February 23, 2023

"When I graduated with a medical degree in 1973, a Black woman in a class of mostly White men, there was a real sense that the days of obsessing over skin color..."

"... and making race-based assumptions about our fellow human beings was finally fading — and, hopefully, soon gone for good. Apparently not. That racial obsession has come rushing back — in academia, politics, business and even in my beloved medical profession. But now it’s coming from the opposite direction...."


"I reject the unscientific accusation that people are defined by their race, not by their individual beliefs and choices. It is little consolation that studies are finding implicit bias training has no effect on its intended targets, and might even make matters worse. Think about the message this mandate sends to Black physicians. It suggests that I should be wary of my White colleagues because, after all, they’re biased against people like me. Sure, they can undergo frequent training, but their bias is always going to be there, beneath the surface, threatening to rear its ugly, racist head.... Since I became a physician, I have seen exactly one instance of racism in health care — and it was from a patient, not a fellow physician. As for my colleagues, I have been consistently impressed with the conscientious, individualized care they have provided to patients of every race and culture... [T]he message to patients is much worse. Black people are, in effect, being told that White physicians are likely to quite literally damage our health...."

She's getting trashed in the comments over there.

74 comments:

paminwi said...

“She’s getting trashed”
Of course, she is challenging the narrative.
Black people must NOT do that.
She’s an Uncle Tom because of it.

Unless this garbage philosophy is mandated by your employer to hear and/or read tell the race baiters to STFU and move on.

Dave Begley said...

Another high-tech lynching of a Black person who refuses to follow liberal dogma.

The Clarence Thomas hearings were the tipping point for me on my conversion to conservatism. Justice Thomas married a Creighton classmate of mine. I was horrified about the ambush and circus the Dems pulled on Clarence and Ginni.

Mayor Pete famously labelled me as a racist. But it was a Black man who saved my political soul and I will always be grateful to Justice Thomas for his courage.

I found out in the past two weeks they I have a large number of political enemies; including many Nebraska state senators. It's because I'm against unreliable and expensive wind and solar energy and sacrificing the health of minors on the liberal trans dogma. So be it.

Sebastian said...

"making race-based assumptions about our fellow human beings was finally fading"

A little naive. Since the 1960s, a whole prog apparatus evolved that depends on just such assumptions.

"That racial obsession has come rushing back"

It's too useful. Its rushing back shows that nothing can be done: it can always rush back again. Race obsession is the eternal tool of American prog politics.

"I’m appalled by mandated implicit bias training"

Again, a little naive. The point is not to effect any improvement, but to impose orthodoxy. Thou shalt submit.

"She's getting trashed in the comments over there."

Of course. Nothing can be done. Progs can and will always resume race mongering when it serves their purpose. Tear down the country, create a dependent clientele, keep the culture in a constant churn, vilify the heretics--what's not to like?

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Progressive Woke authoritarians - led by WHITE Crook Joe - want everyone divided, with the hate machine turned up to 100. The progressive Woke Authoritarian crooks benefit with power and money.

See here for the proof

n.n said...

Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) is the umbrella religious dogma of DIE policy and class-disordered ideologies. One step forward, two steps backward. #HateLovesAbortion

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Progressivism is the real disease.

rhhardin said...

Blacks who don't think that whites are the problem are savaged by the left.

n.n said...

minority report

Enigma said...

When one keeps their eye on the ball -- professionally -- their skills show and their weaknesses too. When one is not anxious and fixated on social comparisons (i.e., self conscious) they can perform at their best. Groups function well when task-focused, and over time anyone might become comfortable working with a capable tall, short, fat, thin, pretty, handsome, ugly, other-race, other-culture person.

People cannot and will not function at their best when constantly obsessing about one dimension and not taking each person on their behavior and functional performance. They also will never function well around hostile people, be they they same subgroup or not.

Some may profit from hostility and grievances, or they have an ingrained sense of inferiority. Perhaps separation is required for those who cannot or will not work with outsiders. And if so, segregation, redlining, and apartheid return by choice and another political pendulum swing is complete!!!!????!!!!

MadisonMan said...

She's being trashed because people make a lot of money with that training.

rehajm said...

My PCP was ranting about med schools moving to pass/fail and students not being being placed according to merit. Are you comfortable with your doctor being placed based on race?

Temujin said...

It always makes me shake my head when common sense is so rare that it gets it's own article in WaPo or NYT.

n.n said...

Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination. It conflates sex and gender to reduces human beings to a gender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes) construct. It denies life to "burdens" deemed unworthy of life. The dogma is part of the twilight faith and Pro-Choice ethical religion adopted by Progressive Liberal sects with a left-wing (i.e. authoritarian) bent under class-disordered ideologies.

James K said...

No doubt she's also rightfully concerned that blacks doctors will be stigmatized as not as competent as white males who now have a bigger hurdle to get into med school.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

What wonderful wisdom from lived experience.

Too bad the woke don't care! They want power at all costs, even a racial war. I recently saw a poll that showed black college students are 30% less likely to agree with the statement "I will be treated fairly" by the college they attend than just 30 years ago during the hellaciously racist crime-fighting nineties.

n.n said...

Singleton is a physician, of female sex and feminine gender where Nature and nature's bias has an evolutionary design, and black as a low-information attribute where color is a reference and her name and achievement are not.

Ampersand said...

During the Cold War, communists often would use the phrase "objective correlation of forces" to describe the focus of their technique of analyzing current and future events. I didn't often agree with the communists, but I did agree with them that seeing the future clearly requires unemotional consideration of the power vectors that were in place, and likely to develop.
Here, implicit bias training and rhetoric is just one part of a campaign by the dominant institutions in US society to essentialize every human being as the sum of that person's identity categories. I don't believe anyone came up with this campaign as a conscious conspiracy, but the effect is nevertheless the same as if someone did. And the effects will be devastating. When the Supreme Court this year finds "benign" racial discrimination to be illegal, as it likely will, you will see a counter-reaction that will make the response to the Dobbs decision look like a footnote. It will be condemned, not only by the nonprofits, the Democrats and the activists, but also by by the mainstream media, the Fortune 500, the labor unions, the Chamber of Commerce, the entertainment and publishing industries, and the world of finance. We are headed toward what I fear will be an explosive finale to the social justice movement. Government can't legislate social harmony, but it CAN legislate its opposite. Fasten your seat belts. Turbulence coming. And it's coming at a time when major foreign powers have either launched, or are about launch, wars of aggression.

Creola Soul said...

We are stepping back from MLKs dream….that the world would be color or race blind.
The way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race. Don’t say “He is the first black EPA Administrator”, just say so and so is the new EPA Administrator. The “Black Anthem” is likewise divisive. Just be Americans! We have a great opportunity to step forward and live MLKs dream.

Drago said...

paminwi: "She’s getting trashed”
Of course, she is challenging the narrative.
Black people must NOT do that.
She’s an Uncle Tom because of it."

Quite so. It's a universal truth that leftists cannot and will not tolerate any minority person who goes even slightly against leftist dogma.

Invariably, those minority persons will have their intellect, character and integrity attacked viciously by partisan dems.

We've seen that very thing at Althouse blog with several of the usual democratical partisans, most notably LLR Chuck, whose long history of virulent racial attacks against minority members that are conservative or simply don't toe the lefty line is quite instructive on that count.

Lexington Green said...

The old model of integrationist, color blind race relations is not only dead, but is itself racist wrongthink.

The new moral-political order will not permit the old views to be voiced aloud, and will punish those who do.

Ice Nine said...

I spent half my medical career in majority Black areas, with the majority of my patients of course being Black. Every one of my colleagues, mostly White, took care of all of our patients with equal intent and equal intensity. I spent my entire career hearing about this bias against Black patients and was therefore on the lookout for it. It never materialized. That's because the idea is complete rubbish. Physicians take care of their patients and strive to make all of them well - period.

Big Mike said...

When I travel aboard a plane, I am not worried about the diversity and equity of the cockpit crew. I am worried about their competence, and whether we will return to ground on our wheels on a runway, or will we return to ground nose first into a hillside.

Likewise I do not care about the diversity and equity of my PCP or the specialists he sends me to. I care about their competence and their ability to keep current with the medical literature. Nothing else matters.

JPS said...

Brave woman.

Broadly, the left* is only antiracist to the extent it helps their movement. When black people (or gays, Native Americans, anyone else the left sees themselves as standing up for) dare to contradict them, they feel free to unleash all the pent-up bigotry they usually squelch. Ingrate! Where do you think you'd be without us? Nowhere, that's where!

And I tip my hat to her, because in 1973, broadly, the only people who'd have cared if she got a medical degree were herself, her loved ones, and anyone she had impressed along the way. Very few people in positions of power were yet saying, It's a crying shame how few black students are in our program.

