. The idea that a white doctor would miss a virus, or a bug, or some other condition, or prescribe the wrong medicine, or cause any harm by omission or commission because he/she is not the same color as the patient is idiotic on its face.
Should medical schools actively seek out qualified minority candidates? Abslutely yes. But not everyone has what it takes to be a doctor, and admitting unqualified candidates based on race while other, qualified candidates are refused will not improve the health care system, will not improve the life expectancy of blacks, but will result in fewer doctors.
And in the immortal words of Dirty Harry, “That’s a helluva price to pay for being stylish.”
How do you feel about seeing a white doctor and wondering whether he got into a great college as a legacy or into a med school because his father was also a doctor?
The question of affirmative action is not (sorry) black and white.
If you come from a lousy primary school you have a harder time getting into a good college and consequently a harder time getting into med school. If you’re from a poor or working class family you may have to spend more time working to pay your tuition which may translate as lower grades.
The question is whether it is better to perpetuate the advantages that whites are more likely to have — good primary education, more disposable wealth more or less in perpetuity.
Or whether we should “bend the curve” to use that fun new phrase and put more blacks in a position to eventually provide those same advantages to the next generation.
Status quo definitely favors whites. Affirmative action favors blacks.
It’s not as if we have a fair system now rendered unfair by affirmative action. It’s more that we have an unfair system for which affirmative action may be the wrong corrective.
I come down slightly on the side of allowing time to heal this wound. A slow accretion of black doctors will breed more black doctors. But it’s slow, very, very slow. I’d resolve it by saying that schools and hospitals should advantage blacks only in the case of equally qualified applicants. On average a black applicant who scores as well as a white applicant has had to climb a higher mountain and may be superior by dint of that extra effort.
“I support affirmative action as it was originally intended. But the idea that all things being equal in educational or employment opportunities, preference should be given if at all possible to those who have been the historic targets of discrimination has fallen by the wayside…”
Sometimes, you are so eager to criticize that you don’t read what I wite.
ed.
Comment by michael reynolds — 7/27/2009 @ 10:32 am
You’re right, I missed that graf.
Sorry. I think Twitter is altering my attention span. Would you mind terribly writing in 140 character bursts?
Comment by michael reynolds — 7/27/2009 @ 11:23 am
I am a cracker, but my doctor is a black woman.
Glad to see that at least I am post-racial.
Comment by Neo — 7/27/2009 @ 2:25 pm
Some other fun effects of AA:
1. One can argue that historic racism has hurt American blacks. But the benefactors have been disproportionally African or Caribbean immigrants and their kids.
This makes AA less effective for American blacks, because these immigrants “take up the slots”.
2. The AA-mongers have created an odd situation where some groups are more AA-worthy than others. If you’re a Chinese kid with triple-800 SAT scores and an arm-long list of extra-curriculurs, good luck getting into a place like Harvard or Yale; your chances are even worse than similar white kids. Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans aren’t “historically disadvantaged”, while Hmong usually are. Filipinos sometimes are, and sometimes aren’t, and occasionally benefit from being “Hispanic”. Thais and Vietnamese usually aren’t in the AA list, while Cambodians and Laotians usually are.
If you’re white but somehow ended up with a Spanish surname, you’ve won the AA jackpot.
Comment by Foobarista — 7/27/2009 @ 6:10 pm
Must “underrepresented” necessarily refer to racial minorities when it comes to communities having too few doctors? What about the nearly all white (re: “hillbilly”) population of Appalachia? All over the region are communities sorely lacking in doctors, medical insurance and health facilities on a rate similar to inner cities and the deep south. Not to harp on this, but you certainly don’t have to be black or hispanic to be “underrepresented”!
Perhaps the wording should be changed to “under-served”, so that all communities that lack enough doctors can be aided. Or incentives can be offered to new doctors to set up shop in neighborhoods that lack doctors. I’m even open to the government encouraging more black and hispanic students to enter the medical field, as long as academic standards aren’t lowered. Frankly, almost anything would work better than this crazy race-based scheme!
