I'm not feeling OK about the force-feeding. Example: music-related periodicals are propping up Blacks. Advertising the same; fat lady models for the sake of equity BS.
My experience: racism AND misogyny in jazz. In performance situations, women were encouraged to be singers ONLY. It was assumed that black was better. I started college in '75. If you would like to know more about my story, pl feel free to contact me. BTW: I just ran for a House seat in VT kathitarrant.com
Perhaps this comment thread has already lost its steam but I'd like to toss some ideas into the mix anyway. The thing is that the progressive left just isn't doing a genuine cost/benefit analysis that should be done with any social policy (and DEI is a social policy). They name the benefits they think will accrue through DEI initiatives (whether real or imagined) but nowhere on the left have I seen a genuine analysis of the costs. In great podcasts like the Glenn Show I see many examples of the costs but I'd like to paint the bigger picture I think I see.
In the case of classical music, the cost of hiring a slightly inferior violinist may be "just" the sidelined career of the one that truly earned it and the diminished enjoyment of the astute listener who can hear the change. However we need to take this question more broadly. I'm certain there are costs in many more scenarios which have not been assessed because the greatest losses would be invisible. They cannot be seen, felt, or measured because we cannot be aware of that which did not manifest as a result of a DEI initiative. The only way to have an inkling of what might be lost is to try to imagine it.
Jordan Peterson talks about a Pareto type distribution with respect to creativity/productivity, meaning a small minority are responsible for the majority of human productivity. This is true in the most common sense way as we can see that it is only a small number of scientists, artists, etc, that produce a huge amount of the most cutting edge and impactful output. Now, let's imagine that the #1 person in any position, field, or formative process is replaced by a #2 or a #5 person (not to mention the numerous real life examples of people that aren't even qualified). At a first glance, maybe it's no big deal, maybe the #1 person will just go find somewhere else to realize their genius.
But maybe not. Anyone that has studied the biography of genius knows that it is not at all obvious it will be realized in this world. Breakthroughs and works of art are more often a perfect storm of causes and conditions than an inevitability. How many geniuses cite that one person or one (merit-based) opportunity that changed everything? Or I could say it like this: Behind every Kanye is a Donda. Genius needs recognition, support and opportunity to flourish.
And while musical performance and sports may have small margins between the #1 and #2 spots, just how far down the ladder is the second best contemporary physicist after Stephen Hawking? In many fields the best performer is in their own league. Yet we could easily imagine a young Stephen Hawking today who would be denied his ideal college admission because of his "whiteness", and all the downstream effects that would have hampered his genius (diminished education/mentorship, research facilities, grants, exposure, etc).
We could similarly imagine the world without any particular invention, song, novel, philosopher, etc, that literally changed our lives to form the people we've become. But it's worse than that because the thought experiment only really works in retrospect. The nature of genius is that we often can't even IMAGINE it until it happens. The pre-Einstein world could never have imagined the theory of relativity. So my argument is this: To the extent DEI initiatives are successful (particularly at the highest level) is the extent to which our HUMAN INHERITANCE writ large will suffer beyond imagination. DEI might not destroy our world but it will make it that much less rich, beautiful, and may very well deprive us of what we need. We are in a world in crisis where we lack the once-in-a-century diplomats that we need, where we need breakthroughs for our ecological crises, where we need medical breakthroughs for things like Alzheimer's. It's not an ideal time in our history to jeopardize the leading edge of human development. Sure, people will still succeed in spite of DEI initiatives (though it's already worse than most people think), and sure, a sidelined genius may only cause a delay for certain inevitable inventions, but even then, what is the cost of a 10-year delay in a cure for Alzheimer's? A 10-year delay for hydrogen fuel cells that revolutionize energy systems? (And we could continue this analysis to include the local heroes, like the cost of an inspiring high school band teacher being replaced by a mediocre one).
It goes without saying that a DEI initiative which elevates a #2 person to a #1 spot will not magically give the #2 person the gifts and capacities of the #1 person. Therefore the only REAL way to address inequities (real or perceived) is to support and insist upon merit. Otherwise, in tearing down our most important contributors we'll all pay costs we cannot imagine.
