I've discussed this phenomenon — of Asians not only being classified together with whites for various race preference programs (and calls for such programs), but of actually being called white — in the past. Razib Khan at Gene Expression points to this San Francisco Chronicle story that exhibits something quite like this:
A new study on physicians in California shows a glaring gap between the number of doctors of color compared with the state's ethnically diverse population, especially among African Americans and Latinos.
At the same time, the state has a disproportionate number of Asian and white doctors, according to the UCSF study, which focuses on doctor ethnicity and language fluency.
It found that out of nearly 62,000 practicing doctors in California, only 5 percent are Latino even though Latinos comprise a third of the state's total population. Only 3 percent of doctors in California are black, compared with 7 percent of the state's overall black population. While Latinos and African Americans make up about 40 percent of the state's residents, fewer than 10 percent of California's doctors are black or Latino.
So I guess that Asians aren't "of color" any more — they're colorless like me. At least it's better than their being "lily white," in the words of the late California Chief Justice Rose Bird.
Or maybe I'm missing something subtle here. After all, there is a glaring gap between the number of doctors of color and the state's ethnically diverse population, even among Asians — it's just that the gap there is the other way. Well, I guess that explains it. Or is it that they're indeed counting all nonwhites, and are just pointing to the "glaring gap" between the 52% nonwhite population and 39% nonwhite doctor share? That doesn't strike me as much of a glaring gap, and it's hard to reconcile with the distinction between the "doctors of color" in the first paragraph and the "Asian and white" in the second; it's odd that the categories in the first paragraph and the "At the same time" paragraph would deliberately overlap. (Plus note that the total nonwhite 52-39 gap appears in paragraph 9, while the "glaring gap" language is in paragraph 1 and the Hispanic-plus-black 40-10 gap is in paragraph 3.)
Oh, and check this out: "Yet within the Asian-doctor category, there is a troubling shortage of Samoan, Cambodian and Hmong doctors, the report found, decrying the overall pool of doctors statewide as inadequate." I guess I didn't realize that Samoans really need Samoan doctors, and Cambodians Cambodian doctors — but if they do, then why not worry about whether there's a disproportionately low number of, say, Serb immigrant doctors, or, if you prefer, doctors of Serb extraction? Why are all whites matched with all white doctors, but Asian ethnic groups seen as needing special help from members of that particular ethnic group?
Finally, the study and the story reason that "minority physicians are far more likely to practice primary care medicine and work with poor or uninsured patients in rural areas, inner cities or other communities with a chronic shortage of physicians." But that's a bit odd — I take it many physicians of all races prefer to make lots of money from rich patients, and quite a few physicians of all races work either full- or part-time with poor patients.
If you want to make sure patients in rural areas and inner cities are served, I would think that the logical answer is to give doctors of all ethnic groups a financial incentive to work there (perhaps as a condition of some scholarship or loan forgiveness program). The answer shouldn't be, it seems to me, finding more doctors of this or that racial group — even if that means relaxing the entry standards for that group, which on average will in some measure work against the interests of the patients that the doctors are likely to treat — and then hoping that they'll serve their own rather than serving the rest of us.
The study itself is available here.
In every area you can imagine (and every area you can't), the whites are, in some way, oppressing the non-whites. That is one of the primary rules of political correctness.
Too successful to count as true "minorities." It's their own fault, if they weren't so successful at succeeding in racist American, they wouldn't need to suffer from such correctives.
Equality of results, not opportunity. Anything that allows the Commissars to manipulate other people's lives.
You think the liberals really want to go there?
Maybe they should rethink this.
an inquiring lover of history wants to know!
Just kidding - I have no profile on match.com, but if I did ...
But I'm just sitting here bitterly clinging to my complaint from years ago that we shouldn't be judged based on our race.
And for that matter, hispanic would include the spanish, but exclude portugese speaking brazilians.
We'll still need a name for those people who are fully assimilated into US society and who don't suffer from any systematic prejudices or disadvantages. It just won't be linked to ancestry or appearance.
We could just call them Americans. Nah, that would never do.
Is this just intentional obtuseness?
Cambodians and Hmong who do not speak English are not better off with an Asian doctor who speaks only English and Chinese.
The best way to get doctors into poor and immigrant communities is to have doctors who came from those neighborhoods. Certainly not perfect correlation -- some Hmong M.D.s will certainly choose Cedar-Sinai -- but if the evidence shows that the best way to get more doctors into the Hmong community is to get more Hmong doctors, why is that so horribly offensive compared to the roundabout of "give doctors of all ethnic groups a financial incentive." And I guess also give them an incentive to learn the language, and stay for more than a year, etc.
For some people, you require less incentive when it means you can work at "home."
As a sometime patient, I thank God for it.
