Heather Mac Donald and "the Pursuit of Equity"

 

Some readers describe Ann Coulter as a flame-thrower, and her columns are always provocative, whether you agree with her or not.  However, at TakiMag she’s just reviewed Heather Mac Donald’s book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. And the review is excellent – and informative:

“No Biggie, Just the End of Civilisation”

. . . It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization — law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine — to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests.

Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people’s self-esteem.

And her review concludes:

Luckily, learning to identify and treat disease isn’t such a big deal at today’s medical schools, anyway. Instead, the faculty are charged with teaching about “systems of power, privilege and oppression.” More than half of the top 50 medical schools now require students to take courses in systemic racism, Mac Donald notes. I’m sure that will be a huge relief when doctors miss your brain tumor.

In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would spend $2 billion … to find a cure for brain cancer? Parkinson’s disease? Heart disease? NO!!! The $2 billion would go to promoting “diversity and inclusion in science.”

In 2022, the National Cancer Institute, funded by you, taxpayer, decided to change its mission from conquering cancer — and really, who cares about that? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! — to guess what? Yes!!! Promoting diversity! Instead of Outstanding Investigator Awards being granted solely on the basis of merit, the gender and race of the researchers would have to be considered.

All this has done wonders for the morale of doctors. Mac Donald quotes one cancer researcher: “It’s the end of the road for me as a Jewish male doctor.” A UCLA doctor told her that the smartest undergraduates in science labs are saying, “Now that I see what is happening in medicine, I will do something else.”

In response to this dystopic future, Mac Donald asked an oncologist, “When would white and Asian male scientists fight back? How much longer would they continue to allow their hard work and accomplishments to be disparaged and sidelined?”

He emailed back: “We value our jobs. We need our jobs. Our peers will turn on us. Speak out, lose job forever, be quickly forgotten and abandoned.”

That’s why, Mac Donald says, it falls to the rest of us to never shut up about the tearing down of standards, to put forth “unapologetic defense(s) of color-blind standards,” and to “relentlessly provide the data that explain the lack of racial proportionality in meritocratic institutions.”

To paraphrase Orwell: If there is hope, it must lie in the uncancelable.

Read the whole column here.

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The lethal consequences of going “woke”

 

The editorial board at Issues and Insights examines some of the lethal consequences of going “woke”:

The Wages Of Woke Are Death

Going woke means more than, as the saying says, going broke. It also means the ultimate loss of life. The grip of wokeness on our society will eventually kill Americans.

Let’s begin with health care. Medical school students, whose learning should be focused on the healing arts, are being taught social justice ideology. Apparently, white supremacy, oppression, and structural racism must be addressed by America’s doctors-to-be, as well as the sin of being white.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion studies are being required at some schools, which of course crowds out time used in the past to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be a good doctor. Politics have no place in medical schools, but there they are.

At the same time, some schools, as many as 40, are dropping standardized testing for diversity’s sake, reports the Daily Caller. The Medical College Admission Test, which “determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study,” does not serve the purposes of the social justice mafia. Now there are other legitimate academic avenues to medical school outside the MCAT. But as we’ve seen in other institutions of higher learning, standards designed to demonstrate and ensure competence are being killed off.

Given these facts, it’s a certainty that many of this country’s doctors of tomorrow and beyond will not have the competence needed to keep patients alive and well. Americans will die or suffer unnecessarily because wokeness demanded that the medical community marginalize them.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine professor and associate dean who wrote “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns,” says the ​​”quiet woke revolution” that had been capturing medicine “erupted in spring 2020 into a full-blown revolution.” 

One win for the woke insurgency is the American Medical Association’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity.” Goldfarb says that “unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal” and “will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects.” If medical schools “cut training time in biochemistry and pharmacology for future doctors” to make room for studies that are political in nature, someone is bound to die.

Then the editors put the field of engineering under the same microscope.  Next they look at the military.  And here are their conclusions:

Wokeness is winning because our institutions have become cowardly and complicit; businesses are afraid they will fall behind if they don’t score well on the Corporate Equality Index, which is a Maoist extortion racket that demands prescribed behavior from companies; and the average American is scared of being ostracized and canceled for not just uttering but even holding opinions the mob doesn’t like.

Unless and until we overcome our fears, the malicious and depraved will continue their booted march through our culture and our economy. No one should be frightened to say that a system based on race, ethnicity, or gender over competence, intellect, and ability is dangerous. It is in fact mortally dangerous. 

The full editorial is here.