I would hope that if this were all pointed out to the sincere leftist they'd realize that the meritocracy is the pinnacle of social justice and should be unflaggingly supported. If we appealed to their human core, they'd easily admit that they could care less about the "identity" of the person to invent the cure to their family member's illness (or whatever). To me it is this existential argument that is a fundamental defeat of any DEI policy, affirmative action, etc. The meritocracy realizes the ideal of BOTH honoring the individual AND offering greatest benefit to society.
Sorry to say, the primary idea of this conversation was enshrouded by bad grammar, absurd and possibly insulting phrases like "good white person," and most of all, illogical and/or subjective assertions. The St. Matthew Passion, the Enigma Variations, Britten's War Requiem, Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras, Renaissance madrigals, -- these magnificent pieces rise above tribal animosities. An effective conductor looks for players who play the right notes, rhythm, articulations, follow direction, and work effectively to interpret the music. Whether they come from Mars, have purple skin and hair, or identify with a certain haplogroup is completely irrelevant.
Could we stop using 'race' or alleged skin color in identifying people? As a Zulu speaker once noted, nobody in the world is actually black. Or white.
Fortunately, most classical music has already been recorded, exists in millions of copies on CDs, and is beyond the reach of the wokists. If Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is never again competently recorded, I am content--I have several copies that I like.
Yep. You can’t fight racism with more racism. Just doesn’t work. The cream will most often rise to the top. It’s sad, all those guilty white Wokies. Were I black I’d be pissed; you’re no longer human but solely ‘black.’ (Whatever that term even means at this point.) Art seems to be in its final death-throes, at least in popular institutions. Good news is we have platforms like Substack. I think deep down inside white wokies know they’re full of shit but the political-cultural train has already left the station and it ain’t coming back; that baby is going to go right off the generational cliff. Ironically, seeing as every generation rebels against the one before it, perhaps our saviors will be Gen-Z or the generation after them. Pendulum swings. Backlash is real. America has too much time/money/privilege and social media combined with agenda-driven legacy media have fractured the American mind to levels of absurdity. Hate to say it but it’s only going to get worse over the next few years.
What would make the most sense (to create a system with no possible race or otherly- oriented selections, keep blind auditions, and appoint each musician a number. That way their name cannot give away gender, race, ethnicity.. it will simply be flautist #73 for example. I would not want to be a diversity selection! I'd much rather get in based on merit. This is out of hand! Musicianship is the easiest selection model there is to mask who is behind the instrument. So absurd.
Most orchestral musicians (or other classical performers) are perfectionists and completely intolerant of anyone whose playing is inferior in any way. Diversity hires won't fit in unless they meet those objective standards. Make one mistake and you are publicly humiliated. Make two . . you are on your way to being ostracized.
Maybe it’s partly just chance, but, anecdotally, an astounding proportion of non-immigrant black women I’m encountering lately, or reading about, or hearing about, locally (I live in a large city but not one of the largest few, in a slightly right-of-center state, near a massive and sprawling university medical system and another huge network) are younger doctors, residents, or med students. It’s truly startling, even if not a statistically representative sample of a larger phenomenon. Does anyone doubt that larger phenomenon is occurring, whatever the precise statistics? (given what Heather MacDonald and others in City Journal have reported). We’re talking about people drawn from slightly over half of a group that makes up approximately 13% of the US population and a field which is still “the profession of professions” in terms of earning potential and social status. How can it be that suddenly a vastly higher proportion of black women are entering and graduating from medical schools, including programs so many highly-qualified applicants if all backgrounds would almost DIE (pun intended) to get into? Have we seen a similarly sharp and startling rise among this cohort in terms of MCAT scores or other standardized, objective measures of merit?