Comment by Surabaya Stew — 7/28/2009 @ 2:27 am
Sigh Mike Reynolds do some research:
The Journal of Blacks In Higher Education
http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html
[quote]Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 130 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.
• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 17 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of more than $100,000. [/quote]
[quote]
If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the statistics and compare just white and black students, we find that 5.4 percent of all white SAT test takers scored 700 or above on the verbal portion of the test. But only 0.74 percent of all black SAT test takers scored at this level. Therefore, whites were nearly seven times as likely as blacks to score 700 or above on the verbal SAT. Overall, there are more than 39 times as many whites as blacks who scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT.
On the math SAT, only 0.6 percent of all black test takers scored at least 700 compared to 6.4 percent of all white test takers. Thus, whites were more than 10 times as likely as blacks to score 700 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were more than 53 times as many
whites as blacks who scored 700 or above on the math SAT.[/quote]
Shave with Occam’s Razor:
1st) We’ve spent decades letting black kids know that they will get a pass on the SAT and replace a more qualified candidate (SO WHY STUDY)
2nd) We have a culture that denigrates knowledge ie “you’re acting white”
3rd) Destruction of the black family ie illegitimacy.
I can guarrantee you that Asians (who score highest / lowest out of wedlock birthrate) would replace blacks as the lowest achievers if we spent 20 years or so going “Hey don’t study you get a pass” and told blacks “Hey you only get in on your test score BUT we are going to reserve some spots for Asians no matter what so you better be the top score so some other Asian gets bumped)
Common freaking sense.
Comment by odooley8939 — 7/28/2009 @ 2:31 am
Oh and before anyone screams “It’s a racist test” kindly explain how alegbra, trignometry, calculus and differential equations are “racially biased”
You either study hard enough to get the right answer or you don’t and if everyone told me in high school “You’ve got a pass” I would have much rather have been drinking beer/chasing girls.
Go to any freaking library and see who’s kids are in there studying and who’s are on the freaking street.
Corrupt culture rewarding bad behavior = more bad behavior
Comment by odooley8939 — 7/28/2009 @ 2:34 am
I remember looking for a new doctor in Upstate New York in 1968, and being asked if I were OK with seeing a black physician. Are we as a society regressing back 40 years?
Comment by Doug — 7/28/2009 @ 8:35 am
Odooley:
So, let me see if I understand the brilliance of your logic: blacks are culturally disadvantaged. This is a result not a cause of educational underperformance. Because it didn’t start with slavery or Jim Crow, it’s a result of affirmative action.
So presumably prior to introduction of AA, blacks were doing fine educationally.
And your control group is Asians, the bulk of whom are from more recent immigrant families. Families wealthy enough and educated enough to get past modern immigration controls and wrangle a 10,000 mile flight from China or Taiwan.
In other words, you contrast the behaviors of a broad-based population with a very long history of oppression in the United States, with a self-selected elite population from entirely different cultures.
Yes, well, that makes . . . um, no sense.
And just so you know: my daughter is Chinese, so no I don’t have a prejudice against Asians. As it happens I’m part of the other group that is often contrasted with blacks: Jews. We also outperform like Asians. And yes, it’s true that like African-Americans we have a history of oppression but a rather unique one. European Jews were put in the position of gaining security from a culture of education. American blacks were put in the position of being murdered if they pursued a culture of education.
See how that might yield different cultural attitudes over time? See how maybe that makes comparisons like yours rather superficial and kind of stupid?
Comment by michael reynolds — 7/28/2009 @ 10:17 am
The basic premise, that race determines your medical outcome and what the possible solutions for it might be reminds me of the “Women make XX for every XX men make” argument in that both emphasise some “solution” that ignores and therefore does not address the actual causes of the disparity. Totally random comparison: It’s like washing your car when it needs an oil change. You did SOMETHING, but it’s entirely the wrong thing.
Comment by DoorHold — 7/28/2009 @ 11:55 am
3. [quote]Odooley:
So, let me see if I understand the brilliance of your logic: blacks are culturally disadvantaged. This is a result not a cause of educational underperformance. Because it didn’t start with slavery or Jim Crow, it’s a result of affirmative action.