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Ceding American sovereignty

More AF Branco cartoons at Creators Syndicate

The other day, this blog posted the link to the White House Declaration of North America, which effectively cedes American sovereignty and constitutional values to global communism, partnering with Mexico and Canada.  David Strom at Hot Air has a follow up, and he somehow managed to have some fun with the Declaration, more than this blog could manage.  Here’s an extract:

. . . America has a new DNA, I guess. Liberty used to be in our DNA, but apparently Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been injected into the country using a new mRNA vaccine or something.

The statement is a wonder to behold. And yes, that DNA reference was actually to deoxyribonucleic acid.

Today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Joseph R. Biden, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Mexico City for the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS). The leaders are determined to fortify our region’s security, prosperity, sustainability and inclusiveness through commitments across six pillars: 1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.

North America shares a unique history and culture that emphasizes innovation, equitable development, and mutually beneficial trade to create inclusive economic opportunities for the benefit of our people. We are not just neighbors and partners. Our people share bonds of family and friendship and value – above all else – freedom, justice, human rights, equality, and democracy. This is the North American DNA.

What is it about government folks being so incompetent when it comes to doing anything catchy? Bad acronyms and metaphors always.

Look at the priorities. Regional security. Nice to see it came in at #6. Immigration made it all the way up to #4.

DEI, and climate change, numbers 1 and 2. DEI is actually #1!

For God’s sake, make it stop! . . .

The rest of Mr Strom’s commentary is here.  The Declaration of North America is here. It's unconstitutional and will never be subject to ratification in the Senate.  So it is just another Biden Administration give-away of our freedoms and sovereignty.  

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Declaration of North America (DNA) : it’s Bad News

 

“White House occupant” Joe Biden is in Mexico for a summit with Justin Trudeau and Andrés Manuel Lopez-Obrador a/k/a AMLO.  Yesterday, the meeting produced a document, Declaration of North America (DNA), and it’s beyond frightening.  Read the whole thing here.  And here’s just a taste of America’s now-stated set of objectives and values that are clearly in violation of our constitution:

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is foundational to the strength, vibrancy, and resilience of our countries. We focus on providing marginalized communities opportunities for their full, equal, and meaningful participation in our democracies and economies. To advance these objectives, President López Obrador, President Biden, and Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated their joint commitment to protect civil rights, promote racial justice, expand protections for LGBTQI+ individuals and deliver more equitable outcomes to all.

Equal opportunity is not synonymous with “equitable outcomes”, which is to say, equal results.  And that's just a start.

All the alarming buzz words and phrases are in this Declaration (global, sustainability, climate crisis, electric vehicles, clean energy, expanded migration, post-COVID health security, etc). No mention of, oh, to pick one, the drug cartels.  Read the whole thing here (h/t Conservative Treehouse). It’s all about government control.  Over us.

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My Kind Of Pushback

Brett T at Twitchy:

‘I won’t be pathologized for being White’: Man resigns from school district over ‘white privilege’ training

This is quite a letter to the Manchester School District, aka “The Temple of Equity,” from Daniel Concannon, who addresses his resignation letter to “Human Wedgie McGee,” the program director of something called the 21CCLC Program.  . . .

 

And here it is:

Click to embiggen or go here to read on the Twitchy link.  Wow.  Posted here for inspirational purposes.

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What is Critical Race Theory?

 

Our household subscribes to Imprimis, the newsletter of Hillsdale College.  Every month, we receive their publication which features an article adapted from a lecture on campus.  It is always good value.  This month’s edition features Christopher F. Rufo’s insights into Critical Race Theory.  It is an eye-opening discussions, and here is a very short extract.  

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression. 

. . .

On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to do battle against critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—which violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese-Americans have told me that having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.   

Read the rest here.

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Immunity Passports Bring Back Racial Segregation

 

image credit: themunicheye.com

More very scary developments: Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage reports:

Vaccine passports aren’t coming: they’re already here. And while discriminating against people based on their vaccination status is bad enough: the implications are even worse.

A vaccine passport transforms all of society into a two-tier system, but the basis for it isn’t a needle, it’s a set of government guidelines that were based on identity politics or ‘equity’.

From the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to various state equity initiatives, some even worse than the CDC’s push to prioritize people by race, the vaccine rollout was designed to put minorities at the head of the line. These prioritizations were meant to be invisible, using disparate impact to advance groups with the right demographic skew.

The government using race to prioritize medical treatment is horrifying enough, but vaccine passports take the biased vaccine system and embed that bias into everyday areas of life.

The end result is a horrifying cross between China’s social credit system and the racial segregation of the South. Call it the equity credit system based on racial and sexual identity.

Read the rest of it here.

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