And Jews. (Originated in Western Asia about 200 miles south of Turkey)<
After all, I don't see anyone mentioning that the New York Giants don't have % of Asian players, proportional to the population of the New York/New Jersey. Perhaps we also need more financial support to develop more Asian football players.
What's your basis for your assertion that your way is the "best way"? Professor Volokh's proposed solution is narrowly tailored to achieve the desired result (by giving people an economic incentive to serve underserved communities). It's certainly possible that some level of racial preferences might achieve the result, but I have no idea what your basis is for declaring that path the "best way".
The reason Samoan, Hmong, and Cambodian people are specifically discussed is because they are large populations of those ethnicities in California. They don't want the reader to get the impression that all Asians are widely represented. There are not large groups of Serbs or Sicilian-French-Austrian-Polish-Ukrainians such that their wide absence in the field of medicine is particularly remarkable.
[/sarc]. I momentarily forgot that 'diversity' is only based on how someone looks, not their mind/background/experiences. Gotcha.
Jonathan
You could have saved Gandhi a lot of trouble if you'd told him, or South Africa.
The only people of color are negroes, Samoans, Hmong, and people of Hispanic origin? Do I have that right?
No. If they become Republicans, they're stripped of color (see Comedy Central's portrayal of the Secretary of State in "Lil' Bush").
I certainly have found people both black and Hispanic who preferred to deal with professionals of their own culture.
That would be deplorable racism if they were white. Is it deplorable racism if they are Republicans and don't really count as black or Hispanic? An interesting question.
I don't get it. Based on those facts, if you had been considered a minority he would have said "you're a qualified minority, so we don't need to wait until Friday, I can tell you you have the job right now". Wouldn't that have been better news?
"A friend of a friend of a friend says SF General has unofficial quotas for the number of gay doctors. Just noting that every profession must represent the "community" on every level to be PC. Race, sex, age, sexual preference, degree of facial hair, what's next?"
Part of an effective health regimen is being able to communicate with your doctor without fear. I have seen doctors through our wonderful HMO system that I regret having been honest with. Higher education is not a guarantee of tolerance or understanding.
Gay men, women, blacks, and the poor all have different health issues that may benefit from a doctor familiar with those issues, often as a member of that same community. San Fransisco has one of the largest gay communities in the US and probably has a higher need or at least desire for gay doctors. Perhaps the "unofficial quotas" have more to do with marketing to profitable customers than a desire to be "PC". If a women's hospital seeks out female doctors over male doctors is that "PC"?
That horse is dead. You can quit beating it now.
I don't know any Latinos that self-identify as either White or Black - it's always "Brown", if anything.
Along the same lines, try calling your average immigrant from the Dominican Republic (most of which are considerably darker than Halle Berry) "Black". You're likely to get a fist in your face for the trouble.
At least in the 19th century, being black or Hispanic was probably less serious a problem than being Chinese. At least, no one felt a need to write such provisions in the state constitution like these.
Can you imagine the howls of protest and the rending of garments that would occur if someone said medical schools need to make sure they have enough white students so that white patients can have white doctors? Anyone who said such a thing seriously would be run out of town on a rail.
Yet the exact same logic is on display here, and hardly commented on except on a blog.
1) EV: "I guess I didn't realize that Samoans really need Samoan doctors, and Cambodians Cambodian doctors "
Report: While doctors of all ethnicities speak Spanish, fluency in Asian languages is largely limited to members of the correlating ethnicity. (pp. v, 19.).
Not too surprising -- how many non-Hmong doctors do you know who speak Hmong? Adding on to that the fact that some immigrant populations have real culture-divides from western medicine, one could make a pretty strong case that having Hmong healthcare providers might be very useful.
2) EV: ("I take it many physicians of all races prefer to make lots of money from rich patients, and quite a few physicians of all races work either full- or part-time with poor patients"
Report: Underrepresented minorities are roughly 20% to 30% more likely to work in medically underserved areas or high-minority areas. (p., 16).
Again, not necessarily surprising. People frequently do feel a responsibility to serve their own communities. It may well be that you could also increase service to underserved/minority communities by adding more government funding -- but I don't know that Eugene is necessarily running to the polls voting for higher taxes.
That's not to say that the Report is right, or that race-based evaluation of the physician population ultimately makes sense. But you should at least acknowledge the Report's empirical facts.
Troubling to whom? It is certainly not troubling to the patients who want their doctors to have the highest qualifications. I don’t believe that a doctor that speaks the foreign language of the patient but is not capable of diagnosing the patient’s disease will be of much benefit to that patient. If there really is a language problem then hire people from the community to act as interpreters.
Finally, the study and the story reason that "minority physicians are far more likely to practice primary care medicine and work with poor or uninsured patients in rural areas, inner cities or other communities with a chronic shortage of physicians."
What the study is asking for is that less qualified doctors be sent to ethnic communities. The result will be that these people will effectively get substandard treatment. In other words, political correctness will harm the very people whom the Left claims to want to help. So what else is new?