Personally, my feelings are mixed. As Glenn always argues so eloquently, these are each different people, individual human beings. Some are brilliant. Some are relatively mediocre. Some are not only highly-competent but also have warm, engaging personalities. Some have likely overcome a lot through hard work, perseverance and talent. Others might be the quite average but cosseted children of lawyers who themselves benefitted enormously from racial preferences in admissions and hiring a generation ago. Some are fantastic young doctors who will benefit patients of all backgrounds and identities for many years, and who truly may have been passed over or felt sure they had little chance of admission into relatively recently. Some might be both incompetent and personally nasty. But I can imagine the sense of joy and possibility and reward for genuine achievement virtually all surely felt upon reaching this profession. It’s churlish not to feel at least some secondhand joy at that. But I also think of an old friend, a white woman who was eminently bright, competent, capable and extremely determined and who was motivated to attend med school for all the right reasons. But she had little shot because of one really bad college semester in particular during which her father who hadn’t much been in the picture growing up completely disappeared. She was treated like damaged goods. It took several years of her humbling herself as a lab assistant for a cancer researcher and countless hours of selfish, sincerely committed volunteer work before finally, after many years and more rejections, a relatively marginal program finally gave her that shot. Predictably, she absolutely thrived and became every bit the smart, competent, truly caring doctor one hopes for. The impression I’m now beginning to get is that pretty much any halfway bright, halfway motivated black woman who wants to go to med school gets a spot, immediately, almost no questions asked. Whatever objective metrics used in admissions aren’t in “her” favor are discounted or systemically delegitmized, or eliminated entirely. Once admitted, any measures of competence, knowledge, or achievement in which “she” doesn’t excel are suddenly invalid, if not presumed to be racially discriminatory at “her” expense. Meanwhile, MacDonald and others report larger proportions of the very highest-qualified Asian and white (especially male) candidates for med school are opting for other fields entirely, ones in which DEI/DIE isn’t yet such a controlling factor re: who has a legitimate chance of seeing their objective merit and performance recognized. Part of me likes seeing so many youngish black women ascend to such a challenging, rewarding, high-status profession. Part of the assumption underlying the rationale for their privileged criteria for admission and hiring seems to be that there is a unique and profound public health crisis impacting black Americans and that the cause of this is entirely or almost entirely various kinds of supposed implicit bias, residual individual racism, and of course all of the ubiquitous if mostly invisible forms of systemic, structural, and institutional racism. Black patients need black doctors, etc. Black doctors all somehow have an all-encompassing wisdom and superior judgment based on standpoint in society and lived experience. How are health outcomes, I wonder, for working class white or Latino men? Are oppressive systems deleteriously impacting their health - or are they making bad choices for which they are chiefly responsible? Maybe their own toxic masculinity is to blame. Maybe more doctors who are black women will ameliorate these issues, too. Or maybe their lives don’t really matter so much. There is absolutely an element of the fetishization of skin color and race - that black patients are holy victims and any little black girl who feels like being a doctor should automatically be first in line. I think about all of the other highly-promising aspiring doctors, prospective med students of other backgrounds who are brilliant, kind, determined, who overcome much themselves, and whose dreams are dashed. Inevitably, I also think of the cumulative bigger-picture consequences in terms of the quality of medical care. Maybe in some ways it will actually be improved. But, unless every previous objective metric of knowledge, excellence, and skill was just invalid, some irrelevant vestige of bias, surely scraping most of those measures of ability in order to achieve what’s now considered an equitable result will have a very real world impact on the decree of expertise and quality of care. Maybe the farcical end point will be when all black women are automatically conferred the title, MD, at birth, and all doctors must be black women in order to be licensed and a practice. There are situations in which being a solid doctor with an empathetic personality is good enough. There are other situations in which differences in knowledge and skill will determine whether patients live or die. The other ineluctable issue is what the broader public will think - how they will see the profession and how they will perceive doctors of these identities which are now so obviously highly-privileged in admissions and hiring for some of the most challenging, highest-status, most remunerated professions there are. No one will be able to say a public word. But what will they think and what will they share in their most private conversations?