So presumably prior to introduction of AA, blacks were doing fine educationally. [/quote]
It is an unarguable statistical fact that the percentage of blacks graduating and educational achievements were higher prior to AA then after and this can be ascertained as well in the few states that have banned AA by skin color the graduation rate has gone up.
Thomas Sowell Affirmative Action around the World is a good read and try to learn some basic mathematics and tell where exactly his study is incorrect.
[quote]
And your control group is Asians, the bulk of whom are from more recent immigrant families. Families wealthy enough and educated enough to get past modern immigration controls and wrangle a 10,000 mile flight from China or Taiwan.[/quote]
Merely to prove the point about culture but one can use West Indian Blacks who do better then whites and culturally indoctrinated into modern liberalism’s slavery mentality blacks here in America or why do they do well on SAT’s / poverty when blacks who’ve been here for the past few generations do not.
Furthermore you ignore the link with the study and statistics provided showing that whites who make less then 10,000 dollars a year do 17 points better then blacks making 100,000 dollars a year in the previous post.
So here it is again:
The Journal of Blacks In Higher Education
http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html
[quote]
In other words, you contrast the behaviors of a broad-based population with a very long history of oppression in the United States, with a self-selected elite population from entirely different cultures.
Yes, well, that makes . . . um, no sense.[/quote]
It makes perfect sense.
Asians in the USA are NOT A “SELF-SELECTED ELITE POPULATION” moron. Tell that to any Vietnamese/Chinese etc who fled those hellish places are arrived here with nothing
From my previous post since you obviously lack not only a basic understanding of mathematics but rudimentary reading comprehension skills:
My previous post:
“Shave with Occam’s Razor:
1st) We’ve spent decades letting black kids know that they will get a pass on the SAT and replace a more qualified candidate (SO WHY STUDY)
2nd) We have a culture that denigrates knowledge ie “you’re acting white”
3rd) Destruction of the black family ie illegitimacy.
[quote]
And just so you know: my daughter is Chinese, so no I don’t have a prejudice against Asians. As it happens I’m part of the other group that is often contrasted with blacks: Jews. We also outperform like Asians.
[/quote]
Merely separating this as a perfect example of modern liberalism’s slavery group think mentality – “I have a lot of black friends . . .” albeit with Asians
[quote]
And yes, it’s true that like African-Americans we have a history of oppression but a rather unique one. European Jews were put in the position of gaining security from a culture of education. American blacks were put in the position of being murdered if they pursued a culture of education.[/quote]
Then once again explain the difference between West Indian Blacks and those indoctrinated into a modern liberal culture of slavery. Asians are my previous example since obviously they were discriminated against but there never was a decades long full court press to enslave them mentally by liberals.
[quote]
See how that might yield different cultural attitudes over time? See how maybe that makes comparisons like yours rather superficial and kind of stupid?[/quote]
What is rather ironic here is that you note that there are cultural differences but then immediately discount them as being the cause of blacks lower SAT scores.
Since you couldn’t answer my previous post in a logical fashion here are the three points again.
“Shave with Occam’s Razor:
1st) We’ve spent decades letting black kids know that they will get a pass on the SAT and replace a more qualified candidate (SO WHY STUDY)
2nd) We have a culture that denigrates knowledge ie “you’re acting white”
3rd) Destruction of the black family ie illegitimacy.”
When you try to debate oh pro-slavery liberal try to address the points for example a rational sane person would’ve said:
Point 1 is invalid because when we compare educational accomplishments prior to AA and in the states that have banned it well blacks are doing better with AA then without and here’s the study
(Sidenote: You can’t do that and reacted emotionally because the factual data says otherwise)
Point 2 is invalid because there is no culture that denigrates knowledge and here is the study
(Sidenote: You can’t do that and reacted emotionally because the factual data says otherwise)
Point 3 is invalid and there is no illegitimacy problem in the black community and / or if there was it would have no impact.
(Sidenote: You can’t do that and reacted emotionally because the factual data says otherwise)
Ah liberals in the private sector – hours of entertainment.
