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I usually don’t respond much on these comments because those that feel the need to interrupt an exchange between peers of their life experiences and their own feelings with unnecessary aggression, baseless accusations tend to be the stubborn types that avoid logical exchanges and insist on flame wars. Furthermore the tendency of pre-meds to proudly tout their lack of experience and education in the humanities (for the more “legitimate” degrees), means you are dealing with a group who by and large are severely lacking in the understanding of human thought and behavior, the effects of culture, social oppression, societal biases, economic status, class, and much more on success.
However, I think some shockingly low levels of societal and self-awareness are being exhibited here that could benefit from discussion. (And because I have some free time atm..)
Let’s dissect this quote...
I have followed this thread from the beginning I am quite sure not a single person has, at any point, said that 1.)Affirmative Action is the most just policy that has come to existence. 2.)Discussed Affirmative Action in particular at any great length at all, since that is not the topic here, and arguably irrelevant, or 3.) Asserted that all whites and ORMs are “bunch of bitter, ignorant bigots”. Your allegation of third point is particularly interesting, you seem offended by the thought that people in this thread would accuse whites and ORMs of being bitter and prejudice, and dismissive of those that have experienced the sentiments of these groups throughout their lives.
URMs get in with lesser CVs/stats than their peers (whites and ORMs). This point is moot because medical admission is not a meritocracy. There exists a minimum threshold by which medical schools have determined correlates to successive completion. On the objective end, last I remember this was a mid 20 MCAT score, for GPA this is harder to target due to lack of standardization, but let’s just say for argument sake it’s a 3.0. That means ANY person, for ANY reason, deemed acceptable by the admission committee of a specific school can choose to accept a student with a lesser CV than their peers. In fact, we all know that a considerable number of people are accepted with lower stats URM and not, otherwise the average GPA of X School couldn’t be a 3.6 if there are 4 URMs in that class right?
Okay but the URMs are more likely to be accepted with lower stats than their peers. Well what other trends exist on average among these groups?
URMs are more likely to have been brought up in poverty, they are more likely to have attended subpar schools from early childhood education through high school (inner city schools, etc) more likely to have not had any early childhood education prior to the available public K, more likely to have been the victim of abuse (verbal, physical and sexual), more likely to have been raised by teenage parents, more likely to have many more siblings in their household = less attention on their individual rearing. All of these not only negatively impact your ability to learn and perform, but may exclude one from even having the chance to learn. The stats and CV you discuss are a product of available opportunities from birth to time of application, opportunities that are far out of reach for most URMs. I’m sure I don’t have to go into great detail here, but those awesome summer research assistantships, internships, facilities, even the basics of have a computer to use in high school, are not attainable for the average URM. With all these disadvantages, on average do you think their CVs will be stacked?
Can you share the source where blacks perform poorly in medical school?
I’m not going to touch on how you target blacks here, as that speaks for itself, surely you know URM encompasses more than the black community. I’m also sure you know that self-aware non-blacks, whether they are other minorities themselves, ORMs, or whites, are capable of recognizing racism around them and the opportunities afforded to them as a non-disadvantaged groups leading them to “complain” about the inequalities that exist in this society. (As has been done in this thread)
What we have here is a common occurrence in biased judgment; fundamental attribution error. Yes, there is always a degree to which an individual’s own choices impacts their success. But to dismiss entirely the external factors at work in an individual’s success shows you have a very limited understanding of the very basic concepts of human behavior and society’s role in an individual’s success. Furthermore, this argument is flawed to begin with, because racism and white privilege did in fact systemically exclude minority groups for medicine and other professions regardless of the exhibited academic performance of the applicant. Blacks barred from medical schools so yes there low representation is a byproduct of institutionalized oppression.
To use your own words, put aside the number of black doctors and go to first principles that underlie it all: unequal educational system.
Honestly, this part is almost laughable gender inequality faced the same issues of underrepresentation. Medical schools for women, much like HBCUs, had to combat the years of institutionalized prejudice that prevented enrollment of women in medical school’s prior to the 70s. As a consequence, these schools had much lower admission standards, because their mission was to get more women into the field, yet they produced competent doctors. After the laws prohibiting gender discrimination in medical school’s in the early 70s and the women’s movements, many more schools began accepting women, with lower stats than their male counterparts. Why? Well when you have thousands of males competing for these positions, which they have arguably been groomed to do, and women who had been denied the education and preparation for such a field, they did not have such outstanding CVs and stats as their male counterparts. Was the low representation of women not a product of “male privilege”? More accurately, “white male privilege”, since these women were still white fighting for equal representation with whites, and American had long deemed the hierarchy white male>white female> minorities (black males~females).
Again, lack of awareness. You, as a first generation American cannot compare or equate your experience in a low-income minority neighborhood to those that have lived in those neighborhoods for generations. There was no white oppression that forced people to skip class, true. But guess what, generational oppression has proved time and time again to minorities that no matter how hard they try they would never get accepted, they would never get that job interview, much less the actual position, they would never be respected for their ideas, and they will always be perceived in a negative light. What is the product of that oppression? You get a new generation of children in the ghetto who fully believe the ghetto is all they can aspire to. They have parents and grandparents that were scorned and scrutinized, and are still there in the ghetto. Their parents have little faith in the world, do you think they realistically present the rainbow imagery of “son, you can be whatever you want to be!”. No, the picture is more like, “son, no matter what you do or hard you try they will never accept you, no one cares about you”. They don’t see the America, or the world for that sake as filled with opportunities waiting to be grasped with eyes wide open as an immigrant family does. This is the product of entrenched racism that becomes internalized, this leads one to hate, and expect little of themselves.