The practice of medicine requires several things: Reasonable intelligence, the ability to relate to people in an empathetic way, the ability to think critically and react and respond to crisis situations without panicking. I would imagine most people would want a competent, caring doctor who will do their best for their patients. I could see a situation where some would prefer doctors who "looked" like them and I can certainly understand women preferring women doctors as their gynecologists. However, for all the talk of diversity, who really cares what one's doctor looks like as long as they are competent? And let's be real, in today's medical climate, you may have numerous doctors involved in your care at different times, ER doctors, Family Doctors, Urgent Care, specialists, etc. Additionally, there may be cultural ideas about what careers are the most preferable. Maybe more Asians prefer medicine than Whites, Blacks or Latinos. You can't force people into careers they don't really want, people will self-select the careers they prefer. On the other hand, let's look at ways to improve school systems for all kids, especially the socio-economically deprived so we can give them a level playing field from the bottom up, not favoritism at the top.
I know this story was even covered in the NYT and is getting a fair amount of play nationally, re: the empty-headed audacity of the complaining students and the craven “our wealthy customers are always right” cave by the administration. How does anyone take NYU seriously anymore when it comes to the hard sciences? How does anyone take seriously NYU grads who apply for medical school? (Very unfair to the professors still trying to teach with rigor and demand serious effort from their students; very unfair to the truly accomplished STEM grads from NYU whose reputations may be affected by this stunt). But this story really says it all. How much does NYU cost? And what does a graduate really get other than four years in lower Manhattan and all the non-academic amenities such schools now offer their mostly wealthy customers? Would-be med students at a supposedly top school, now demanding organic chemistry be dumbed down enough so that pretty much anyone there who wants to be a doctor (for what - money and status?) can get in without having to show they have the knowledge, work ethic, and intellectual chops to even get through a core prerequisite. That pretty much says it all. What does the world’s phoniest, least impressive “public intellectual”, Ibram X, says we should use as our key criterion: the students’ “desire to learn”?! Not, of course a desire to learn manifested in rigorous study - or even going to class, watching the videos the professor made and posted at his own expense, or making a serious effort to understand what in exam questions was even being asked. No, just the assertion that they want to learn (and, let me guess, never ending accusations that any failure on their part is a sign of some sort of racism, either personal or institutional, interfering with that desire to learn). Look, that surgeon really “desired” to perform the transplant competently, but personal and systemic biases interfered in their ability to actually do so. That can only mean we must double and redouble “antiracist” racial discrimination against the most demonstrably knowledgeable and competent potential doctors until enough demonstrably less knowledgeable and competent feel that their desire to learn and desire to ascend to the top of some of the most challenging professions most consequential to public health and safety are duly honored and respected.
Thanks Glenn and John for continuing to take on this difficult topic.
Unblinding orchestra auditions is an action taken by a Diversity Officer in a Position of Power applying Critical Theory in the form of Equity policies. The purpose is to advance Black musicians thereby producing more Equitable outcomes for Blacks as an identity group. In this campaign, the Black musician's individual merit and ability is secondary to his Group Identity. He is a soldier holding the line for all Blacks, not a musician playing an instrument. This same game is being played across government, military, education, and corporations in the Western world. Occasionally LGBT+ is part of the rubric, if one is present and makes her pronouns known during the process of candidate screening.
For some reason Barack Obama comes to mind.
I'd really like to hear Glenn and John directly address DEI's compatibility with Western civilization. I'd like to hear them talk about the rise of DEI during the Presidency of Barack Obama.
I'm not feeling OK about the force-feeding. Example: music-related periodicals are propping up Blacks. Advertising the same; fat lady models for the sake of equity BS.
My experience: racism AND misogyny in jazz. In performance situations, women were encouraged to be singers ONLY. It was assumed that black was better. I started college in '75. If you would like to know more about my story, pl feel free to contact me. BTW: I just ran for a House seat in VT kathitarrant.com
Don wrote a few months ago about the San Antonio Symphony. https://donb.substack.com/p/san-antonio-dei-and-mail-from-an
Sadly, there's an update: https://www.sfcv.org/articles/music-news/san-antonio-symphony-dead-long-live-san-antonio-philharmonic
Politically correcting themselves out of existence.
