THE NEW LIBERAL-SPEARHEADED STRATEGY IN HEALTH CARE TO DIVIDE THE HAVE-NOTS ALONG RACE LINES, ALL IN THE NAME OF 'ANTI-RACISM'
by John Spritzler (spritzler@comcast.net)
February 18, 2022
[The URL to share this article is
https://www.pdrboston.org/race-health-care ; please share it.]
[Note: What this article describes is part of a larger pattern. Read about other ways that our rulers, in the name of 'anti-racism' are deliberately helping white nationalist organizations to recruit white working class people: "Here's What CRT (Critical Race Theory) CENSORS: The Anti-Working Class PURPOSE of the Systemic Racial Discrimination it Describes" and "America's Liberal Establishment Has Done the Heavy Lifting to Recruit Working Class Whites Into White Supremacist Organizations."]
The overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans of all races are united in believing that health care should be based of the principle of fairness, without any discrimination for or against anybody because of their race.
There is much evidence [also see here where numerous book-length studies are cited] that despite efforts to eliminate it, there remains racial discrimination against non-whites in health care.
Anybody who sincerely was working to eliminate this racial discrimination in health care by advocating this or that change would, if they also wanted to promote unity among the have-nots of all races, advocate for whatever change they thought was necessary on the grounds that it would make health care more fair, more color blind. They would never advocate for a change by describing it as "preferential care based on race or ethnicity" and say that it "may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law"; this would clearly be maximally divisive. And yet two self-described "anti-racism" doctors in Boston, with great backing from prestigious liberal organizations, are doing exactly that.
Drs Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey in their article, "An Anti-Racist Agenda for Medicine," at
"Sensitive to these injustices, we have taken redress in our particular initiative to mean providing precisely what was denied for at least a decade: a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service...
"Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law. But given the ample current evidence that our health, judicial, and other systems already unfairly preference people who are white, we believe—following the ethical framework of Zack and others—that our approach is corrective and therefore mandated. We encourage other institutions to proceed confidently on behalf of equity and racial justice, with backing provided by recent White House executive orders."
The two doctors elaborate on what they mean by "preferential care based on race or ethnicity," writing in the same article, for example:
"Redress is simultaneously the most substantial and the most unprecedented component of our Healing ARC [previously defined as "Darity’s reparations framework of acknowledgment, redress, and closure"--J.S.]. In general, institutional redress should involve not just a direct solution to monitor and end health inequities but to offer restitution for past and present injustices. Redress could take multiple forms, from cash transfers and discounted or free care to taxes on nonprofit hospitals that exclude patients of color and race-explicit protocol changes (such as preferentially admitting patients historically denied access to certain forms of medical care)."
The clear presumption here is that the "cash transfers and discounted or free care" would be made available to non-whites but not to whites (or else how would it be preferential care based on race or ethnicity?) Why not offer these things to ALL people who are poor enough to need them? Frankly, the only reason for not offering them to poor whites is flat out unjust discrimination against whites!
Drs Morse and Wispelwey also write in the same article:
"After analyzing ten years of hospital data, we concluded that the trend we observed was painfully robust: white patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital—a prominent, predominantly white Harvard teaching hospital—were indeed more likely to be admitted to the cardiology service. We also found that the discrepancy, like many other racial health inequities, wasn’t fully accounted for by insurance status, established links to care, other medical conditions, or an index reflecting the socioeconomic status of a patient’s neighborhood. In a follow-up study we found that patient self-advocacy may play a role in these disparities: white patients were perceived to advocate for cardiology admission more often and more intensely, and providers acknowledged such behavior impacted their decision making.
...
"Sensitive to these injustices, we have taken redress in our particular initiative to mean providing precisely what was denied for at least a decade: a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service. The Healing ARC will include a flag in our electronic medical record and admissions system suggesting that providers admit Black and Latinx heart failure patients to cardiology, rather than rely on provider discretion or patient self-advocacy to determine whether they should go to cardiology or general medicine." [My emphasis]
There are three points to make about this.
