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Comment by pcthrowaway450 | Hacker News Reader

Seems that there's a pipeline of affirmative action programs throughout the medical profession starting with admission to college and ending at the hospital where there are quotas for hiring black and latino doctors.

That's an absolutely terrifying state of affairs.

I want the best qualified people to treat me and my loved ones.

Edit: Seems that the more 'mainstream' crowd (read reddit-esque PC liberals) have arrived at this article and I'm now being downvoted (without any responses or counter arguments). As a result I've been rate-limited and I can no longer post. Cheers!

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There's that explicit pipeline for marginalized people. However, there's long been a much more powerful implicit pipeline in the form of unconscious biases, old boys' clubs, and the like.

The problem with the old boys's club is that it's essentially networking. In other words Japan Finland and China all would have this and is has little to do with bias. It's basically networking.

Yes there are exclusionary clubs which bar specific classes of minorities but on the whole they don't work that way. It's like saying frats are biased. Yes they are and the world would be better off without frats and their counterparts elsewhere, but I don't think they are mainly perpetuating racial discrimination. Rather they work as a job network and business network for their members.

I could be wrong. If so illustrate.

Have ... have you missed all the recent news of frats being sanctioned and branches even being closed down for racist behavior?

There was one frat in the south that was paying an old black man just to pick cotton. Seriously!

That's a good point. There indeed are some which exhibit this behavior, but that's not their main purpose. the purpose is to create networks. the same with black fraternities. They create networks for their members to plug into.

Yes, we know many of them engage in peripheral racist and misogynistic behavior, but those things are sideshows.

My point is forming these groups which foment cohesion and support for their members are rather common across cultures so to paint them as 'old boys's' networks is a misunderstanding of human nature.

Basically networks may be used to keep the other out --but that's not why or how they are formed. They are formed out of human nature to form groups which help their members --not that different from community groups, or PTAs, etc.

The old boy's club consisting of Asians, Indians, and Whites?

Isn't there a pending lawsuit even now about Asian engineers being categorically passed over for management promotions in favor of their white peers?

And this means I should accept a statistically inferior doctor to treat my heart attack... why?

"statistically inferior" is meaningless when it comes to individual capability.

Exactly. "Women are shorter than men on average," but that doesn't make a 7'2" woman any shorter in absolute terms.

Exactly. I can look at a 7'2" woman and see that she's tall.

What do I know about medicine? If my life depended on picking a tall person hidden behind a screen, would I choose a woman or a man?

This is what's stupid about so-called "affirmative action". They've set the situation up such that it's rational to make sure your doctor is white or east Asian.

Not really. Sure, statistics on whole populations favor whites and asians when it comes to test scores. But any doctor you may come in contact with has passed many tests of knowledge and ability at all levels of their education and career. They have seen many patients, have not had their medical license revoked, can still receive medical insurance, so on and so forth. Such a selection of individuals will not follow the distribution of intelligence one sees in the general population. At this point you are just as likely to have a crackpot white doctor as a crackpot black doctor.

No, I don't think so. Some people are more intelligent than other people, and it flows through to all their endeavors.

I agree with you in principle, but one thing to keep in mind about the medical community is that there is a legitimate need for broadly diverse medical professionals in a hospital. The reason is for community outreach -- someone of the same background (say, socio-racial-economic) can communicate with the patients easier and have a better outcome for the patients' health.

I am sympathetic to the desire for the best qualified people and affirmative action truly does scare me, but medicine does need a bit of special consideration here, in my opinion.

Yes I agree with the community outreach angle.

I'm not sure that outweighs the costs of AA.

Imagine your mom is diagnosed with cancer and you take her in for treatment. In walks a black doctor who will be overseeing her care. It is obviously possible that this doctor is just as qualified as any other, but given AA it's also more likely that this doctor - as opposed to a random indian or white or asian doctor - is less qualified.

So now what do you do? It's your mom's health on the line here.

We're literally talking about peoples' wellbeing potentially being sacrificed to the alter of political correctness.

Ignoring that the black doctor (and his/her children, and their children) may have only been able to escape the cycle of poverty and its innumerable harms to health because of AA.

> I want the best qualified people to treat me and my loved ones

Blacks and latinos want the same. The problem is that the best qualified people is not an absolute term. It changes with the situation and often means 'people like me'.

A thousand years ago a raped or abused woman had to be examinated by a male doctor; currently most female victims of domestic violence will feel much more comfortable talking and being examinated by a female physician if available.

Children are typically very stressed in hospitals. A black boy with a broken arm tend do trust easier a black young physician and is less traumatic for him. The old white male doctor could not be the right people for this particular job. In fact could be seem as unpolite or creepy by people with a different culture.

This is a solid reason for having different people in your team that can navigate by the pitfalls of the different cultures without being unintentionally rude. This makes the life in the hospital much easier for all.

> I want the best qualified people to treat me and my loved ones.

No, you really don't. You want a team of the best doctors and nurses. "Best" is not the same as "best qualified".

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