Perhaps this comment thread has already lost its steam but I'd like to toss some ideas into the mix anyway. The thing is that the progressive left just isn't doing a genuine cost/benefit analysis that should be done with any social policy (and DEI is a social policy). They name the benefits they think will accrue through DEI initiatives (whether real or imagined) but nowhere on the left have I seen a genuine analysis of the costs. In great podcasts like the Glenn Show I see many examples of the costs but I'd like to paint the bigger picture I think I see.
In the case of classical music, the cost of hiring a slightly inferior violinist may be "just" the sidelined career of the one that truly earned it and the diminished enjoyment of the astute listener who can hear the change. However we need to take this question more broadly. I'm certain there are costs in many more scenarios which have not been assessed because the greatest losses would be invisible. They cannot be seen, felt, or measured because we cannot be aware of that which did not manifest as a result of a DEI initiative. The only way to have an inkling of what might be lost is to try to imagine it.
Jordan Peterson talks about a Pareto type distribution with respect to creativity/productivity, meaning a small minority are responsible for the majority of human productivity. This is true in the most common sense way as we can see that it is only a small number of scientists, artists, etc, that produce a huge amount of the most cutting edge and impactful output. Now, let's imagine that the #1 person in any position, field, or formative process is replaced by a #2 or a #5 person (not to mention the numerous real life examples of people that aren't even qualified). At a first glance, maybe it's no big deal, maybe the #1 person will just go find somewhere else to realize their genius.
But maybe not. Anyone that has studied the biography of genius knows that it is not at all obvious it will be realized in this world. Breakthroughs and works of art are more often a perfect storm of causes and conditions than an inevitability. How many geniuses cite that one person or one (merit-based) opportunity that changed everything? Or I could say it like this: Behind every Kanye is a Donda. Genius needs recognition, support and opportunity to flourish.
And while musical performance and sports may have small margins between the #1 and #2 spots, just how far down the ladder is the second best contemporary physicist after Stephen Hawking? In many fields the best performer is in their own league. Yet we could easily imagine a young Stephen Hawking today who would be denied his ideal college admission because of his "whiteness", and all the downstream effects that would have hampered his genius (diminished education/mentorship, research facilities, grants, exposure, etc).
We could similarly imagine the world without any particular invention, song, novel, philosopher, etc, that literally changed our lives to form the people we've become. But it's worse than that because the thought experiment only really works in retrospect. The nature of genius is that we often can't even IMAGINE it until it happens. The pre-Einstein world could never have imagined the theory of relativity. So my argument is this: To the extent DEI initiatives are successful (particularly at the highest level) is the extent to which our HUMAN INHERITANCE writ large will suffer beyond imagination. DEI might not destroy our world but it will make it that much less rich, beautiful, and may very well deprive us of what we need. We are in a world in crisis where we lack the once-in-a-century diplomats that we need, where we need breakthroughs for our ecological crises, where we need medical breakthroughs for things like Alzheimer's. It's not an ideal time in our history to jeopardize the leading edge of human development. Sure, people will still succeed in spite of DEI initiatives (though it's already worse than most people think), and sure, a sidelined genius may only cause a delay for certain inevitable inventions, but even then, what is the cost of a 10-year delay in a cure for Alzheimer's? A 10-year delay for hydrogen fuel cells that revolutionize energy systems? (And we could continue this analysis to include the local heroes, like the cost of an inspiring high school band teacher being replaced by a mediocre one).
It goes without saying that a DEI initiative which elevates a #2 person to a #1 spot will not magically give the #2 person the gifts and capacities of the #1 person. Therefore the only REAL way to address inequities (real or perceived) is to support and insist upon merit. Otherwise, in tearing down our most important contributors we'll all pay costs we cannot imagine.