* With honorable exceptions, of course. Some really do care, and some are just as bigoted as they assume everyone on the right is.

Mingus Jerry said...

How dare this person share their lived experience! Doesn't she know "lived experience" only matters if it fits the narrative?

Readering said...

1 hour every 3 years mandated for CA attorneys. Hard to fill the hour.

Achilles said...

The Reptile people that run the globalist regime have used racism and race based division to keep the little people divided throughout all of history. The Democrats and GOP are just WEF tools.

Whether it is slavery, Jim Crow, Affirmative action, abortion, eugenics, DEI, LGBTQ+ or whatever it is always about division.

In 1930's Germany they went after the Jews.

Just replace White Male with Jew in present day United States and it is a perfect historical parallel.

The people pushing this are evil and need to be destroyed.

farmgirl said...

The world needs more people like this woman.

Leland said...

I was driving today and watched a grocery truck pass by. On the trailer it advertised Frijoles Negros (Spanish Black Beans). It's interesting to me that calling someone a Negro is deemed offensive and outdated. I don't disagree about the word and never used it to define another person. Yet, I find it interesting that we know are forced to recognize people by their skin color, call them black (because how could black lives matter if we don't recognize what a black life is), and treat them differently. I'm not onboard with this new way of thinking. I prefer the doctor's line of thought.

Steven said...

I have been thinking about the causes of this resurgence in the saliency of race and I wonder if it has happened because of the breakdown of racial barriers. In the past, black people and white people existed in separate worlds. Starting in the 70s, those obstacles largely degraded so the extent that in the 90s most black people no longer considered racism a problem. However, during all that time many black people considered themselves to be doing well because their status was high with respect to other black people. Since the 90s, the relevant category to compare oneself with is the integrated society, so black people are comparing themselves to everyone including white people. Now, high status black people do not feel they are doing quite so well as before.

To me, the question is will this be a transitory period as conditions for black people continue to improve and reach parity with white people, or will the focus on race as a class reinforce the old separation and lead to regression with black people forever considering themselves in opposition to white people.

I think it is the opinion of black people that matters here. White people do not compare themselves to black people.

n.n said...

In 1930's Germany they went after the Jews.

Jew privilege.

The Jew "burden".

DIEversity

Planned Jewhood

Communities without borders was a logical progression.

Maynard said...

We've seen that very thing at Althouse blog with several of the usual democratical partisans, most notably LLR Chuck, whose long history of virulent racial attacks against minority members that are conservative or simply don't toe the lefty line is quite instructive on that count.

Well of course the LLRs and democraticals are attacking her. She is literally the Black face of White Supremacy.

n.n said...

We are stepping back from MLKs dream

Diversity of individuals, minority of one.

Maynard said...

1 hour every 3 years mandated for CA attorneys. Hard to fill the hour.

Readering,

I guess your point is that the neo-Marxist, racist indoctrination needs more time to fully take hold.

Don't worry. More time will be allotted to it in the future.

Amadeus 48 said...

The surgeon that saved my wife's life is a black guy. We have always been grateful to him and for his skill. Any residual racism lurking in my subconscious died that day.

"I reject the unscientific accusation that people are defined by their race, not by their individual beliefs and choices."

Owen said...

Farmgirl @ 2:36: What you said. They’re out there —I’m thinking of Tom Sowell, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, others of their ilk— but they pay a price. Sometimes truth has to be its own reward.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The corrupt left lost their minds when they realized Black people supported Trump. Even - BLACK DEMOCRATS.

That's why the corrupt left sell their toxic race poison. According to Crook White Biden - the nation has a lynching problem. We do?

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

MLK jr. said in his I have a Dream Speech:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The corrupt collective racist race-obsessed power-mongering liar left want to remove it. Erase it.
It goes against their corrupt religion of hate and division. Race-mongering feeds the White Authoritarian left's power. The white Schitt-Biden Crooked FBI-CIA White Joy Behar White Andrea Mitchell White Rachel Maddow liar way.

typingtalker said...

Decades ago, woman doctors, woman medical students and woman medical school applicants were fighting the same fight. It was ugly but today is mostly over. And it was not won with implicit bias training.

‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’

The quote is most likely due to writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”


bigthink

And repeating it we are.

BG said...