If I were African-American, I'd be very resentful of other races -- and particularly of other lily white, caucasian 'cultures,' like Spanish speaking white folks -- horning in on the gravy train that was begun to help out blacks specifically.
Now, plenty of Spanish speaking caucasians believe they have the right to dig their hands deep into the pockets of the 'other white' taxpayers.
seems much easier than social engineering to assuage liberal guilt.
Ditto. Why is it that PC expectations are that the racial/ethnic make-up of any particular profession or group should mirror the racial/ethnic make-up of the general population? People have different interests, skills, talents, etc. And as BU2L mentioned above, does the Giants' roster reflect the general make-up of the geographic area? I can say no right away because the Giants don't have any girls and there are certainly plenty in the NY/NJ area.
Strange, then, that the report makes so much hay about the lack of "latino" doctors when "doctors of all ethnicities speak Spanish." I'm just shootin' in the dark here, but maybe there is another agenda at work beyond language fluency. . .
Can't the libertarian types appreciate how this story illustrates the madness of our current system of mass immigration without assimilation and without attention to skills/education of entrants?
The logic isn't as irrational as you might think. The fact is that from breast cancer and prostate cancer to other types of diseases, all manner of studies have shown that African-Americans and Hispanics are much more likely to be under-treated and under-diagnosed by health care professionals. From a 2002 JAMA study:
Obviously this doesn't speak to considering Asian-Americans white or denigrating doctor's of all races who do their job, but to discount the fact that bias does exist between races and that bias filters even into healthcare is to ignore the obvious. I'm not advocating race-based allocations of doctors but if race does factor into the quality of care, attempting to increase the quantity of doctor's in under-served areas who won't have these biases isn't exactly illogical.
Wouldn't that require you to, oh I don't know, show that race factors into the quality of care, or something?
How 'bout proving a premise before drawing solutions from it? For all you know, white docs might do better.
Yeah, the "Sneetches" story. For some, the parable is too hard to grasp or learn from.
For the black who does well, see "Oreo".
Yeah, straight doctors never see cases of sexually transmitted disease, and would be completely baffled when confronting them in a gay patient for the first time. [rolls eyes]
Wow, WGWAG finally made it to VC. Can Frat Stud and Gallion be far behind?
(Little blade goes "Guinea, Guinea, Guinea..."
Big one goes "Wop, Wop, Wop...")
As for gay people, it is hard to go to the doctor office of an old straight man when you don't know if he is a blatant homophobe. The doctors also often assume heterosexuality, which makes it uncomfortable because you have to "come out" to them. It is hard to discuss details of sexually private activity, and it is much more difficult to do that to someone whose personal opinions you are not sure of.
That all said, cultural sensitivity is probably the key, not necessarily just more minority doctors. Though, more minority doctors is good for other reasons, already discussed.
When you understand that "white" is just a proxy for "group in power," you will understand that it's not strictly about race at all.
The irony of all these white people complaining about "race" is that white people are the ones that made race the point of separation in the first place. People want their rights and all of the sudden white people are all up in arms shouting "let's me colorblind." No one believes you. We've already seen how trustworthy white america is.
True. Japanese people were granted the classification of "honorary white" by the ancien regime in South Africa. Going strictly by the book, they were "coloured."
It has always been my impression that medical schools aim to produce the very best and brightest of candidates for the profession, regardless of race creed or color.
True with regard to those whose admissions are on a restricted basis: Jews and Asians. False with regard to officially recognized "minorities." Note that this situation applies to other professions: law, medicine, science, and so forth, particularly at the so-called "elite" educational institutions.
This is pretty reductive. Patients often need doctors whom they trust, to give often embarrassing and confidential information about their health. Interpreters can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, especially given that patients are sometimes ashamed and embarrassed about language problems.
Further, interpreters may not be able to translate complex information about medical conditions, or translate it completely and accurately.
I am often the last person to accept "racial diversity" arguments. But it seems to me perfectly plausible that you might want to have enough doctors who can discuss things directly in the vernacular immigrant patients. Saying that these doctors aren't as "qualified" as other doctors misses the point that fluency in the language might be just as much a "qualification" as medical training in a given situation.
Does this apply to WASPs who have been raised to distrust Jews? Why or why not?
The irony of all these white people complaining about "race" is that white people are the ones that made race the point of separation in the first place
When I travel in different (non-white) countries, I am always struck at how blunt people are in their dislike and blatant stereotyping of those who belong to different national or ethnic groups. "White" people did not invent racial separation by any stretch of the imagination.
If you think collective guilt and communitarian resentment are wonderful policies that the U.S. should adapt, go on believing that. Some of us who have seen what these lead to in other countries (whether we are "white" or not) would honestly not like the U.S. to turn into another Yugoslavia.