I would hope that if this were all pointed out to the sincere leftist they'd realize that the meritocracy is the pinnacle of social justice and should be unflaggingly supported. If we appealed to their human core, they'd easily admit that they could care less about the "identity" of the person to invent the cure to their family member's illness (or whatever). To me it is this existential argument that is a fundamental defeat of any DEI policy, affirmative action, etc. The meritocracy realizes the ideal of BOTH honoring the individual AND offering greatest benefit to society.
The whole point of these efforts is the destruction of such things.
Sorry to say, the primary idea of this conversation was enshrouded by bad grammar, absurd and possibly insulting phrases like "good white person," and most of all, illogical and/or subjective assertions. The St. Matthew Passion, the Enigma Variations, Britten's War Requiem, Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras, Renaissance madrigals, -- these magnificent pieces rise above tribal animosities. An effective conductor looks for players who play the right notes, rhythm, articulations, follow direction, and work effectively to interpret the music. Whether they come from Mars, have purple skin and hair, or identify with a certain haplogroup is completely irrelevant.
Could we stop using 'race' or alleged skin color in identifying people? As a Zulu speaker once noted, nobody in the world is actually black. Or white.
Right on. People want to be well thought of, and think well of themselves so they virtue signal. But it's not honest
Maybe dishonesty is a sin for good reason.
Fortunately, most classical music has already been recorded, exists in millions of copies on CDs, and is beyond the reach of the wokists. If Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is never again competently recorded, I am content--I have several copies that I like.
They made a movie about this kind of thing....Idiocracy
Yep. You can’t fight racism with more racism. Just doesn’t work. The cream will most often rise to the top. It’s sad, all those guilty white Wokies. Were I black I’d be pissed; you’re no longer human but solely ‘black.’ (Whatever that term even means at this point.) Art seems to be in its final death-throes, at least in popular institutions. Good news is we have platforms like Substack. I think deep down inside white wokies know they’re full of shit but the political-cultural train has already left the station and it ain’t coming back; that baby is going to go right off the generational cliff. Ironically, seeing as every generation rebels against the one before it, perhaps our saviors will be Gen-Z or the generation after them. Pendulum swings. Backlash is real. America has too much time/money/privilege and social media combined with agenda-driven legacy media have fractured the American mind to levels of absurdity. Hate to say it but it’s only going to get worse over the next few years.
Michael Mohr
Sincere American Writing
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
What would make the most sense (to create a system with no possible race or otherly- oriented selections, keep blind auditions, and appoint each musician a number. That way their name cannot give away gender, race, ethnicity.. it will simply be flautist #73 for example. I would not want to be a diversity selection! I'd much rather get in based on merit. This is out of hand! Musicianship is the easiest selection model there is to mask who is behind the instrument. So absurd.
Most orchestral musicians (or other classical performers) are perfectionists and completely intolerant of anyone whose playing is inferior in any way. Diversity hires won't fit in unless they meet those objective standards. Make one mistake and you are publicly humiliated. Make two . . you are on your way to being ostracized.
For those interested in a critique of the Goldin and Rouse paper on blind auditions: an overview by Columbia's Andrew Gelman (a specialist in causal inference) of criticisms of the original paper: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-orchestra-auditions-really-benefit-women/ (Answer: Unclear. Possibly not. Possibly a very little. Definitely not a clear case.)
Tolstoy is mine.
Let's be sure that goes in your bio, Glenn!
Hendrix, Guy , the 3 Kings and many more didn’t need DEI. Just ask Clapton, Beck etc
Maybe it’s partly just chance, but, anecdotally, an astounding proportion of non-immigrant black women I’m encountering lately, or reading about, or hearing about, locally (I live in a large city but not one of the largest few, in a slightly right-of-center state, near a massive and sprawling university medical system and another huge network) are younger doctors, residents, or med students. It’s truly startling, even if not a statistically representative sample of a larger phenomenon. Does anyone doubt that larger phenomenon is occurring, whatever the precise statistics? (given what Heather MacDonald and others in City Journal have reported). We’re talking about people drawn from slightly over half of a group that makes up approximately 13% of the US population and a field which is still “the profession of professions” in terms of earning potential and social status. How can it be that suddenly a vastly higher proportion of black women are entering and graduating from medical schools, including programs so many highly-qualified applicants if all backgrounds would almost DIE (pun intended) to get into? Have we seen a similarly sharp and startling rise among this cohort in terms of MCAT scores or other standardized, objective measures of merit?