First, the "follow-up study" (co-authored by the two doctors) that they cite as evidence of racial discrimination against non-whites in cardiac care does not in fact provide such evidence. The study itself reports:
"Results
"Complete data were available for 61/135 patients admitted with HF during the study period, which halted early due to coronavirus disease 2019. No significant differences emerged in admission to cardiology versus medicine based on age, sex, insurance status, education level, or perceived race/ethnicity. White patients were perceived as advocating for admission to cardiology more frequently (18.9 vs. 5.6%) and more strenuously than Black patients (p = 0.097). ED clinicians more often reported having spoken with the patient’s outpatient cardiologist for whites than for Black or Latinx patients (24.3 vs. 16.7%, p = 0.069).
"Conclusions
"Theorized drivers of racial inequities in admission service did not reach statistical significance, possibly due to underpowering, the Hawthorne effect, or clinician behavior change based on knowledge of previously identified inequities. The observed trend towards racial differences in coordination of care between ED and outpatient providers, as well as in either actual or perceived self-advocacy by patients, may be as-yet undemonstrated components of structural racism driving HF care inequities."
This study is sharply criticized also by the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Second, this proposal would deny entrance of a white patient with heart failure to cardiology (instead of general medicine) when a non-white patient with exactly the same medical condition and same provider discretion or patient self-advocacy status would be admitted to cardiology. The proposal, in other words, does indeed discriminate against white patients in their care; it does indeed put non-white patients whose provider discretion or patient self-advocacy status (perhaps wrongly) did not indicate the need to go to cardiology "ahead of the line" relative to white patients whose provider discretion or patient self-advocacy status (perhaps wrongly) did not indicate the need to go to cardiology, to receive the life-saving treatment only provided by cardiology and not general medicine.
Third, even assuming that there is indeed racial discrimination against non-white cardiac patients, the solution advocated by Drs Morse and Wispelwey is needlessly divisive. A far better color-blind solution could easily be found. For example, rather than rely on provider discretion or patient self-advocacy to determine whether they should go to cardiology or general medicine, all patients regardless of race who meet some very objective and appropriate criterion such as heart failure would go to cardiology instead of general medicine. This solution would eliminate any possible bias in provider discretion or patient self-advocacy determining whether the patient goes to cardiology or general medicine. Alternatively, the method of selecting which patients with heart failure go to cardiology could be based on the decision-maker(s) being blinded to the race or ethnicity of the patient. The point is, a sincere effort to solve the problem in a color-blind manner could be devised.
Here's what is going on.
These Boston doctors are advocating in medicine what the liberal wing of the ruling U.S. billionaire plutocracy is advocating more generally: to respond to past and present racial discrimination against non-whites by implementing reverse racial discrimination against whites.
This is not a new idea. Affirmative Action of past decades was all about reverse racial discrimination against whites in the name of "anti-racism." Affirmative Action set lower (i.e., easier) criteria for minorities than for whites to be hired or accepted into a college or university. In Boston, where I live, there are online examples of this in the hiring by the Boston Fire Department of firefighters here and here and here; the exam score required to be hired was lower for non-whites than for whites. The City of Boston was not unique! Harvard University used different qualifying SAT scores for different races. A Washington Post article reports: "The Dallas firefighters' case stems from a five-year affirmative action plan that the city adopted in 1988. It permitted certain black, Latino and female members of the fire department to be promoted over others even if they earned lower scores on written promotion tests." Sometimes racial quotas and set-asides were used instead of different minimum required passing scores on a qualifying exam for different races, but the result was the same: some whites with high scores were not hired/admitted while non-whites with lower scores were.
The fact that Affirmative Action was often implemented as explicit or implicit reverse racial discrimination was made well-known to working class people (by the conservative wing of the ruling class with media it controlled that aimed at a white working class audience) but it was disguised in the media and literature aimed at middle class and professional people, which described Affirmative Action as something unobjectionable to anybody opposed to any kind of racial discrimination, i.e., as just being about making an effort to recruit qualified but formerly ignored minorities with things like recruiters going to minority venues.
Instead of being against racial discrimination, Affirmative Action was in fact for it. What has been the result? Terrible!
For decades whites heard employers or schools tell them essentially, "We're sorry. We couldn't give you the position you applied for because we had to give it to a less qualified minority person." Could a better method of creating racial resentment ever have been invented?
As The New Yorker's Louis Menand wrote:
"It is true that probably the main reason Nixon promoted affirmative-action programs was to pit African-Americans against labor, both traditionally Democratic voting bases. And, by many accounts, he succeeded, and created Archie Bunker—the Reagan Democrat, a man who resents special government help for minorities." (Read this 1995 Washington Post article for a detailed report on how divisive Affirmative Action was.)