In SF, Asians aren't "minorities" in a strict sense. So, maybe the authors misspoke when they implied that the Asians were "people of color," what they probably meant was that they are not a minority, especially not one underrepresented in the medical field in SF.
What do you mean by "in a strict sense"? The population of San Francisco is roughly 30% "Asian." That is a minority by any "strict sense" I've ever heard of.
If you mean that Asians are overrepresented in SF relative to their fraction of the CA population, well, sure; they're similarly overrepresented in CA relative to their fraction of the US population. I don't see why that makes them not a "minority," though.
While splitting firewood, I was smacked in the head by the wedge. I got a pretty bloody compression cut.
At the emergency room, while the Indian doc was poking and poking around, I asked him what he was doing.
I will not attempt the accent, but the point is, he was looking for the wedge.
I'd caught the butt end of something larger than a sledgehammer head.
He had no clue.
So, yes, I was temporaril disadvantaged by being treated by a doc who came from a place where there had been no wood large enough to need splitting in a thousand years, or a caste which considered even the contemplation of manual labor a sin.
Would have been better off with somebody from Duluth.
Is a shrink from another culture effective? Are the fundamentals so fundamental that he could cut through cultural dressing?
I doubt it.
Wow. I have bad news for you: I never made "race the point of separation." I am not old enough to have done so. By the time I was an adult, racial discrimination in employment, housing, voting, etc., was unlawful. It had been so for a number of years.
If "white america" had been this untrustworthy, who passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act? Who ruled that racial segregation of schools was unlawful? Was there some black majority on the Court and in Congress that I missed?
Your racism is revolting.
The last time that I had a doctor doing a prostrate gland examination (which is not exactly what I would call a comfortable situation), it was an openly lesbian physician. Maybe I'm just a bit more openminded than all these "gay people" that you think can't handle talking to a straight doctor.
And Indian tribes can have rules with quite strange effects. I once knew a couple with three sons. Two of the sons belonged to the Indian tribe that their father (who was, as I recall one fourth Indian) belonged to, but the third did not. Why not? Because the tribe changed its rules in between the births of the second and third sons. By the way, the father was a college librarian, and the mother was musician so the two older boys were not underprivileged.
(For the record, I am almost certain that the University of Washington, which fought against I-200, is still using racial preferences. But they are being sneakier about it.)
As one who has survived life-threatening heart disease for more than 40 years, I hope I never have an "event" in California after such a regime is instituted.
"SEC. 2. No corporation now existing or hereafter formed
under the laws of this State shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, employ, directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chinese or Mongolian. The Legislature shall pass such laws as may be necessary to enforce this provision. "
To tell a family secret, my grandmother was Dutch....
How about Condolezza Rice, Senator Obama, and Colin Powell? Are they white? If so, when did they become white?
That's quite a statement to make, especially without links. But to be kind, I looked for your cite and found it here.
There are three highly suspect aspects of the original article (and not a study, as you suggested) by John Franklin, Asst Prof of Psych at Northwestern.
1) The issue of causality by class/economics - and not race - receives scant attention despite ample evidence in the piece itself:
2) Franklin's unsourced, and thus unsupported, assertions are extremely bold:
3) The author of the article is hardly an objective researcher:
Franklin is also the Assoc Dean Minority and Cultural Affairs and head of the Office of Minority and Cultural Affairs, and the diversity-speak is waist-deep over at the OMCA:
In fact, one could argue that Franklin's work is essentially self-perpetuating:
1) find race disparities
2) work in "diversity" position to resolve said disparities
3) when done go back to 1)
------------------------------------------------------------
The original post also hits home personally for me. I lived in Japan for a number of years and have lived here in China for several years as well. I'm fully competent in both languages (supporting my studies at a Chinese uni. via medical translation for Japanese companies). The rub here, though, is that I'm also white.
The original article makes me question the wisdom of returning back to the States - if a job there depends on language fluency, I'm a great candidate, but if it hinges on ethnicity?
Before we go off to the races (pun intended) and create remedies for the substandard care that poorer minorities receive, shouldn't we first determine the source of the problem? Without more data, it seems at least possible that those patients are being harmed by less qualified practitioners who were admitted to med schools on "diversity" quotas. There is also the matter of poor patients seeking treatment at county and municipal hospitals, where (depending on the locale) there have been many scandals about the facilities being run in a thoroughly horrid manner. This, I believe, has much more to do with poor management and political cronyism, than incompetent physicians--though some public health facilities pay physicians shockingly little, and you frequently get what you pay for. I'm just not buying an explanation that points to racist white doctors (of whatever race) who let patients go off to die, because they don't care about people of color.
