Activists Scheme to Skirt Affirmative Action Ban – And Provide False Pretense For Doing It

Two commentaries published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on the same day leave no doubt that the American Medical Association remains committed to skirting rather than honoring the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action.

In The Supreme Court Decision on Affirmative Action—Fewer Black Physicians and More Health Disparities for Minoritized Groups, “researchers” argue that the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based admissions “goes beyond college admissions for Black people and other minority groups to the very core of the health of the entire country…Multiple research studies have shown that patients have improved outcomes when they are treated by people of a similar background or race or ethnicity.”

The claim that black patients fare better with black doctors references a systematic review (i.e., an assessment of the evidence base on the topic) that offers some optimism when it comes to the effect of racial concordance on patient-provider communication. It conveniently neglects to reference the four other systematic reviews on race concordance in medicine which conclude that the evidence base does not reveal a pattern that demonstrates benefit, including a more recent review that also specifically focuses on patient-provider communication.

The JAMA piece isn’t the first occasion in which the American Medical Association has endorsed or promoted fictional claims that black patients fare better with black doctors. That they continue to promote these falsehoods in the face of public fact checking of sloppy factual errors reveals the depths of their conviction to continue lowering standards and engaging in racial preference for medical school admission. 

In the other piece of commentary ­– Affirmative Action Ruled Unconstitutional: Options for Building a Diverse Healthcare Workforce – “researchers” assert that “The Court’s opinion potentially leaves room to maneuver.” Citing Justice Sotomayor’s dissent that colleges can consider “socioeconomic diversity” in their admissions decisions, they mention the UC Davis “socioeconomic disadvantage scale” as a blueprint for the “maneuvering” that they advocate. The UC Davis Associate Dean of Admissions is explicit and unapologetic about the fact that their admissions policies are a technical workaround to the state’s prohibition on affirmative action and a solution to the imagined problem of the “overrepresentation” of Asian physicians.

The piece concludes with a warning: “Far from coming to an end for legal questions about race and ethnicity and university admissions, intense litigation will likely continue for many years.” So long as woke activists at the American Medical Association remain committed to skirting the Supreme Court’s decision, this prediction is all but sure to come to fruition.