Adding insult to injury, Affirmative Action harmed minorities by stigmatizing those of them who did obtain a sought-after job or school admission as "not actually qualified" even when they were indeed qualified.
Fast forward to the present day.
Vice President Kamala Harris is a proponent of "Affirmative Action." "Harris opposed California's ban on affirmative action. She asked the Supreme Court to 'reaffirm its decision that public colleges and universities may consider race as one factor in admissions decisions.' Harris filed legal papers in the Supreme Court case supporting race as an admissions factor at the University of Texas. She also filed papers supporting affirmative action in a different Supreme Court case involving the University of Michigan."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Kamala_Harris#Affirmative_action )
Vice President Kamala Harris's pro-"Affirmative Action" position is spelled out very clearly by Ibram X. Kendi, who in 2019 wrote:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." [from Kendi's 2019 book, How to be an Antiracist, pg 19.]
Kendi is one of the leading intellectuals on race and he has of late been warmly embraced by the liberal wing of the ruling class. "In September 2017, Kendi founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, serving as its executive director. In June 2020, it was announced that Kendi would join Boston University as a professor of history. Upon accepting the position, Kendi agreed to move the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University to Boston University, where he will serve as the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research."
The ultra liberal Boston Globe newspaper (owned by the billionaire John Henry) conducted a special zoom event featuring the paper's editorial editor praisingly interviewing Kendi. If one does a Google search for "Kendi New York Times" one will see lots and lots of examples of the New York Times featuring and praising Kendi, who is a prominent contributor to a new book titled, The 1619 Project, edited by the main author of the original New York Times Magazine edition that was "The 1619 Project" itself.
So it is not surprising that today there is a push in medical care delivery to replace racial discrimination against non-whites with racial discrimination against whites, in the name of anti-racism:
As I show in my "We Need THIS, Not Affirmative Action,"
a) The effect of a policy such as Affirmative Action that implements reverse racial discrimination (i.e., against whites) in the name of anti-racism is to undermine solidarity between white and non-white working class people, by creating white resentment of non-whites; and
b) There are excellent color blind methods for eliminating racial discrimination against non-whites, methods that would gain the enthusiastic support of both non-white and white working class people, methods that the ruling class avoids like the plague.
The ruling billionaire plutocracy in the United States implemented Affirmative Action to divide-and-rule the have-nots to maintain its enormous anti-democratic power and wealth and privilege at the expense of all others in our society. Rigorous academic research has found that the United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy (also see here and here and here) and this explains why the reform policies that get supported by powerful institutions in our society are those that undermine solidarity of the have-nots by pitting white against non-white.
The only way that the have-nots of all races can successfully challenge the power of the ruling upper class that treats them like dirt (as described with many examples here) is by relying on their solidarity; this is why the ruling class does things to destroy that solidarity, things such as declaring that the only antidote to existing racial discrimination against non-whites is to implement discrimination against whites, as is being done by the two Boston physicians.
Lots of people advocate lots of different reforms or ideas for the best of intentions. The ruling class decides to promote some of them and ignore others. The ruling class promotes only the reforms and ideas that strengthen its power over society, that undermine the solidarity of working class people. The ruling class may promote--in fact typically promotes--a reform or idea that is advocated by somebody who has no clue why the ruling class chose their reform or idea instead of another one. Drs Morse and Wispelwey may have no desire to undermine working class solidarity along race lines with their reverse-racial discrimination proposal; but because it does do that, the ruling class is promoting it big time, as I will show below. (While the two Boston doctors may not have any particular desire to undermine working class solidarity along race lines, it surely seems as if they don't CARE if their plan for "preferential [anti-white] care based on race or ethnicity" does that.)
Furthermore, as I will show with numerous examples below, liberal organizations such as the Massachusetts Medical Society and its New England Journal of Medicine, along with liberal media such as the Boston Globe and WGBH, and also conservative media such as FOX NEWS are manipulating physicians into supporting reverse racial discrimination in medicine without fully realizing what, exactly, they are supporting. Here is how this is being done.
The conservative media makes sure that white working class people know about Drs Morse and Wispelwey's 'Anti-Racist Agenda' featuring discrimination against whites. As a result of this there has already been one demonstration against the 'Anti-Racist Agenda' and it was reported on by the liberal WGBH in its article here.