The problem, like it or not, is racial attitudes. Asians demand excellence from their children. You can't say the same about African-Americans and Hispanics. I have a friend, Eddie, an African-American guy. We go back nearly 30 years. (I am 36, so you can see how he has basically always has been a part of my life). You should see the difference in the way he acts around me as compared to his friends and family. He graduated a great university and now works as research analyst. For years, all he heard was how he was a "sell out" for "acting white" and hanging with a lot of white guys. Very few people, even his own family, told gave him support. And when he married a white woman...don't even ask.
And, I live in a majority Hispanic state now. We have a Hispanic governor, a majority Hispanic legislature, and nearly ever position of power, from the courts to the top positions in government, are filled with Hispanics. And all you ever hear is about racism against Hispanics and how they are underprivileged minorities.
Asians don't burden themselves with such things, which is why they are successful. They choice to work hard instead of whine hard and blame whitey for everything.
Of course, I am a racist for pointing all of this out. So be it. I prefer to take the advice given at the end of the artice you linked to: "[W]e should be scrupulously honest about what's really going on."
Undoubtedly, but I don't see why it's society's or the state's role to act in this fashion to accommodate this group that apparently either don't or can't learn English. I don't know when the US decided it was going to be the accepter of all peoples fleeing from [insert your poison here], but what further duty do "we" have to thereafter changing things to grant these peoples an easier time? Life is unfair. It's about time the diversity at all costs crowd got the message.
Are you trying to say that these immigrants are all racists Dilan Esper? We are talking about doctors here not policemen.
Interpreters can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, especially given that patients are sometimes ashamed and embarrassed about language problems.
You do know that you are babbling now, don’t you? What you said makes no sense at all. Normally if someone can’t speak the English, a relative or friend comes with the person to translate. That was the way it was done when all of the immigrants from the past came to this country or do you think all of the white immigrants automatically spoke English.
Further, interpreters may not be able to translate complex information about medical conditions, or translate it completely and accurately.
Do you want to try that again? Are you trying to claim that it is impossible to translate the fact that you have a pain in a particular part of your body? I know it is hard for you to believe, but we are all human. We all have the same physiology. This is not Star Trek where the alien life form has no human analog.
I am often the last person to accept "racial diversity" arguments.
You could have fooled me.
I certainly understand and can deal with the "major minority" approaches to medicine, but I certainly wouldn't feel certain with the nuances of Hmong culture. That said - I assimilated enough spanish to be proficient with my hispanic patients, of which I have many.
I suppose that the points that I would like to make are this: Some patients are more comfortable with a doctor of their ethnic group. I knew some docs who might have not been great on paper - but could communicate. That is worth a lot.
And with practice, an outlander can learn. Maybe not be guaranteed trustable, but if say a white doc has a patient population that is largely Hmong, that doc will learn the cultural mores, and be better at it. Ditto for any ethnic/cultural distinction. The person that worried about heterosexual doctors tut-tuting gay values? Bah, you aren't the first person to come out to the doctor. It's a real concern, I know, but believe me, for most things people say, it isn't the first time we've seen it. Docs may have prejudices just like other people, but we do care about general humanity.
I know...purely anecdotal, but probably a more honest statement of preference than an opinion pollster would ever get.
Now that's just silly and actually gets to a false argument that too many conservatives believe. Affirmative action, at least in elite higher education, admits people with somewhat lower test scores. That's all it does. They still have to pass their classes. They still have to pass their professional exams.
So the idea that you are getting these incompetent minority doctors and lawyers is completely silly. (There is a better argument, made by Richard Sander, that too many minorities flunk out who would have succeeded at less elite institutions. That is a ponderable problem. But no, the ones who graduate from the top law and medical schools, I assure you, are perfectly competent people.)
Undoubtedly, but I don't see why it's society's or the state's role to act in this fashion to accommodate this group that apparently either don't or can't learn English.
This comment strikes me as evil. Yes, I know, we want people to learn English. But we are talking about FRICKING HEALTH CARE. PEOPLE'S LIVES ARE AT STAKE. And maybe if you would THINK a little bit about what it is like to be an immigrant, you might realize that EVEN ENGLISH SPEAKING IMMIGRANTS MIGHT BE MORE COMFORTABLE AND MORE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE ABOUT THEIR PRIVATE HEALTH CONCERNS TO A DOCTOR WHO SPEAKS THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE! Really! You need a LOT more "there but for the grace of God go I".
Are you trying to say that these immigrants are all racists Dilan Esper? We are talking about doctors here not policemen.
This one pisses me off too. Guess what, Richard: PEOPLE WHO FEEL COMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT PRIVATE HEALTH CONCERNS WITH SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS THEIR LANGUAGE ARE NOT RACISTS. Conservatives can be real jerks on the issue of racism, pretending that racism is about powerless immigrants who want to have a discussion in their native language, rather than powerful whites who pointed fire hoses at black demonstrators.
