Obama Perpetuates Racial Discrimination
Paul Mirengoff of the Power Line blog has an op-ed in the Washington Times about the Obama administration’s selection of people who will all but ensure continued racial discrimination. Thomas Perez has been nominated to head the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice. Among other things, he believes in lowering standards for minority medical school applicants. See Obama Nominee Suggests Lower Quality Doctors for Minorities for more information.
Mirengoff writes:
Mr. Perez …is best-known for his efforts to develop cutting-edge theories with which to defend discrimination in favor of blacks and other minority groups.
In a 2006 article in the University of Maryland’s Journal of Health Care Law and Policy, Mr. Perez argued for the preferential treatment of minority applicants for medical school admission on the theory that minority medical school graduates are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to provide care to the poor.
…
However, Mr. Perez’s analysis is not intellectually honest because it fails to acknowledge that those admitted through racial preferences also are disproportionately likely to do poorly in medical school and, thereafter, disproportionately less likely to obtain important board certifications. In other words, lowering admission standards for minority applicants reduces the number of well-qualified doctors.
Mirengoff takes the analysis a step further by offering this insight: that black doctors serve the poor disproportionately may be the result of fewer options because of lesser qualifications (and not necessarily because of an altruistic impulse). Poorer communities are therefore being served by doctors admitted to medical schools under race preferences and are, by definition, less qualified than doctors who had to compete with everyone else.
Perez believes and advocates such a practice. If confirmed, he’ll continue advocating lower standards for minority medical school applicants. Occupying a high position in the Justice Department, he’d have a powerful platform from which to spread his ideas of “medical apartheid,” as Linda Chavez correctly calls it.