The liberal media, especially those with physician audiences such as The New England Journal of Medicine, use the fact that it is racist leaders of white nationalist organizations who organize the protest(s) against the "Anti-Racist Agenda" to say, essentially, "See! The only people who oppose the Anti-Racist Agenda are neo-Nazi racists. You need to condemn this vicious racist attack on Drs Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey: it is an attack on their attempt to eliminate racial discrimination against non-whites in medicine."
The liberal media love having "neo-Nazis" to condemn. What the liberal media do not ever tell their audience, however, is this. White nationalist organizations (such as the one that demonstrated against the 'Anti-Racism Agenda') are indeed led by racists (such as David Duke, a former big leader of the KKK who has never denounced the racist violence of that organization) but these leaders nowadays recruit new members entirely with the pitch that their organization is simply defending whites against anti-white racial discrimination in the name of 'anti-racism.' These white nationalist organizations are able to recruit good and decent white people solely because the liberal advocacy of reverse racial discrimination is driving whites to look for organizations that will defend them, and the only organizations they find that say they are doing that are the white nationalist organizations; no other organizations, unfortunately, do it. (Let's hope that changes!) These good white people need solidarity between all races of have-nots to succeed in challenging the power of the ruling class that treats them like dirt, but the racist leaders of the white nationalist organizations are totally opposed to this solidarity. I discuss this in detail in my "What Do 'White Supremacists' Believe?"
When reporting on the white nationalist demonstration against the "Anti-Racism Agenda,' the liberal media bend over backwards to prevent their audience from knowing that the 'Anti-Racism Agenda' angers whites because it calls for "preferential [anti-white] care based on race or ethnicity" and not because it is about eliminating racial discrimination against non-whites. The liberal media wants physicians to think that their only choice is either to support neo-Nazi racists or to support the "Anti-Racism Agenda" that--they are falsely led to believe--is not at all about preferential care based on race or ethnicity but merely about eliminating racial discrimination.
Here are examples of this blatant manipulative deceit:
Example #1. FOX NEWS
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-doctor-racial-preference-minorities-medical-care
NYC chief medical officer calls for racial preferences in medical care, criticizes 'colorblind' practices: Doctors criticize 'colorblind policies'
"Two physicians, including the New York City health department's chief medical officer, have proposed racial preferences for Black and "Latinx" patients, in order to address structural inequities.
...
"They went on to advocate integrating critical race theory and anti-racist efforts into medicine, adding that they have already implemented racial preferences in their cardiology service.
"[W]e have taken redress in our particular initiative to mean providing precisely what was denied for at least a decade: a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service," they said.
...
Discovery Institute researcher Chris Rufo, who has spearheaded efforts against critical race theory, told Fox News that what the physicians advocated was a moral crime and unconstitutional."
As this FOX NEWS article illustrates, what doctors Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey are proposing might just as well have been suggested to them by FOX NEWS for the purpose of helping FOX NEWS mobilize whites behind racist leaders. The two doctors are either extremely naive, or they don't care about their proposal dividing the have-nots by race in order to enable the upper class to dominate all of them.
The fact that FOX NEWS harps on Critical Race Theory is no accident because CRT is, like preferential care based on race or ethnicity, being used to divide the have-nots by race, as I discuss in detail in my article, "Here's What CRT (Critical Race Theory) CENSORS: The Anti-Working Class PURPOSE of the Systemic Racial Discrimination it Describes."
Example #2. WGBH (one of the main PBS & NPR stations in Boston)
Medical community rallies behind Boston doctors targeted by neo-Nazis
February 8, 2022 All Things Considered
"Hundreds of doctors around the country are rallying around two physicians who were the targets of a recent neo-Nazi demonstration outside Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The group falsely accused Dr. Michelle Morse and Dr. Bram Wispelwey of denying medical treatment to white patients because of their efforts to establish equity in health care for people of color.
"An open letter published on Medium authored by a group of Boston doctors under the heading Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity has garnered more than 500 signatures of doctors across the United States. Online forums have also been organized with the goal of “leveling the racial and ethnic playing field in medicine,” and supporting both Morse, a former Brigham and Women’s resident who now works for the New York City Health Department and teaches at the Harvard Medical School, and Wispelwey, a Brigham and Women’s physician who also teaches at Harvard Medical School."
This WGBH article says that the protest "falsely accused Dr. Michelle Morse and Dr. Bram Wispelwey of denying medical treatment to white patients because of their efforts to establish equity in health care for people of color."
