Nothing heals old racial wounds like affirmative action surgery:
For students applying to medical school with slightly below average GPAs of 3.20-3.39 and slightly below average MCAT scores of 24-26 (first column in the table), black applicants were more than 8 times as likely to be admitted as Asians (67.3% vs. 7.7%), and more than 5 times as likely as whites…
Good old reparations.
Problem is that I had nothing to do with the past before my time.
If my grandfather murdered someone, you are not allowed to arrest me for his crime.
Great! Now I’ll be seen by Dr. Nick Riviera when I have a problem. Or maybe LeShan Davis.
The funny thing about affirmative action is that even if you buy the logic that the evil white man oppressed all those poor minorities then what the heck is going on with the Asians.
For crying out loud, during WW2 the mainland Japanese-Americans had all their property confiscated and were interned into camps (understandably). Now affirmative action treats them EVEN WORSE than whitey?
It just makes me laugh. But you know what? The challenge just makes them work harder.
Uhmmm… duh? There are few places more liberal than medical schools. Plus a government issued scholarship means the school gets the money up front. They like that.
But don’t worry. The stupid don’t make it through residency, minority or not. There are few places less forgiving than the floor of a hospital.
Look, not really an issue if the applicant needs help with their GPA to get into, say, an Arts course. Can’t inflict much damage on others after graduation expect for the odd OWS rally.
I would be a bit concerned if my Doctor got into his/her program on the basis of affirmative action though.
He/she either knows their sh*t or they don’t.
I wonder which pigeon hole they slot the East Indians into?
Asian or Black?
Gee, with policies like these it’s a good thing there’s no such thing as race.
The ACLU will be all over this racism really fast.
Right?
What do you call a guy who graduated last in his class at medical school?
Doctor.
What do you call a woman who got into medical school even though she didn’t qualify?
Doctor Tameeka Lashawnda Jackson-Williams.
Tameeka is raking in $400,000 a year working at a California state prison as a psychiatrist. Her husband is Doctor Demtreus Latrone Williams, III also making $400,000 per year at the prison.
So, does this mean you can now tell the quality of a doctor by their colour?
People wonder why when you go in to see a “professional” who turns out to be a black, you ruuuun!
In fact he may even be a capable doctor, accountant, financial advisor etcetera, but you always know that you roll the dice. Look what the US has for a president these days. I’ve been to doctors in several third world countries, never a pretty site always a quack diagnoses. A person I worked with last year was wrongly diagnosed with AIDS, only to be told sorry we made a mistake a month later in a backwater Islamic craphole.
Nearly every Indian/ Pakistani cab driver in Canada has a sad story about their medical degrees that don’t seem to pass the “racists white establishment”. It’s not for lack of wanting by the medical establishment, but 6 months and $2,000.00 USD at Mumbai U in some dilapidated back ally school still doesn’t cut the mustard here for now. They’ll get their shot eventually though if the NDP ever get into power.
to git taliwacker extention surgery by a doctor with unsteady hands due lack of confidence because they got their degree due political correctness is a bad gamble
I will never have a black doctor. Maybe he or she is competent or maybe he or she is just somone who got through medical school due to his or her color. I’m not willing to take that chance. Thus is the product of this foolish experiment in racial equality. I will never trust a black doctor.
This racist stuff is no good.
There are inequities and preferential treatment, ok. This is happening everywhere you go. The preferential treatment was always there, what changed is that, today everybody wants to be a victim to qualify and take advantage for a special status.
It looks as though it depends on what race or ethnicity you are or where you go to the bathroom or if you are the second cousin of a sheppard in Burkina Faso, that matters.
It sucks and should not be so, though it is. It’s interesting that there is no effort to eliminate that since it may come and bite you in the ass. Heh.
On a recent Rutherford radio program hosted by someone else, they were talking about the medical school at the U of Calgary. It is an open secret that there is no chance in hell, you can get in the program if you don’t have somebody masturbating the administrations brain in your favour. The system is corrupt, much like the rest of the society.
A society, not as an abstract, as every individual that makes it up.
You have to give full honour to the exceptions.
There are those, that are exceptions to the rule. One can say that they are the ones that pay for their honesty, maybe they would qualify for victimhood.
Those that go with the flow take advantage.
It is what it is, why point out the race when the system is set up as it is.
Is anybody in the world going to do something about it? Not a snowballs chance in hell.
What has to happen is that every person individually will refuse to cooperate. What is the chance for that? Not a snowballs chance in hell.
This is why we have 3rd World medicine that 30 years ago most Imported DRs couldn’t have made it as nurses.
Kate, I rarely post on your site as i cannot even begin to add to what your astute and intelligent base already does, but I do read you every day. Just curious reading these comments, are some of these posters posing as conservatives and regulars so their comments can be used against you in future? I do not think the majority of your fan base would run from a DR. because they are black, I get the message but let us not lose sight of what we conservatives are all about…respect for the individual and judging by their character not the colour of their skin!