Really, if you think that some immigrant who can't find the words to describe her culturally taboo vaginal discharge to a doctor who only speaks English and knows nothing of her culture is the moral equivalent of Bull Connor or the KKK, you MUST have slept through your history classes.
You do know that you are babbling now, don’t you? What you said makes no sense at all. Normally if someone can’t speak the English, a relative or friend comes with the person to translate. That was the way it was done when all of the immigrants from the past came to this country or do you think all of the white immigrants automatically spoke English.
You might stop for a second and consider that MAYBE what happened is some of those people, because they were embarrassed or couldn't find an adequate interpreter, just didn't get treatment for their health problems? You are REALLY making assumptions here about what went on in the "good old days".
Do you want to try that again? Are you trying to claim that it is impossible to translate the fact that you have a pain in a particular part of your body?
Richard, you seem to know as little about going to the doctor as you do about immigrants. Doctors and patients discuss private embarrassing medical information ("I have a burning sensation in my penis"), complicated diagnoses ("you have abdominal hemoraging"), and complicated treatments ("you need to soak it in warm water treated with this tetracycline powder for 45 minutes each evening, and take this pill three times daily and 1/2 a pill of this one 4 times daily"). And if the patient gets it wrong, he or she may be injured or killed.
How about some SYMPATHY for people who don't have it as well as you do? Would it kill you?
You could have fooled me.
Only because you ASSUME that no liberals have any criticisms about affirmative action and racial diversity programs. But if you don't assume that liberals are evil, if you consider that maybe we've thought through our arguments, you might find that we are a very heterodox lot. In fact, I oppose a heck of a lot of race-based affirmative action. It seems to me that the need to have doctors who speak the language of their patients is a pretty persuasive, narrow reason to do it.
If you believe otherwise, tell me this. If the US government reacted to the shortage of Arabic-speaking linguists who can be enlisted to fight the war on terror by creating a scholarship program for Arabic speakers, would that be unconstitutional? If not, how is that different from a preference for medical students with particular language skills?
My one experience with an affirmative action doc confirms my suspicion that every field harbors a certain percentage of incompetents. Yeah, this doctor went to an elite school, was smart enough to pass his courses and his licensing exam, but he was a crappy doctor. He missed a bunch of important things. BTW, he was the beneficiary of the other kind of affirmative action. He was the son of a big time surgeon with a Park Avenue practice.
You have to admit that some doctors are just not very good at what they do...unless you believe that all medical malpractice suits are scams. All doctors don't graduate from elite schools, either.
The other possibility is that there are a lot more straight guys who bear animosity against gay guys than there are lesbians who bear animosity against straight guys.
If it wasn't for the Indian and Pinoy docs, many of them first or second generation, a lot of small town America would be in trouble. So is it a crime if Dr. Patel sees Mr. Gonzalez, or Dr. Reyes (father born in Pampanga) sees a black patient? Give me a break.
Affirmative action, at least in elite higher education, admits people with somewhat lower test scores. That's all it does. They still have to pass their classes. They still have to pass their professional exams.
Uh huh. And they don't get any extra "help" there, either.
This comment strikes me as evil.
Someone can't differ with you without being "evil"? Hmmm, I'm thinking the Hitler card will be played soon...
Yes, I know, we want people to learn English. But we are talking about FRICKING HEALTH CARE. PEOPLE'S LIVES ARE AT STAKE.
All the more reason for them to learn English! If I moved to a foreign country, I certainly would not expect them to have a cadre of English-speaking doctors on hand just to accommodate my needs. I would gain basic competence in the language of that country, especially if I thought I might need medical care there.
racism is about powerless immigrants who want to have a discussion in their native language, rather than powerful whites who pointed fire hoses at black demonstrators.
Oh good grief, when are we going to get over this? Nearly 70% of the population in this country wasn't even born when the "powerful whites" were using the fire hoses.
Really, if you think that some immigrant who can't find the words to describe her culturally taboo vaginal discharge to a doctor who only speaks English and knows nothing of her culture is the moral equivalent of Bull Connor or the KKK, you MUST have slept through your history classes.
Unfortunately, you seem to think that a doctor who only speaks English and only understands American culture is the moral equivalent of Bull Connor and the KKK. This indicates you paid all too much attention to the Lefty professor who taught your history class.
Only because you ASSUME that no liberals have any criticisms about affirmative action and racial diversity programs.
A good assumption is that the liberal "criticism" about affirmative action and racial diversity programs is that there are not enough of them, they're not pervasive enough, and they aren't backed by sufficiently strong government power.
if you consider that maybe we've thought through our arguments
Your posts certainly don't suggest this is the case.
If the US government reacted to the shortage of Arabic-speaking linguists who can be enlisted to fight the war on terror by creating a scholarship program for Arabic speakers, would that be unconstitutional? If not, how is that different from a preference for medical students with particular language skills?