But the leaflet that the protesters distributed, a photo of which is included in this other WGBH article, says:
"Dr. Michelle Morse & Dr. Bram Wispelway who teach at Harvard Medical School have proposed a medical pilot program that has since been adopted by Brigham and Womens Hospital that will implement preferential healthcare treatment policies for non-white patients. This will put non-white patients ahead of the line for life saving treatments despite being entirely less qualified for them. This is a blatant Anti-White genocidal policy fueled by the same line of thought as Critical Race Theory. We have seen more policies like this pop up around the country since its initial implementation at Brigham and Womens Hospital. Non-white preferred treatment is now endorsed by the FDA. We will not tolerate the genocide of the people who founded this city."
The white nationalist leaflet does not say that doctors Morse and Wispelway "deny medical treatment to white patients" but rather that they "put non-white patients ahead of the line for life saving treatments despite being entirely less qualified for them," which is a very different statement, and one that seems to be true. And note, for future reference below, that the phrase "entirely less qualified" obviously, in this context, means medically less needful of the given treatment, not less qualified by virtue of being non-white. WGBH says that when people accuse the Morse and Wispelwey proposal of denying medical care to whites that they are lying, but the doctors' proposal would indeed, as noted above, deny entrance of a white patient with heart failure to cardiology (instead of general medicine) when a non-white patient with exactly the same medical condition and same provider discretion or patient self-advocacy status would be admitted to cardiology.
So, who is lying? WGBH or the racist leaders of the white nationalist organization?
One of the main harmful effects of the reverse racial discrimination advocated by doctors Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelway is that it enables racist leaders of white nationalist organizations to use the TRUTH to recruit good white people by showing that discrimination against whites is being done in the name of "anti-racism." I discuss how racist leaders of white nationalist organizations are doing this in my article "What Do 'White Supremacists' Believe?"
Articles like this WGBH one use deception to mobilize support for the Morse-Wispelway plan; they hide the fact that the plan is indeed reverse discrimination against whites, and that when white nationalists protest it they only need to tell the truth about it to win whites to their organization on the basis of being against racial discrimination.
Example #3. New England Journal of Medicine
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2201950
"On January 22, 2022, neo-Nazis marched on Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with a banner claiming that the hospital “kills Whites” and flyers featuring photos of Drs. Michelle Morse, a Black woman, and Bram Wispelwey, a White man, who have led antiracism work at the hospital. The group denounced the physicians and the hospital for “creating preferential health care treatment policies for non-White patients.” This was not the first time that Morse and Wispelwey were attacked for their work.
...
"This effort is not about race-preferential treatment, as the neo-Nazis and others on the political right have claimed, but about eliminating obstacles to care that harm systematically excluded populations."
The NEJM article is flat out lying here. The Morse & Wispelwey proposal does indeed call for race-preferential treatment; in their own words:
"Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law. But given the ample current evidence that our health, judicial, and other systems already unfairly preference people who are white, we believe—following the ethical framework of Zack and others—that our approach is corrective and therefore mandated."
Like the WGBH article above, the NEJM support for the Morse & Wispelway reverse racial discrimination relies on falsely denying that it is reverse racial discrimination.
Example #4. The Boston Globe (which is arguably the most liberal large-circulation daily newspaper in the United States)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/07/opinion/white-nationalist-threat-antiracist-medicine-boston/
The white nationalist threat to antiracist medicine in Boston
Two Brigham and Women’s Hospital doctors were targeted for their work in addressing disparities in medical treatment.
By Paul Farmer, Sheila Davis, and Ophelia Dahl Updated February 7, 2022,
"It’s in everyone’s interest that clinical medicine, training, and research be antiracist, and this tardy epiphany has spread throughout academic medical centers. So imagine our dismay when we learned that two of our former trainees and current colleagues — Dr. Michelle Morse and Dr. Bram Wispelwey, both graduates of the residency program —were recently singled out by a group of self-described white nationalists who protested in front of the Brigham with a banner claiming “B&W Hospital Kills Whites.” The protesters gathered in front of the entrance to the oldest part of the Brigham, doors through which our colleagues have for years walked in order to see patients, teach students from Harvard Medical School, and make medicine matter to those who need it most. Over the past decade, Morse and Wispelwey, in particular, put heart and soul into addressing deficiencies in the medical system in the United States and medical systems around the world.