Personally, my feelings are mixed. As Glenn always argues so eloquently, these are each different people, individual human beings. Some are brilliant. Some are relatively mediocre. Some are not only highly-competent but also have warm, engaging personalities. Some have likely overcome a lot through hard work, perseverance and talent. Others might be the quite average but cosseted children of lawyers who themselves benefitted enormously from racial preferences in admissions and hiring a generation ago. Some are fantastic young doctors who will benefit patients of all backgrounds and identities for many years, and who truly may have been passed over or felt sure they had little chance of admission into relatively recently. Some might be both incompetent and personally nasty. But I can imagine the sense of joy and possibility and reward for genuine achievement virtually all surely felt upon reaching this profession. It’s churlish not to feel at least some secondhand joy at that. But I also think of an old friend, a white woman who was eminently bright, competent, capable and extremely determined and who was motivated to attend med school for all the right reasons. But she had little shot because of one really bad college semester in particular during which her father who hadn’t much been in the picture growing up completely disappeared. She was treated like damaged goods. It took several years of her humbling herself as a lab assistant for a cancer researcher and countless hours of selfish, sincerely committed volunteer work before finally, after many years and more rejections, a relatively marginal program finally gave her that shot. Predictably, she absolutely thrived and became every bit the smart, competent, truly caring doctor one hopes for. The impression I’m now beginning to get is that pretty much any halfway bright, halfway motivated black woman who wants to go to med school gets a spot, immediately, almost no questions asked. Whatever objective metrics used in admissions aren’t in “her” favor are discounted or systemically delegitmized, or eliminated entirely. Once admitted, any measures of competence, knowledge, or achievement in which “she” doesn’t excel are suddenly invalid, if not presumed to be racially discriminatory at “her” expense. Meanwhile, MacDonald and others report larger proportions of the very highest-qualified Asian and white (especially male) candidates for med school are opting for other fields entirely, ones in which DEI/DIE isn’t yet such a controlling factor re: who has a legitimate chance of seeing their objective merit and performance recognized. Part of me likes seeing so many youngish black women ascend to such a challenging, rewarding, high-status profession. Part of the assumption underlying the rationale for their privileged criteria for admission and hiring seems to be that there is a unique and profound public health crisis impacting black Americans and that the cause of this is entirely or almost entirely various kinds of supposed implicit bias, residual individual racism, and of course all of the ubiquitous if mostly invisible forms of systemic, structural, and institutional racism. Black patients need black doctors, etc. Black doctors all somehow have an all-encompassing wisdom and superior judgment based on standpoint in society and lived experience. How are health outcomes, I wonder, for working class white or Latino men? Are oppressive systems deleteriously impacting their health - or are they making bad choices for which they are chiefly responsible? Maybe their own toxic masculinity is to blame. Maybe more doctors who are black women will ameliorate these issues, too. Or maybe their lives don’t really matter so much. There is absolutely an element of the fetishization of skin color and race - that black patients are holy victims and any little black girl who feels like being a doctor should automatically be first in line. I think about all of the other highly-promising aspiring doctors, prospective med students of other backgrounds who are brilliant, kind, determined, who overcome much themselves, and whose dreams are dashed. Inevitably, I also think of the cumulative bigger-picture consequences in terms of the quality of medical care. Maybe in some ways it will actually be improved. But, unless every previous objective metric of knowledge, excellence, and skill was just invalid, some irrelevant vestige of bias, surely scraping most of those measures of ability in order to achieve what’s now considered an equitable result will have a very real world impact on the decree of expertise and quality of care. Maybe the farcical end point will be when all black women are automatically conferred the title, MD, at birth, and all doctors must be black women in order to be licensed and a practice. There are situations in which being a solid doctor with an empathetic personality is good enough. There are other situations in which differences in knowledge and skill will determine whether patients live or die. The other ineluctable issue is what the broader public will think - how they will see the profession and how they will perceive doctors of these identities which are now so obviously highly-privileged in admissions and hiring for some of the most challenging, highest-status, most remunerated professions there are. No one will be able to say a public word. But what will they think and what will they share in their most private conversations?