The US government should react to this "shortage" by training the best possible recruits to speak Arabic, not by importing / recruiting Arabs to work for the US government. Medical schools should also recruit the best possible students on the basis of their future competence to practice medicine, not their "particular language skills".
Do you really believe that all people who pass their exams and get a diploma are equally competent? In other words, you would argue that the B or C student is just as competent as the A student, is that correct Dilan? You know that position is indefensible, so why do you even attempt to make it?
This one pisses me off too. Guess what, Richard: PEOPLE WHO FEEL COMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT PRIVATE HEALTH CONCERNS WITH SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS THEIR LANGUAGE ARE NOT RACISTS.**
Really? What would you call White people who don’t want to use non-White doctors because they don’t feel comfortable telling them their “private health concerns”? I do believe the answer would be racists. Of course the reverse is never true because as we know only White people can be racists.
**By the way Dilan you don’t have to shout. Your patronizing attitude towards minorities comes through loud and clear. What is it about liberals that they have to ascribe their own racist feelings onto other groups?
Conservatives can be real jerks on the issue of racism, pretending that racism is about powerless immigrants who want to have a discussion in their native language, rather than powerful whites who pointed fire hoses at black demonstrators.
This comment is truly pathetic. Are you really that much of a Leftist that you believe this crap? I thought I would only hear such an argument from a Black Nationalist. I am embarrassed for you that would actually make such an argument.
Richard, you seem to know as little about going to the doctor as you do about immigrants.
You are correct. White people don’t have to go to doctors. We are immune to all diseases. In is only these lesser racists who get sick and have to go to the doctor. In fact we developed diseases to kill off these brown people. Your arguments are getting more and more bizarre, Dilan.
Doctors and patients discuss private embarrassing medical information ("I have a burning sensation in my penis"), complicated diagnoses ("you have abdominal hemoraging"), and complicated treatments ("you need to soak it in warm water treated with this tetracycline powder for 45 minutes each evening, and take this pill three times daily and 1/2 a pill of this one 4 times daily"). And if the patient gets it wrong, he or she may be injured or killed.
Is the only reasons people go to a doctor to discuss private “embarrassing” medical information? Why are you focusing on only one part of the body? Are those the only diseases that you know about? This is a stupid straw man that doesn’t fool anyone. And how do you know it is embarrassing to them. After all their culture is alien to us.
How about some SYMPATHY for people who don't have it as well as you do? Would it kill you?
What has this got to do with “SYMPATHY”. I am not talking about denying people medical service. Rather I am talking about giving them the best medical service possible, not the politically correct medical service where they get a doctor who is barely competent but is of the right ethnic group. What you are arguing is that not even a Vietnamese doctor is capable of treating a Hmong because they are from different ethnic groups. If anyone is causing these immigrants to be harmed it is people of your ilk that will deny them the most competent doctors to satisfy your own racists beliefs.
Even among the Chinese communities, Honkies and Taiwanese dislike Mainlanders. Then Vietnamese and Tibetans have axes to grind with Chinese. Then Chinese and Koreans dislike Japanese. South Asians and East Asians throw shots at each other for being cheap and having weird smelling food. Honestly, the designation for "Asian" on the US census is more based on the fact none of these groups fit anywhere else.
All doctors don't graduate from elite schools, either
Unlike law schools, graduates of medical schools (there are about 160 MD and DO schools) don't have to rely on the USNWR ranking of their schools to get a well paying job. In this respect, there are no elite medical schools unless you are just counting the universities they are attached to.
Every medical student takes the same basic courses, passes the same national exams, and is subject to the same matching program for residencies. Graduates of foreign medical schools have to take the same national exams in addition to a very rigid entrance test to practice in the States.
In order to get into a medical school you have to have a high GPA, do very well on the MCAT and have the usual feel-good extras. The difference between the whole of medical school entrants and law school entrants is that the range of aptitude for medical students is quite narrow and the selectivity is much higher compared to law students.
This presents a practical problem for some groups whose members are not going to college in large numbers. As a result, the majority of medical students are white middle/upper class or Asian - the cultural groups that have high participation in upper education.
There are medical schools who try to boost minority participation (Meharry and Howard, for example) and others who cater to specific populations (most state schools) in an attempt to bolster the presence of physicians in underserved areas.
Because being a physician is a secure job, there is still a lot of competition for these slots. According to a Tulane study, only a third of all entering fresmen who profess that they are pre-med even apply to medical school by graduation (this is an older study, a lot more medical students have experience outside of college before they apply) mostly because the grind of pre-med takes its toll. And pre-med is only a taste of the stressors placed on a medical student.
People who imply that anyone with the intellectual capacity can go to medical school have probably not been through medical school. Not everyone has the combination of discipline, self-starting capabilities, and immunity to boredom needed to tolerate the long hours of study and practicum in medical school. And that is just to get the degree.
