Posted on 09/01/2003 10:54:29 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
Have you heard about the latest California crusade?
It's called Proposition 54, and it's based on the utopian ideal that race doesn't matter. The proposition stipulates that state and local officials can't collect or use information regarding someone's race, ethnicity, color or national origin for the purpose of public education, public contracting, public employment or other government operations.
The mastermind behind Prop. 54 is a mild-mannered man by the name of Ward Connerly. He also happens to be African-American. But people are warned not to use that term in his presence. As Connerly sees it, race isn't real.
Well, in a society where skin color still segregates, and languages other than English intimidate, race is very real and cannot yet be ignored.
If we did ignore race, then it would never have been known that a disproportionate number of people of color were being singled out for police stops and searches, or that children of color constituted the majority of school dropouts and teenage pregnancies.
We'd never know just how much more difficult it was for African-Americans and Hispanics to get bank loans or home mortgages, or that a visit to the doctor by people of color didn't automatically result in the same quality of care.
And we wouldn't have known that in some cities where "minorities" constitute a substantial portion of the population, candidates of color never seem to get enough votes to win an election.
Yet in spite of these examples as to why we need to pay attention to race, there exists an even more compelling reason: medical genetics.
Neil Risch, a Stanford University population geneticist, argues that the medical community should not be in such a hurry to whitewash folks. For too long, clinical drug trials were performed with few people of color as test subjects. The consequence has been a surprise to researchers when certain racial and ethnic groups have had unforeseen reactions to FDA-approved drugs.
By not taking our differences into account, important medical discoveries are missed, helping to explain why certain diseases or drug reactions are more prevalent among one ethnic group than another.
Already it's been discovered that certain groups within our population metabolize drugs differently, experience distinct side effects, develop disease for different reasons and have adverse reactions to medical procedures.
For example, it's been found that pain medications, such as codeine, metabolize differently in East Asians than in Anglos. Whereas two tablets of codeine may do the trick to help Anglo patients rest comfortably, the same dosage wouldn't bring any relief to East Asian pain sufferers.
Even simple procedures such as placing a breathing tube down a patient's windpipe call to keep in mind the ethnicity of the patient. Anesthesiologists realize that black patients salivate more heavily than other patients, causing complications in the airway.
Overmedication can be a problem, too. Doctors now know that Latinos with schizophrenia don't need as much antipsychotic medication as Anglos to achieve the same drug levels in the bloodstream. And the latest research published in the August issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology reveals that a child's ethnicity determines the chances of developing common eye disorders.
In other circles, targeting these racial differences would be considered politically incorrect and probably referred to as
racial profiling. There is even an ongoing debate in the medical community on whether to use race as a variable in medical research.
However, unlike other situations where people of color are targeted unfairly because of their skin color or accent, racial profiling in medical matters must not be seen through colorblind eyes.
Especially, when it boils down to a race between life and death.
----------------------------------------------------- Treviño, of Rowlett, Texas, is a contributing columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. She may be reached by e-mail at mtrevino@airmail.net.
Those are mostly based on credit ratings. It's been years since I had to have an interview for a loan. I suppose people named "Kweisi" or "Gonzales" might think their problems are race based, but I'd guess that credit ratings are the problem.
And we wouldn't have known that in some cities where "minorities" constitute a substantial portion of the population, candidates of color never seem to get enough votes to win an election.
How can that be racism? It seems to me that the racist view is the one that thinks minorities are too dumb to vote.
The reason that the left is so focused on race and racism is that they are personally very racist and assume that everyone else is as racist as they are. Instead of admitting their own racism and confronting it, they want some socialist utopian "solution" that will make them feel good about themselves (and their deep-rooted racism) without doing anything about the problem.
I don't think that's right. I think the problem is that their political positions are more tenable when based on the assumption that most people are racist. I don't think leftist are any more racist, as a group, than anyone else.
I'm speaking from my personal experience. Between work and family, I know only two other conservatives (hubby and son). Most of the racism I hear expressed is very polite, and very condescending. For instance, the attitude that leads to affirmative action (i.e. quotas) is based on a fundamental belief that certain people are inferior. Examine any liberal belief on race, and it basically comes down to a belief in the inherent superiority of one group over another. I think a lot of liberals are very racist, but unwilling or unable to confront it or acknowledge it openly.
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