Kate, I rarely post on your site as i cannot even begin to add to what your astute and intelligent base already does, but I do read you every day. Just curious reading these comments, are some of these posters posing as conservatives and regulars so their comments can be used against you in future? I do not think the majority of your fan base would run from a DR. because they are black, I get the message but let us not lose sight of what we conservatives are all about…respect for the individual and judging by their character not the colour of their skin!
golfergirl
Here’s a news-flash…..blacks have no confidence in black doctors either…..
I trust my 5 year old and 3 year old to a black doctor. Never even crossed my mind not to. I’d say if anyone has been a doctor in Canada for at least 5 years, and you cannot find any history that is troublesome, you’re racist to not trust them.
However, any new doctors coming in under these type of parameters changes the game, doesn’t it? Way to go and make non racist people act racist, political correctness!
Back in the 70’s, when I was in high school, I was talking to a friend about the universities we were going to apply to. My parents were not rich, and engineering at UofT was about $1,000/yr for tuition, with books, etc. on top. Less than $3k annually, even with room and board at my fraternity included. MIT was over $10k US just for tuition – there was no way I could afford that.
But one of my friends was well to do, and he wanted to go to Harvard. Not for the quality of education, mind you; he could care less about that. It was all for, as he explained, the connections he would make. Now, Spike (as I’ll call him) had respectable, but not great, marks, and being a short Jewish kid who couldn’t skate, he wasn’t going to get in on athletic ability either. So I asked him how he was going to overcome the obvious barriers to his entry. His solution was breathtaking.
“I’ll say I’m black” said Spike. When I pointed out the obvious difficulty with this, he demurred, pointing to his natural ‘Fro and somewhat olive complexion. “I’ll just send them a slightly under-exposed black and white photo, and tell them I’m too financially pressed for a face-to-face interview and do it over the phone.”
“OK”, I said “But what happens when you show up?”. His plan for that was 1) they probably wouldn’t notice, and 2) if they did, they’d be so embarrassed, they wouldn’t say anything, and 3) if they did say anything, he’d claim it was an innocent mistake (after all, he reasoned, who would ever claim they were black if they weren’t?), and then sue them for anything he could think of.
I don’t think his plan worked – at least, he never came dancing up saying he was going to Harvard – but it was ambitious, to say the least.
@golfergirl
The point isn’t that blacks cannot be fine doctors. The point is that when you compromise standards only for the sake of adding color to a profession, you end up eroding confidence in the profession. Since certain races don’t benefit from these arbitrary standards, we don’t have any reason to hold their competence suspect. When we see a doctor from a favored minority group, we are left wondering whether this person is high quality or low quality.
There are two schools of thought regarding higher education: signalling and human capital. In signaling, a school or program sends a signal to the potential employer that a person is high quality because the school vetted them and tested them to see which were most capable; education need not actually teach you anything useful for your future profession. The human capital idea is that education actually increases skills for the future profession. The two models are not exclusive of one another.
Affirmative action undermines both. First, it distorts the quality signal. If standards are lowered for a group with identifiable characteristics, the employer cannot verify low or high ability. This hurts GOOD black doctors.
In the human capital model, a student who is less capable simply has a harder time learning and retaining information. Skill and intellect are not the only factors contributing to good care, but they are important. Knowing nothing else, would you rather have a doctor graduating from Johns Hopkins or Meharry? Would you rather have a doctor in the top 10% of his class or the bottom 10%?
If you think we’ve been racist or snarky or unkind, it’s not because we are racist, snarky, or unkind people. We are ridiculing a racist and harmful system of admissions in a venue where it is safe and legal to do so. We are having fun at the expense of others. You don’t get candor like this in person.
We take the matter seriously, and I don’t think anyone here is a racist. We judge people by skin color ONLY when we KNOW that their skin color was used as an admissions criteria. Admit people to medical school based on some other identifying feature unrelated to aptitude, e.g. whether an applicant has an attached earlobe or not, and we will worry about that too. Are we now lobists?
For us, it has nothing to do with race. For liberals, it has everything to do with race. We don’t even think about race until some leftist shoves it in our faces. If there is some inherent discrimination that needs to be addressed, so proof of discrimination, not statistical differences that can also be explained by aptitude, ability, and effort.
Even if a poor black kid got a crappy high school education despite his every effort because of proven racism, I still don’t want him in med school if he’s not prepared for it. He can either be a bad doctor or a good something else. Fix the high school, but putting him in med school doesn’t make him whole and doesn’t make a good doctor out of him. SOME people could do poorly in college and become a GREAT doctor. The problem is that we don’t know who those people are, and there aren’t enough seats and resources in medical school to sift through hundreds of buckets of sand for a few small nuggets of gold. Every affirmative action admission awarded deprives opportunity someone else with better measured potential.