"A leaflet accused Morse and Wispelwey of being the authors of “preferential health care treatment policies for non-white patients,” putting them “ahead of the line for life-saving treatments despite being entirely less qualified for them.” In their attempts to whip up resentment against what they call “a blatant Anti-White genocidal policy fueled by the same line of thought as Critical Race Theory,” the white-supremacist demonstrators unveiled their values, which could not be farther from ours.
"Let’s stop to reflect on what the protesters are contending. What does it mean to be “entirely less qualified” for a “life-saving treatment”? Are some people intrinsically “qualified” to enjoy life, and others “entirely less qualified”? Is health care a right reserved to a self-styled superior race? How could making medical care more widely available be tantamount to a genocide aimed at white people? It’s hard to take such claims seriously. But surely it’s serious when neo-Nazis refer to genocide — and deeply troubling to Morse and Wispelwey, as they’ve told us, and to the community that surrounds them."
The white nationalist leaflet used the phrase "entirely less qualified" quite obviously in the context of meaning "less medically in need of" the given treatment. The white nationalist leaflet (see its full text above under the WGBH article here) used the phrase in this sentence: "Dr. Michelle Morse & Dr. Bram Wispelway who teach at Harvard Medical School have proposed a medical pilot program that has since been adopted by Brigham and Womens Hospital that will implement preferential healthcare treatment policies for non-white patients. This will put non-white patients ahead of the line for life saving treatments despite being entirely less qualified for them."
Paul Farmer [Note: my article was written shortly before Paul Farmer died--J.S.] et al are being deceitful in making it seem that the white nationalist leaflet was saying that non-whites are less deserving than whites of receiving appropriate treatment when needed. Paul Farmer et al, like the other supporters of the reverse racial discrimination agenda noted above, can only defend it by deceitfully denying that it is in fact reverse racial discrimination.
Example #5. Partners In Health
https://www.pih.org/article/advancing-antiracist-efforts-improve-unequal-health-system
Advancing Antiracist Efforts to Improve an Unequal Health System
PIH backs colleagues against attacks: “White supremacy will not deter the fight for health equity”
On January 22, a group described in press accounts as “white nationalists” amassed outside the Brigham holding up a bedsheet claiming that “B and W Hospital Kills Whites” and citing Morse and Wispelwey by name on pamphlets they distributed that day.
"The rage among this neo-Nazi group was apparently sparked by research and associated interventions conducted by Morse, Wispelwey, Dr. Regan March, a strategic senior advisor at PIH, and emergency medicine physician and medical director of quality, safety and equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and others over the past years “addressing obvious deficiencies in the American medical system and beyond it,” as the op-ed authors put it. Notably, the doctors were among the authors of a 2019 studythat showed that Black and Latinx patients in the emergency department with heart failure were less likely than white patients to be admitted to specialized cardiology units, thereby demonstrating institutional racism in the admitting process. . "
This Partners in Health article lies. It falsely asserts that the white nationalist demonstrators were angered at research that showed that discrimination against non-whites continued to exist even when there were efforts to make health care color blind. The truth is that the white nationalists were angered by something very different, namely at doctors Morse and Wispelwey's proposal that explicitly rejects color blindness and advocates instead "preferential care based on race and ethnicity" that preferences non-whites over whites.
Example #6. ABC NEWS
Doctors seeking health equity undeterred by neo-Nazi protest
"Two doctors who have been working to establish greater equity in health care for people of color say they are undeterred by a recent protest outside Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston by neo-Nazis who claimed the doctors are “anti-white.”"
...
"Wispelwey said his team found it was hard to address institutional racism in medicine — such as disparities in how patients are admitted for heart surgery — using racially blind methods.
...
"Morse and Wispelwey said they are not intimidated.
“The fact that you have an avowed white nationalist neo-Nazi group show up at a hospital really speaks to the work that still remains to be done,” Wispelwey said."
This ABC NEWS article never mentions that Drs Morse and Wispelwey call for "preferential [anti-white] care based on race or ethnicity" and thereby make it seem that nobody except neo-Nazi racists would object to the doctor's "health equity" proposal.
Example 7. New England Journal of Medicine
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2201950
Perspective: A Call for Antiracist Action
List of authors.
-
David A. Ansell, M.D., M.P.H.,
-
Brittani James, M.D.,
-
and Fernando G. De Maio, Ph.D.