Becoming a physician is a dedication of at least seven years of your life after college. At my school the average entering medical student is 24 years of age and half of them are women (another minority, perhaps?) All of them bring high academic achievement, high aptitude, and a proven history of being goal driven to school.
As another writer pointed out, this is a cultural issue.
Are some people being overlooked who could get through medical school? Sure, probably half of those who are turned down could be a good physician. Many of them try again and are admitted (most of this information is on the AAMC web site )and some schools have back door policies to let in students who don't meet all the usual standards.
What does this have to do with low numbers of non-Asian minority doctors? Getting into medical school is a numbers game. If you don't have the numbers, you don't get in. I certainly would not have as good a chance these days as I did in the time when physicians were mostly white, mostly male. If the starting pool for certain groups is small to begin with, the chances are that these groups will not have very many members who make the cut, even with special care in selection in an environment with very high standards.
The same could be said about physics graduate school, but you don't hear much about that.
That would be me--a gay person who had to "come out" to a doctor who turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian. I left humiliated. Like Uthaw, the doctor automatically assumed the issue was VD simply because I was gay. (It wasn't.) That was back when I trusted doctors (my mother was an RN) to be professionals first. Now I do research to find doctors that have other gay patients. With the basic HMO-type health insurance most of us get from our employers, this can be difficult. I have seen ambulance personnel balk at entering a gay bar to treat a patient. We've all read about medical personnel refusing treatment to people on religious grounds. When I'm sick or hurt and need to see someone the last thing I want to deal with is the fear that my treatment may suffer because of my caregiver's prejudices.
There is nothing special about doctors that prevents them from behaving as good or as bad as people in other professions. Something as private as medical care requires communication which requires trust. Not all doctors can be trusted by all patients.
The success of the Asians and Indians makes it a bit difficult to accept the excuse that minorities can't succeed because of racism. If Blacks, Mexicans, and Hmong had the same test scores as Asians and Indians, they would be in medical school, too.
Just for my own enlightenment, what "health issues" do gay men have that straight men do not other than STDs? If the issue is not an actual or potential STD, why even mention that you are gay?
Oh, and also just curious, did he not treat your medical problem? If he did, how was he "unprofessional"? Indeed, how is it "unprofessional" to ask a gay man about STDs regardless of the reason he comes to the office, inasmuch as gay men are well known to engage in risky behaviors, to have a higher chance of having STDs than straight men, and to have STDs that straight men generally do not have? Seems to me he would be unprofessional not to ask you about your sex life as it relates to your health.
Clayton:
(1) You aren't more open-minded than the "gay people" I describe, you've never been called a faggot or a homo, had your life threatened by a bigot with a baseball bat, or had laws enacted to restrict your rights. THAT's why when you walk into the doctor's office you are free to be who you are. The lesbian doctor was hardly going to judge you for being straight. Your logic is more disjointed than your website, which by the way advocates boycotting Amazon because they sell a book you don't like. I mean, care you not about freedom of expression?
(2) That whole "those white people are different white people than me, so I'm innocent, minorities stop complaining" line of argumentation is so annoying. First of all, at least most of your parents lived in the hayday of segregation -- they drank out of the not-for-black-people fountains, etc. So don't tell me about how far divorced you are from it all. Second, you live your life everyday benefiting from the white privilege that your ancestors set up for you. Others benefit, too (white immigrants who easily assimilate after a generation or two). It's easy to walk around life preaching about equality when you are protected by a bubble of white, straight privilege.
Elliot123:
(1) I said "group in power." Naming three black people in power hardly constitutes a "group in power."
(2) Racism is a lot easier to fight when you come to this country with higher education. Many South Asian and East Asian people come here with degrees in medicine, engineering, etc. It's an economic thing. And we can't ignore that the economic situation of Blacks and Mexicans is directly derived from their oppression at the hands of a racist society. Hmongs came here as refugees with nothing. It doesn't really seem like a fair comparison does it? (Hmongs are Asian, btw).
Secondly the concept of a "Hmong physician" is somewhat of an oxymoron being that Hmong culture rejects the medical paradigm of disease so in order to actually become a physician the first thing you'd have to do is reject your original cultural upbringing. How many people do you think are going to sign on for that no matter how low you set the bar for entry? It's like expecting to recruit a bunch of Christian Scientist cardiac surgeons or Jehovah's Witness hematologists. Yes, if you could get one they probably would understand the culture a little better -- but you've got a hell of a lot better chance educating the rest of us about the culture than the reverse.
"Common knowledge" =/= true, rational, non-racist, or even terribly interesting.
at least most of your parents lived in the hayday of segregation -- they drank out of the not-for-black-people fountains, etc. So don't tell me about how far divorced you are from it all.
Oh, please... now racism is a permanent genetic taint... one drop of racist blood, and you are a racist!