It’s always a crap shoot as 50% of all Doctors come from the bottom of their class. Practice of medicine also gets me thinking. I don’t want practice. I want someone that knows what they are doing.
I think golfergirl has a point about self policing the postings in here.
Eventually the police and politicians will want to control the internet and things like this will get Kate in trouble.
No tin foil hat here, but just agreeing with best to police ourselves before we get…
@ johnbrooks at February 16, 2012 1:52 AM
In a free country there should be nothing that can not be debated or discussed. Nothing.
Jc,
It is understandable that the government illegally used census information to round up all the japanese americans, stole their property, put them in camps, took away all their human rights, used them as slave labour, kept them in conditions just a notch above Aushwitz?
Sheep scare the bejabbers out of me…
Cedric – very well put.
Affirmative action and other such programs are in themselves racism. Simply recognizing someone’s race (or s*x for that matter), be it to their benefit or not, is no criteria. In fact, as we see here, it is a detriment to all.
In my world, it does not matter what colour, size, shape you are (or whether or not something is dangling between your legs). What matters most is: Are you capable? Are you qualified?
Nearly every Indian/ Pakistani cab driver in Canada has a sad story about their medical degrees that don’t seem to pass the “racists white establishment”
To put it simply. Universities and medical training in much of the under-developed world are simply substandard. I am sure there are many doctors in Africa and Asia who have never been exposed to the simplest technology used constantly in Canadian hospitals. On a positive note, they make good cab drivers.
Hey folks, there’s an internet out there, remember? When I was living in Texas I checked out my potential physician by checking them out on-line. Anyone who graduated from Sam’s School of Dentistry, Medicine and Barbershop was off the list. My eventual GP’s credentials exemplary.
Having said that, here in the Republic of Kanuckistan you have to get in line to get a chance to apply to be a patient of the next available doctor within three days drive.
Since Obama has become president, we have come to know how much American blacks hate white people …. so would you go to a black doctor?
Those black doctors will have almost an exclusively black patient roster. As long as they are good with gunshot wounds and ODs there should be no real problem with letting the less bright get their MD certification.
If you were a white doctor would you set up shop on a Black Ghetto?
Race problems are killing America along with progressive policies. It’s really sad.
I’m with peterj on this one: It’s always a crap shoot as 50% of all Doctors come from the bottom of their class.
Okay, affirmative action haunts me when it comes to airline pilots also, or pharmacists.
But, my mother was in the Kg hospital for nearly 2 months back in the 60s with nary a coloured doctor of any hue was on staff and not one of the bright white specialists (at a teaching hospital) could diagnose her condition although it was diagnosed back in the 1800s by doctors who had no tools but brains and experience.
She died, unexpectedly, with me at home sleeping.
I look askance at every doctor and pray for the best.
Grey Lady at February 16, 2012 8:35 AM What a bunch of sh@t you spew.
a@c,
Which particular fact do you take issue with? Saying I speak with “poo”ith tongue is not an argument it is a child’s ploy.
I see that people are showing their colours today.
Again I say, “Judge a person not on the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character.”
I know a black guy said it, but it’s probably not a bad thing to take to heart. It would make some of you conservative types a touch more palatable and reasonable. I’m happy to see that some of you conservatives understand this. I’ll be sure to watch over my shoulder for the other conservative types. I’ve seen them at work in the past and I have learned to be cautious.
Two points: First, I’d have no problem whatsoever seeing a black doctor. We don’t have affirmative action in Canada – at least not to the extent that they do in the U.S. – but also, as Phantom pointed out, the rigors of residency tend to cull those who can’t do the job; being admitted to medical school doesn’t mean you’re going to end up as a doctor.
Second, affirmative action isn’t only unfair to Asian/white students who are denied entry to medical school because far less qualified blacks have been accepted, it’s also unfair to first-rate *black doctors* – who are, in some cases, better at their jobs than their Asian/white counterparts – because perfectly reasonable people will be inclined to wonder whether he’s a doctor because of his ability, or because he’s black.
golfergirl raises a good point. Having the government come back and kick you for something you said once is a definite possibility in Canada.
When I was in PT school there were a few black kids in the medical school class. Most who were accepted into first year didn’t make it past Christmas. The ones who did turned out to be good doctors, and probably are still practicing someplace. They were the ones who had decent marks going in. Just like the white kids who lasted past Christmas.
When I was in Arizona in the 1990s I had an acquaintance doing her medical residency who was a Navajo Indian. Good doctor, knew her stuff, worked hard, had no insalubrious habits. Wanted to get her license and then go back home to the Rez and “give something back to the community”. Which she did.
Lasted six months back home.
Moved to Montana where she still practices quite happily in some town where she’s the only Indian. Why did she crash and burn so fast in her own home town among her own people?
They wanted a -white- doctor.
Yep. No kidding. She was -p1ssed- too. So she packed up and headed out to the sticks where the cowboys still judge people by what they do and not what they look like.