The Left Is Wrong: Why Black Babies Cared For by White Doctors Die More Often - It's Not Because of 'Racism'
When diversity trumps excellence in our education system and then infiltrates the highest levels of government, it eats at the walls of democracy like an infestation of termites.
If that sounds over the top, you’re not paying attention. Diversity initiatives in the workplace may very well lead to societal collapse.
In one telling example of diversity gone awry, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed black babies are more likely to die under the care of white doctors because of racism.
The problem? Jackson was factually incorrect in her description of a dubious scientific study cited in her dissent to the Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down racial preferences in university admissions, according to Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jay P. Greene.
The SCOTUS Diversity Hire
The irony of a Supreme Court Justice unable to decipher a medical study yet citing it anyway cuts to the quick in proving that Virginia’s GOP Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears’ assertion that Jackson is an example of a diversity hire gone wrong was spot on.
In an interview with Fox News, Martha MacCallum asked Earle-Sears to respond to Jackson and the other dissenting leftist justices who attempted to argue the court’s decision was backpedaling when it comes to equality.
“Well, what you have is a justice who was chosen because she’s black and because she’s a woman,” Sears answered. “That’s what we’re understanding now …”
According to CNN, Biden committed to nominating a black female to the Supreme Court justice in 2020. “On a debate stage in South Carolina, Biden argued that his push to make ‘sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court’ was rooted in an effort to ‘get everyone represented.’”
You may remember that Jackson — when asked by GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee to define the term “woman” in the senate confirmation hearings — could not provide an answer. With this in mind, Jackson may not realize she was nominated for the Supreme Court because she is a minority woman.
Jackson argued in her dissent that racial preferences are essential when it comes to admissions to medical schools. Why? Because more black doctors are needed to improve health outcomes for black patients.
At first glance, it appears Jackson is asserting that the color of a doctor’s skin is the essential factor in determining whether the doctor will be effective at improving the health of black patients. This would mean skin color is more important than medical expertise or aptitude.
Following this logic would lead to medical segregation where Asian doctors were responsible for the healthcare of Asian patients, Hispanics for Hispanics, and whites for whites. Hospitals would be organized into separate wards for black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American patients.
Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Jackson did cite a scientific study to support her claim. Referring to the study, Jackson wrote, “For high-risk black newborns, having a black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”
Are Black Babies More Likely to Die Under the Care of White Doctors?
If the color of a doctor’s skin “more than doubles” a high-risk black newborn’s odds at living, it would be foolish, even racist, to argue against it. That’s a big “if”.
According to Greene, Jackson was citing an amicus brief filed by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The brief referenced a study that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Greene explained the study in detail, “First, the study does not claim to find a doubling in survival rates for black newborns who have a black attending doctor.”
“Instead, in its most fully specified model, it reports that 99.6839 percent of black babies born with a black attending physician survived compared with 99.5549 percent of black babies born with white attending physicians, a difference of 0.129 percent.”
Greene concludes, “The survival rate of 99.6839 percent is not double 99.5549 percent.”
Jackson’s claim about the survival rates for at-risk black newborns when they have black physicians is blatantly false. The amicus brief is obviously wrong. The study in question — entitled “Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns” — is woefully flawed.
What’s going on? Maybe logic really is racist, as suggested in an article in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s even been suggested that logic has its roots in (wait for it) ‘white privilege,’ and anyone who offers a rational argument that is not commensurate with victim culture is somehow racist.”
Or maybe — just maybe — this is what happens when diversity trumps excellence.
When a Supreme Court justice misconstrues an amicus brief referring to a medical study, it becomes obvious that there is a crisis in critical thinking in America. How did we get here?
How We Got Here
Blame academia. The toxic plume of postmodern relativism erupted with German philosopher Nietzsche and was blown across the Atlantic by the likes of Foucault. It was absorbed by American university humanities and social science departments like radiation from a mushroom cloud.
The result? Today, truth is construed by leftists as a social construct where “personal truth” trumps critical thinking.
Nietzsche — prophet of doom and despiser of Christianity– saw what was coming, “He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers — and spirit itself will stink.”
In other words, 2 Timothy 4:3-4 has come home to roost, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
Fables generally contain moral lessons. Postmodernism teaches that morality is relative and therefore meaningless. A fable void of meaning is reduced to gibberish.
On a practical level, Greene put it like this, “The fact that neither the Association of American Medical Colleges nor Jackson’s clerks could read and properly understand a medical study is an alarming indication for the current state of both medical and legal education.”
The debacle indicates that elitist universities — let alone the education system in general — are no longer capable of pursuing truth.
Instead, they conjure tendentious interpretations based on the prevailing leftist winds.
The Total Destruction of Jackson’s Race-Baiting Argument
Greene’s dissection of Jackson’s argument went much deeper in pointing out its very obvious flaws.
“[E]ven if the results of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study were accurately described, they should not be believed,” Greene wrote.
“The study’s comparison of death rates for newborns who have doctors of different races does not take into account the fact that black newborns have a greater likelihood of serious medical complications and the attending physicians assigned to treat those more challenging cases are likely to be white.”
“Rather than demonstrating the protective benefits of black newborns having black doctors, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study only documents that black newborns are more likely to have severe issues that increase their risk of infant mortality, and those severe cases are more likely to have white attending physicians because white doctors are more prevalent in the specialized fields that treat those complications.”
“The study provides no convincing evidence on whether black newborns with identical conditions would fare better, worse, or no differently with a black or white doctor.”
Greene wasn’t finished critiquing Jackson’s dissent.
“[E]ven if Jackson could describe the results of the study accurately and even if those results were credible, the finding would not support the claim that we should employ racial preferences in medical school admissions,” he wrote.
“As a practical matter, increasing the number of black doctors, so that every black newborn could be ensured to have one would require significant dilution in the quality of doctors so that the modest benefit claimed in the study would likely be swamped by the harm of less capable physicians.”
He goes on to explain that the train of broken logic would inevitably go off the tracks and hospitals would be required to segregate doctors and patients. This, in turn, would add legal woes to an already overburdened medical establishment.
“Because they pride themselves as people who ‘believe in science,'” Greene lamented, “they feel it necessary to invoke research to justify their support of racial preferences, never minding whether they are reading the research correctly, whether the research is convincing, or whether the research actually supports their preferred policy.”
Nietzsche was wrong. It’s not the human spirit that stinks — it’s our education system.
The fact is black babies are not more likely to die under the care of white doctors because of racism. To suggest otherwise is gibberish.
When a Supreme Court justice misreads a dubious medical study to defend a tendentious argument, it is midnight in America. What to do? Stick to reason and be sure your children are equipped with critical thinking skills.
Then, at the end of the day, when you are able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7), the truth will eventually win.
Striving for truth breeds excellence. Don’t settle for anything less.
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