February 16, 2022
"On January 22, 2022, neo-Nazis marched on Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with a banner claiming that the hospital “kills Whites” and flyers featuring photos of Drs. Michelle Morse, a Black woman, and Bram Wispelwey, a White man, who have led antiracism work at the hospital. The group denounced the physicians and the hospital for “creating preferential health care treatment policies for non-White patients.” This was not the first time that Morse and Wispelwey were attacked for their work.
"On March 17, 2021, the two physicians published “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine” in the Boston Review.1 The article described the historical failure of color-evasive (or what many term “colorblind”) solutions to racial inequity in health care and offered a race-conscious approach they named “The Healing ARC.” They called for a structural shift in racial equity work toward holding health care institutions accountable, contending that only race-explicit programs will directly address the underlying causes of racial health inequities and mitigate the current impact of racism in medicine."
...
"The framework applies the principles of applicative justice to racial health inequities at the level of the health system. It recognizes the need for race-conscious approaches in medicine. While it affirms that race is a sociopolitical construct with no biologic basis, a race-conscious approach allows the identification and rectification of long-standing racial health inequities. This effort is not about race-preferential treatment, as the neo-Nazis and others on the political right have claimed, but about eliminating obstacles to care that harm systematically excluded populations. The Healing ARC builds on the work of William Darity, Jr., and A. Kirsten Mullen calling for federal reparations for Black descendants of formerly enslaved people,2 acknowledging that race-conscious approaches are necessary in medicine because colorblind approaches have not closed racial gaps in health outcomes."
Again the NEJM deceitfully denies that the Morse and Wispelwey proposal is about race-prefential treatment!
This Perspective: A Call for Anti-Racist Action includes an eloquent and true affirmation that racial discrimination against non-whites remains a problem in medical care, and then--totally illogically!--concludes that what is therefore needed is what Drs. Morse and Wispelwey advocate (which is reverse racial discrimination against whites, but which the NEJM denies is such.)
Example 8: Massachusetts Medical Society (which owns the NEJM)
Massachusetts Medical Society on racist protest at medical facility
February 10, 2022
"The Massachusetts Medical Society and its 25,000 physician and student members are angered over the recent incident in Boston that saw an extremist group target physicians whose commitment is to care for patients and to facilitate conversations and actions that will make our health care system more just and equitable for communities of color.
"The Medical Society is opposed to direct confrontational racist acts and stands equally against damaging microaggressions directed at health care workers.
"Not only was the demonstration built on a false narrative and dangerous misinformation, but the act also threatened to interfere with delivery of health care, putting patients at risk.
"Massachusetts Medical Society policy states that health care is a basic human right and we condemn any individual or group who uses a platform of bigotry to erode that right. The Society asserts that race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, age, financial status, and health condition should not be barriers to appropriate health care for any human being – for any of our patients.
"The Medical Society stands with health care workers, patients, and all who endure disgusting acts of racism and will continue undaunted with our work to eliminate inequities in health care."
-Carole E. Allen, MD, MBA, FAAP, President, Massachusetts Medical Society
The Massachusetts Medical Society hides the fact that the white nationalist protest was against "preferential [anti-white] care based on race or ethnicity" and thereby makes it seem that any protest against the Morse-Wispelwey plan must be a racist protest. This false framework is used to make physicians think that in order not to be on the side of racism they must be on the side that is (although unknown to them because of the coverup of the fact) reverse racial discrimination against whites.
Example #9: MedPage Today
Racist Protest 'Threatened' Patient Care, Massachusetts Medical Society Says
— Neo-Nazis targeted doctors outside Brigham and Women's Hospital
by Jennifer Henderson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today February 11, 2022
The Massachusetts Medical Society said it was "angered" over the recent neo-Nazi protest outside Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston that targeted two doctors whose work focuses on health equity.
"Not only was the demonstration built on a false narrative and dangerous misinformation, but the act also threatened to interfere with delivery of health care, putting patients at risk," said Massachusetts Medical Society President Carole Allen, MD, MBA, in a statement released on Thursday.