Oh, how things have changed in just 20 years.
Twenty years ago I sat with my elderly (white) mother in the UW Hospital. She was there for a procedure on her lung. The specialist was black. My mom was part of the "greatest generation." She lived through the Great Depression and WWII. And also all that prejudice and the names that were used to describe other people.
This doctor was absolutely wonderful with her. He knew exactly how to relate with her. One day he was off so another doctor made the rounds. A white doctor. This white doctor walked into her room and my mom scowled. "I don't want him! I want the darkie!" Oh, I could have died. I apologized to the nurses that were there. They said not to worry about it.
And my mom never did let that white doctor check her over.
Can you imagine what would have happened to my mom in this day and age? Surely some sort of "social" educator would have met with her, at the very least.
Instead, my mom and her very good doctor had a lovely relationship and no one gave a f*** about their skin color.

Dogma and Pony Show said...

People should keep in mind that this campaign to look at everything through the lens of race and identity is not itself ideological. The ideology that's driving this is communism. Identity politics is simply a means of undermining American values (individualism, civil liberties, etc.) in order to promote the goal of collectivism. Once that, or some version of that, is achieved, I guaranty you that those in charge will no longer give a fuck about how well blacks are doing, whether trans people feel "welcome" at universities, or any notions of social justice. Adherence to the authority of the state will be all they care about.

Leland said...

Farmgirl, on the celebrity front, we are getting more as Denzel Washington and Idris Elba note their preference to being just actors rather than labeled by their skin color. I know I'm tired of answering surveys (for anyone, government, business, marketing) that ask me to identify myself by gender, race, and age. I'm tired of handing to institutions the tools they want and need to divide us.

M said...

I have had middle eastern doctors mistreat me because I am white. I have had black and middle eastern nurses mistreat me for the same reason. Never had a problem with a black doctor. Hispanic doctors used to be fine but some of the younger ones seem to have absorbed some of the hate whitey attitude.


The biggest problem with minorities in healthcare is they are given extra points for being minorities. They literally may not be as smart as Far East Asian or white healthcare professionals. Do with that what you will.

n.n said...

Most women and men are not discomforted by men and women, respectively, reviewing and treating their medical or surgical conditions. Some are.

That said, while a degree takes you to the starting line, performance takes you to the finish line.

Saint Croix said...

She's getting trashed in the comments over there.

Welcome to the Republican party!

We are a big tent.

traditionalguy said...

Trillions of dollars in multi phases of REPARATIONS are on the Progressive agenda. And like our sudden hundreds of billions of our dollars disappearing in the Dems money laundry called Ukraine, there will never be an audit.

Add to that the woke Medical Education that has been pushed by famous schools for 30 years and it is a perfect storm. They not taught to treat patients anymore. They instead learn to distribute statically proper medical care for the age and race of the various sub-populations flooding in.

But the rulers still get real Physicians. So they will never notice the disaster.

Joe Smith said...

The problem with DEI is lowered standards or no standards at all.

I don't want a brain surgeon that got the job based on the melanin content of their skin.

It makes the qualified black surgeons automatically suspect.

Who are the smart ones and who are the dummies?

Whites can (and do) get kicked out of programs all the time.

Try doing the same with any protected class...

n.n said...

She is from a time past where affirmative action was discernible from affirmative discrimination.

n.n said...

Takes us back to the profitable days of Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter (SS BLM): We're here to help. Why are you resisting?

You are a mere color bloc, a gender construct, the leverage in class-disordered ideologies. One step forward, two steps backward.

wendybar said...

She's right.

Big Mike said...

FWIW, in 1973 Dr. Singleton was more likely to be discriminated against because of her sex than her skin color. That’s my takeaway from being in graduate school back then.

boatbuilder said...

Marylyn, you are a very courageous woman.

Of course she's getting trashed in the comments. What could a black woman who is old enough to graduate from med school in 1973 possibly know about the struggles that black people face in 2023?

boatbuilder said...

Dave Begley--you have the best of enemies.

I salute you.

Keep up the good work!

MacMacConnell said...

Why haven't these D I E folks not called for the toppling of MLK statues?

FullMoon said...

Seemed to be a teensy-weensy change in attitudes around 2009 or so.

TaeJohnDo said...

Dave Begley, what boatbuilder said.

ken in tx said...

This kind of training seems to foment anti-white bigotry. I makes me afraid to be in the medical care of people who have been trained to hate me, sight unseen.

Rusty said...

An hour, readering, which you will never get back. Once you submit to one hour the next one is easy.

walter said...