The practice of medicine requires several things: Reasonable intelligence, the ability to relate to people in an empathetic way, the ability to think critically and react and respond to crisis situations without panicking. I would imagine most people would want a competent, caring doctor who will do their best for their patients. I could see a situation where some would prefer doctors who "looked" like them and I can certainly understand women preferring women doctors as their gynecologists. However, for all the talk of diversity, who really cares what one's doctor looks like as long as they are competent? And let's be real, in today's medical climate, you may have numerous doctors involved in your care at different times, ER doctors, Family Doctors, Urgent Care, specialists, etc. Additionally, there may be cultural ideas about what careers are the most preferable. Maybe more Asians prefer medicine than Whites, Blacks or Latinos. You can't force people into careers they don't really want, people will self-select the careers they prefer. On the other hand, let's look at ways to improve school systems for all kids, especially the socio-economically deprived so we can give them a level playing field from the bottom up, not favoritism at the top.
https://reason.com/2022/10/03/maitland-jones-jr-organic-chemistry-nyu-fired/
I know this story was even covered in the NYT and is getting a fair amount of play nationally, re: the empty-headed audacity of the complaining students and the craven “our wealthy customers are always right” cave by the administration. How does anyone take NYU seriously anymore when it comes to the hard sciences? How does anyone take seriously NYU grads who apply for medical school? (Very unfair to the professors still trying to teach with rigor and demand serious effort from their students; very unfair to the truly accomplished STEM grads from NYU whose reputations may be affected by this stunt). But this story really says it all. How much does NYU cost? And what does a graduate really get other than four years in lower Manhattan and all the non-academic amenities such schools now offer their mostly wealthy customers? Would-be med students at a supposedly top school, now demanding organic chemistry be dumbed down enough so that pretty much anyone there who wants to be a doctor (for what - money and status?) can get in without having to show they have the knowledge, work ethic, and intellectual chops to even get through a core prerequisite. That pretty much says it all. What does the world’s phoniest, least impressive “public intellectual”, Ibram X, says we should use as our key criterion: the students’ “desire to learn”?! Not, of course a desire to learn manifested in rigorous study - or even going to class, watching the videos the professor made and posted at his own expense, or making a serious effort to understand what in exam questions was even being asked. No, just the assertion that they want to learn (and, let me guess, never ending accusations that any failure on their part is a sign of some sort of racism, either personal or institutional, interfering with that desire to learn). Look, that surgeon really “desired” to perform the transplant competently, but personal and systemic biases interfered in their ability to actually do so. That can only mean we must double and redouble “antiracist” racial discrimination against the most demonstrably knowledgeable and competent potential doctors until enough demonstrably less knowledgeable and competent feel that their desire to learn and desire to ascend to the top of some of the most challenging professions most consequential to public health and safety are duly honored and respected.
Our enemies need not fear us, we are destroying ourselves quite nicely from within.
Thanks Glenn and John for continuing to take on this difficult topic.
Unblinding orchestra auditions is an action taken by a Diversity Officer in a Position of Power applying Critical Theory in the form of Equity policies. The purpose is to advance Black musicians thereby producing more Equitable outcomes for Blacks as an identity group. In this campaign, the Black musician's individual merit and ability is secondary to his Group Identity. He is a soldier holding the line for all Blacks, not a musician playing an instrument. This same game is being played across government, military, education, and corporations in the Western world. Occasionally LGBT+ is part of the rubric, if one is present and makes her pronouns known during the process of candidate screening.
For some reason Barack Obama comes to mind.
I'd really like to hear Glenn and John directly address DEI's compatibility with Western civilization. I'd like to hear them talk about the rise of DEI during the Presidency of Barack Obama.