This MedPage Today article simply reports what the Massachusetts Medical Society article (above) said. Of note, however, is the fact that when I posted a comment critical of reverse racial discrimination, the moderator of the comment page deleted it. I re-posted my comment and it was deleted again. When I sent an email to the comment moderator asking why my comment was deleted, they did not reply for four days; then they replied that they replaced my comment, but never answered my question about why they deleted it in the first place. You can read it, along with other comments in support of what I said, on the comment page here. Here it (with the supporting reply) is:
John_Spritzler • 5 days ago
The "anti-racist agenda" that doctors Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse advocate in their Boston Review article includes explicit advocacy of reverse discrimination as opposed to successful efforts to make medical care color blind; here are the doctors' own words in their article:
"Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law. But given the ample current evidence that our health, judicial, and other systems already unfairly preference people who are white, we believe—following the ethical framework of Zack and others—that our approach is corrective and therefore mandated."
Yes, it is true, as Doctors Wispelwey and Morse show in their article, that past efforts to make medical care color blind have failed to eliminate racial bias against non-whites. The obvious response to this fact should be to determine why those efforts failed (were they all truly sincere efforts?) and to figure out how to make further efforts that will succeed in making medical care color blind.
This advocacy of reverse discrimination in the name of "anti-racism," however, is exactly what the racist leaders of white nationalist organizations LOVE because it makes it possible for them to recruit whites whom they otherwise would never be able to recruit; it gives credence to their assertion that anti-racism is code for anti-white.
Peter_D John_Spritzler • 4 days ago
I agree JS, we must figure out how to make medicine color blind and Reverse discrimination will not help at all, as it will only cause us to be more divisive and fan the flames of what is already a disturbing trend.
WHAT DO THESE EXAMPLES TELL US?
What do you think is the combined effect of a) the conservative media (such as FOX NEWS) and only the conservative media telling its largely white working class audience that "anti-racists" such as Drs Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey are advocating reverse racial discrimination against whites in medicine, and b) the liberal media (many liberal newspapers around the country just re-print WGBH stories about this) telling its audience of relatively few working class whites but many non-whites and middle class whites that Drs Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey are simply working to end racial bias in medicine and are being attacked for that by white racists? Clearly the effect is to pit white working class people against blacks and liberal middle class whites.
As long as anti-racism liberals refrain from sharply and aggressively condemning reverse racial [anti-white] discrimination such as that advocated by Drs Morse and Wispelwey, then good white working class people will perceive the racist leaders of white nationalist organizations as the only people defending them against unjust discrimination. This is exactly what the racist leaders of white organizations hope will happen, and what the ruling plutocracy is counting on to make its divide-and-rule strategy, of pitting us against each other along race lines, succeed.
WHAT NEXT?
I have been reaching out to physicians that I know personally to ask them what their take is on this reverse racial discrimination proposal for medical care. Many agree with me and so far none have disagreed with me. Here are two of the responses I have received:
#1.
"I think you are so obviously correct that it's hard to imagine how anyone can think otherwise. Hopefully this "thought virus" won't spread outside the confines of Boston.
If I hear of any cases (!), I will certainly have the material with which to fight them.
Thanks for reaching out, and please continue to keep me in the loop."
#2.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Glad to know that there are still a handful of iconoclasts willing to call out the old Emperor whenever he puts on a new suit of clothing.
"I believe you will find that many people in our profession silently agree with you, but are unwilling to speak out about this publicly, because of the all too real backlash from leadership in their respective institutions. I am sure you are familiar with Michael Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind,” which describes this predicament eloquently. Sadly, there are some topics that can no longer be debated honestly and openly in American academia.
"Please keep up the good fight as long as you are able. At a time when the American University expects us to be speaking with one voice, dissenting opinions are more valuable than ever."
I think it is important for physicians and anybody else to weigh in on this issue. I encourage you to share this article with friends and colleagues and ask them what their take is. I think that when color blind methods for eliminating racial discrimination in medicine are articulated clearly and genuinely pursued, then most people of all races will be united in supporting that enthusiastically. This unity is the only realistic way actually ever to make medicine color blind. What's happening now is an effort by the rich and powerful (who control both the liberal and conservative media) to prevent this unity from seeing the light of day.
I hope that readers of this article of mine will speak out in whatever way they think best (a letter with lots of signatures in JAMA?), so that we can stop ALL types of racial discrimination and make health care and all of society TRULY color blind when it comes to the things people need and want and deserve.
Please let me know your thoughts about this; email me at spritzler@comcast.net. Also, if you know of other people to whom you would like me to email a link to this article (instead of you sharing it with them directly) please send me their name and email address and I will do it. Thank you.