There is a huge difference in mindset and perspective. I am a first generation immigrant, but I am black. I lived in low economic neighborhood, I went to a predominantly black high school, and I saw many times the type of students you describe (skipping class, etc.). I had the intrinsic motivation to work hard, get good grades, perform well, and I didn’t have any of the internal syndromes of generational oppression. I had a parent that expected nothing less than good grades, worked 3 jobs at a time to provide, and though scorned by America as an immigrant, still continually tried to do better. The environment in my home, though economically similar, was did not exhibit the same attitudes and perspectives as non-immigrant families in that neighborhood. Still, I faced the same external hurdles to success that are based on racial prejudice that the native minorities do. My experience was therefore similar in many ways, difference in many ways than an African-American, after-all we look similar, but still there were stark differences in how we approached those challenges, and our ability to overcome them.
My white, German-American husband also went to the same high school, lived in a better neighborhood at the time (though a similarly minority neighborhood in earlier years) and we had entirely different experiences, and perceptions of teachers and administration. The difference in our race played a key role in how teachers interacted with us, whether or not they wanted to mentor us, what opportunities were presented to us, the benefit of the doubt we were given, and much more. If we were to narrate our high school years to you, you would think I went to school in Alabama or something with bigots, where it was impossible to succeed and he went to some fancy private school, where teachers bent over backwards to help him.
Just to add: your statement of spending welfare checks on designer clothing is presumptive at the least. How do you know someone gets welfare checks? You opened them for your neighbors? How do you know they were not fakes? You took their clothing and analyzed the stitching and logos? I highly doubt a minority person explicitly told you that they get welfare checks and that they use that income to buy designer clothing. You might want to take some time and reflect on why you would say something so prejudicial, but are so defensive of being called as such?
First off trading places with an African American does not mean at the point where you would apply to medical school. Sorry it does not work like that, changing your ethnicity means you get all the advantages and disadvantages of that group from birth, not selectively the admission to medical school. The question is rather, would you opt to have been born into an African American family, raised here and subject to the life of a typical African American. Guess what if that was your life you would likely never reach the point of applying to medical school. The disadvantages of being African American in America far surpass the advantages of med school admissions and scholarships. Again, awareness is severely lacking.
You wouldn’t have to work as hard in college? This also ties in with an earlier comment that said all groups have the same free time in college. This is likely false, since on average you would probably be working fulltime to help take care of your home, provide for your siblings, and pay for your own education as an African-American. More likely, you wouldn’t have been used to the system of education in university as your elementary, middle, and secondary education would have rendered you unprepared for that academic environment. You would begin your college education significantly below your white/ORM counterparts.
Go to inner city public high schools in Chicago, LA, NY, Detroit, and D.C., and come back and let me know how academic privilege and oppression has been dissolved. You lack understanding of the public school system. Oppression cannot be dissolved if unequal educational systems are persisting throughout America. The quality of teaching in a minority neighborhood on average is far from equal than that in a suburban white neighborhood. Look at the available of technology such as computer labs, functional libraries, AP/IB courses, SAT prep courses, high school subject proficiency assessments, level of experience of the teachers, compensation of said teachers, level of college counseling and a vast amount of other measures and it would be readily apparent that the difference between the two types of school systems are far from equal. Your experience of getting a 2340 on a SAT (umm aptitude test) does not prove that that school was equal. Besides n=1, it does not give causation or attribution to whether your performance was a result of the education given in school, what was learned within your home, your natural intelligence, your standardized testing abilities, etc.
America does not change at a rapid pace, this is apparent in our broken healthcare system, our ineffective political system, or severely lacking judicial system, our backward social expectations, and our fundamental lack of cultural competency. The only thing that changes rapidly in America is technology, is that the measure you use for ethical issues?
Surely, you are not suggesting that because we have a black president means racism prejudice, and minority exclusion in positions of power does not exist?
You’ve also supported the idea deep-rooted oppression in your example of Nigerians, the immigrant mindset, is distinct from that of the group that has been oppressed for generations, even though they share skin pigment.
For this last part, it’s hard to not be completely disgusted at the comment that “If black people were truly oppressed, they wouldnt be given opportunities to dominate American sports and athletics for millions of dollars.” This is just deplorable. You clearly have no understanding of American history. As discussed earlier, blacks have been systematically barred from many professions over the course of American history. Sports and entertainment industry was one of the earliest to become tolerant of blacks, only because of the huge financial advantages they provided to white businessmen. Boxing for example, was one of the first to allow blacks. You believe a sport that allowed bigoted white men to take advantage of young black men, pay them a fraction of their worth and watch them physically hurt each other is a gracious opportunity that blacks have been afforded? Many equate this to the attitude that blacks could only serve a role of entertainment for whites, but not as educators or positions of power. Still, racial discrimination was persistent black athletes were not compensated as much as whites. Sports are a true meritocracy. Blacks are not given opportunities to dominate sports, the best athlete makes the team, and the best athlete wins the game. There is no affirmative action blessing young, black kids like a fairy godmother with the opportunity to compete at the collegiate or professional level, it is a product of their physical ability. Take a poor black child in the hood that is athletic, offer him money to entertain the nation and make you even more money, he would be too centered on the fact that he is earning something to realize the inherent oppression and exploitation that is being done. He eventually makes more money than he could have imagined as a child in the ghetto. Finally, the reason you see so many black men in professional sports like basketball and football is because of this history of exploitation has led to a high valuation of sport professions in young minds. Children in poverty stricken areas have it ingrained in them that the only way to upward elevation is through a sport, or some other form of entertainment (singing, rapping, etc.).
Just bumping an old post, I'm in love with you..
Beginning to wonder why so much emphasis was placed on diversity in med school admissions. Thanks Internet for reminding me why it is needed.