Comment by odooley8939 — 7/29/2009 @ 6:08 am
Sidenote:
With regards to the “Women make X per every dollar men make”
Remember those are always junk science studies by liberal arts majors because they never compare men / women in the same profession with the same experience and education.
When you do that it’s statistically the same.
Next time a liberal quotes the junk science superstitious religious myth call them on it and point it out and double down by saying “I can prove it too”
When they ask how (they will ignore the scientifically valid studies) say
“Let’s go to any college campus and count the number of women in the engineering fields of study and then let’s compare them to the number of women in any liberal arts major field of study”
There’s a reason that 13 out of the 15 highest paid degrees are in engineering and the other two require mathematics as sell.
Comment by odooley8939 — 7/29/2009 @ 6:20 am
I know it’ll be a shock to him, but I’ll defend Reynolds here; Asian immigrants in the US are a self-selected population. I wouldn’t necessarily call them an “elite” (although many Chinese definitely are), but there is a rather fierce Darwinism imposed by US immigration bureaucracy - not to mention the whole refugee experience that Vietnamese went through in the late 70s and 80s - that means the survivors are people with a high level of persistence and determination, and a willingness to “learn the game” and play it well. It’s little surprise that they out-compete native-born Americans of all races, particularly those who come from backgrounds of multi-generational poverty.
I grew up in an immigrant Asian neighborhood in the SF Bay Area, and saw first-hand how Vietnamese moved quickly from the section-8 hellholes into the middle and often upper classes within a decade, sometimes less. They did it so fast that Mexicans and Blacks in those neighborhoods figured they must have had some sort of massive government aid. But they didn’t - they just kicked ass. But they also knew that they _could_ kick ass, since they’d made it this far.
Those who couldn’t kick ass didn’t make it.
Note that there was also a correlation between what they did in their homeland and how well they did in the US. My best friend in HS was a Vietnamese guy who came from a family of doctors, and now he’s a dentist - and all of his sisters are in medicine of one form or another. His wife is an optometrist. Another friend’s family ran a restaurant in Saigon, and her family opened a Vietnamese nightclub as soon as they’d saved a few grand, and ultimately became successful. But a neighbor came from the Vietnamese countryside, and while they did OK, they didn’t do “great”, and didn’t “play the game” of education, saving, and 25-hour-a-day butt-busting quite as well as the others.
The “take away” for me was that “classes” have more than access to money; in the case of the Vietnamese I knew growing up, they all started with zero dollars and almost no English. Those who grow up in “higher classes” know that every society has a “game to be played” and are willing to sacrifice in order to play it.
I’m not sure how this applies to Blacks, but it’s made me more sympathetic to arguments that if we are to have AA, it should be based more on net worth than physical properties like race.
Comment by Foobarista — 7/29/2009 @ 3:57 pm
Odooley:
Your response is simply incoherent.
Comment by michael reynolds — 7/29/2009 @ 10:29 pm
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”
— Attorney General Eric Holder, addressing Justice Department employees, February 18, 2009
What a bunch of cowards. Everybody on here.
Black Americans are duller than white Americans by a full order of magnitude, what statisticians call a standard deviation. If the average white American has an IQ of 100, the average black American has an IQ of 86.
Instead of dealing with that fact honestly, critics have spent VOLUMES trying to convince us that it’s simply not true. Or if it’s true, the testing methods are flawed, or ethnically biased. Or that IQ itself is irrelevant. Or failing all of the above, they vilify the messenger, as happened, for example, to Nobel laureate, James Watson, or to the authors of The Bell Curve. And I anticipate, to me.
Considering the fact that white Americans outnumber black Americans 10 to 1, add that that ratio increases dramatically for IQs over 100, and considering that an advanced degree like a medical degree requires an IQ of of at least 130, the ineluctable conclusion is that there shouldn’t be but a very, very small number of black doctors AT ALL. About as many black doctors as there are tooth fairies and unicorns.
That shouldn’t offend anyone any more than the very, very small number of white folks in the starting blocks at the Olympic 100-yard dash.
It’s just the way things are. Right up there with the earth is round.
Comment by buckwheat — 8/4/2009 @ 10:20 pm