Docs have sold out to pharma regulatory capture, why not wokeness?

Readering said...

Maynard: uh, no.

The Crack Emcee said...

I was once forced to take "training" to insure I didn't discriminate against myself.

It worked like a charm,...

rwnutjob said...

She is obviously correct. Race had become barely a thought until Chicago Jesus, a man elected by white people twice, started dividing us for political gain.

We will never have racial healing until we stop talking about race.

Birches said...

I had a non routine surgery a few years ago. I was actually pleased when I met my surgeon and he was Asian. Same when I had to see a neurologist this past summer. If they're able to beat the weird intersectionality curve happening right now in medicine, they must be good. They were.

Birches said...

We actually have a black pedestrian. She's wonderful and doesn't ask what my kids' pronouns are or if we have guns in the home. I feel like we have the same values and she doesn't worry about intervening on every little problem. But I'm annoyed that her skills are being diluted in this environment. Reminds me of Clarence Thomas and how his Yale Law Degree was perceived.

Paul said...

'Affirmative Action', thanks to Jimmy Carter, has been a pox on Black Americans. It puts a shadow on any achievements they make since, right or wrong, it looks like they can't cut it.

MLK talked about a time when one's color would mean nothing. But to the left one's color means everything. And thus the Black community has slid down farther into the low expectations hole where quotas mean everything and ability means nothing. The nuclear family among the blacks is now the 'baby mama' and 'baby daddy' where kids have no anchor that teaches them morals. Instead they have gangs to teach them how to commit crimes.

Predictable outcome with 'Affirmative Action'.

Birches said...

Pediatrician.

Rusty said...

The Crack Emcee said...
"I was once forced to take "training" to insure I didn't discriminate against myself."
Just cop an attitude. HR will leave you alone rather than make a scene.

Robert Cook said...

"Progressivism is the real disease."

Conservatism is the real disease!

See how easy it is, how effortless...how thoughtless...to make a blunt and passionate assertion empty of any substance (especially when you don't define your terms)?

Robert Cook said...

"MLK jr. said in his I have a Dream Speech:

'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'
"

The problem is we've never reached that day.

Michael K said...

Cook missed the point where we reached MLK's dream and then elected Obama who began to reverse it.

My wife, who is a nurse practitioner with two graduate degrees, has had two black physicians in the past ten years. Both were excellent and both were foreign born (and very black). In my 15 years of teaching medical students I have had a number of black students. All but one were foreign born. The one American born (grew up in LA where the medical school is) flunked out after two tries. The other black students tried to help him without success. The progressive movement has poisoned the minds of black kids in the US. They have been convinced that they cannot make it because of all this hidden racism. The black immigrants I have met have none of this. In fact, many are contemptuous of American blacks who seem paralyzed by fear of racism.

You may assume that black immigrants are privileged because they got here and probably had money. In fact on of my black students was a refugee from Eritrea whose parents had gotten her away to safety in South Africa, then to Guadalupe in the West Indies and finally to LA. She was very poor and could not even afford a microscope. Another was from Jamaica and married to a white graduate student in Engineering.

The contrast is real.

ccscientist said...

My black neighbor was a pharma sales rep who went around to the doctor offices. The only racists he ever encountered were Pakistani doctors. Not white. Not chinese. He laughed about them being such jerks.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

"Black people are, in effect, being told that White physicians are likely to quite literally damage our health...."

And white patients are being told that black physicians are likely to quite literally damage our health.

Because they're not like us, and don't care about us, they only care about people "like them", and we're told that ONLY people with darker skin are "like them".

Evil at its finest, they name is "the Left"

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Robert Cook said...
"MLK jr. said in his I have a Dream Speech:

'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'"

The problem is we've never reached that day.


No, Cookie, the problem is that you left wing racist scum bags are fighting tooth and nail to make sure we NEVER reach that day, and to pull us away from ever reaching it.

THAT is the problem. That is 99% of the racism in America, and the cause of 50% of the rest of the racism in America.

The problem is that you leftists are evil racist pigs, and want to force all Americans to be just as evil and racist as you are.

Until you fix that, you have nothing of value to say about racism

Kevin said...

Most people would rather be special than equal.

It's the idea at the center of the Progressive movement.

Estoy_Listo said...

"... and making race-based assumptions about our fellow human beings was finally fading — and, hopefully, soon gone for good."

Funny, I thought the same thing at about the same time when I watched "Soul Train," Dick Clark for black folks.