As the woman stormed through the Canadian medical facility, she was adamant: She wanted a white doctor to treat her son — not a brown one and not one with an accent.
“So you’re telling me that my kid has chest pains, he’s going to have to sit here until 4 o’clock?” she told an employee at the walk-in clinic in Mississauga, Ontario. “Can I see a doctor please that’s white, that doesn’t have brown teeth, that speaks English?”
The employee responded that the facility couldn’t suddenly summon a Caucasian pediatrician.
But the angry mother was steadfast.
“You’re telling me there’s not one white doctor in this entire building?” she continued. “Well, what’s the closest that you have to speaking English?
“Being white in this country, I should just shoot myself. My kid is part not-white, so can we get somebody to see him that at least speaks English?”
The Sunday afternoon incident was captured on video by a man — himself an immigrant, according to HuffPost Canada — waiting to see a doctor at Rapid Access to Medical Specialists in Southern Ontario, near Toronto…
A sociology professor from Ryerson University in Toronto said “everyday racism” is “beginning to resurface” in Canada.
I too feel more comfortable with people like myself, people who are white and speak English and don’t have brown teeth. Given that seven out of eight black doctors have benefited from affirmative action, not wanting a black doctor is a rational choice if you know nothing else about the doctor. Obviously, I would prefer a great black doctor to an average white doctor.
Would you go to a doctor who benefited from affirmative action?
Would you go to a doctor who you knew was admitted to medical school based on lower standards simply because of his ethnicity? It's an important question, because the left is clamoring for even more of it:
Too few women and minorities are entering certain medical specialties in the U.S., researchers say.
Diversifying the physician workforce may be key to addressing health disparities and inequities, Dr. Curtiland Deville of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on the study, said in an email.
I'm confused already. Is he saying we need more black doctors to treat black patients? Why can't minorities go to doctors of any race?
"Minority physicians continue to provide the majority of care for underserved and non-English speaking populations,” Dr. Deville added.
Non-English-speaking populations? This is America. The language of our citizenry is English. Why should we be concerned about the welfare of foreign populations?
Yet "in no specialties . . . were the percentages of black or Hispanic trainees comparable with the representation of these groups in the US population," he and his colleagues wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.
It must be racism. It always is. I would add medicine to the fields of professional basketball and jazz instruction for investigations of racism.
Using publicly reported data, the researchers determined that of the 16,835 medical school graduates in 2012, 48 percent were women and 15 percent were minority groups (including 7 percent Hispanic and 7 percent black).
In 2012, women accounted for 82 percent of trainees in obstetrics and gynecology and for 75 percent of pediatrics trainees. Women also accounted for more than half of all trainees in dermatology, family medicine, pathology, and psychiatry – but for only 14 percent of trainees in orthopedics.
So there is sexism at work as well! It looks as though there is a conspiracy to keep men out of OB-GYN. Or is it a choice? Is gynecology simply one of the jobs men won't do?
Among black trainees, family medicine and obstetrics and gynecology were top picks, while otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) was least favorite. Among Hispanic trainees, top picks were psychiatry, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics, while ophthalmology was least favorite.
This is very important to know.
What's needed to increase diversity in medical specialties? “First is the need to increase the available pipeline of diverse medical students,” Dr. Deville said.
Guess what: there is no "pipeline." Blacks are not tar sands in Alberta. This is code for "lower standards for affirmative action." This brings me back to my question: would you go to a doctor who you knew was admitted to medical school using lower standards?
My guess is that most people wouldn't. But by lowering standards, all minorities get tarred with the same brush. That's why affirmative action is such a pejorative negative action for minorities.
Instead of trying to get more black otolaryngologists, why not simply figure out if there is a doctor shortage and recruit more doctors generally of that kind, without spending so much time worrying if too many white doctors are treating too many black patients or vice versa?
