Opponents of Critical Race Theory in Health Care Denigrated as ‘White Supremacists’ in Medical Journal

The public’s respect for establishment medicine is being destroyed by the sector’s own leaders. Leading that charge into the trust abyss are the editors and opinion writers of venerable publications, most particularly, the New England Journal of Medicine.

Witness, “A Call for Antiracist Action,” published in the current edition. The authors come to the defense of other physician equity warriors who wrote in the Boston Review about the supposed need for “medical restitution” — to supplement hoped-for federal reparations — to achieve equity for African Americans in the health-care context. Here, read it for yourselves.

That apparently led to some pushback in the conservative media, and a demonstration at the authors’ hospital by a small gaggle of “neo Nazis.” So, the NEJM authors write as if those few demonstrators epitomize critics of “antiracism” policies in health care generally — meaning critical race theory — and accuse objectors of being akin to white supremacists. From the piece:

Efforts to embed racial justice in medicine and advance health equity have been launched–and critiqued. There have been concerted attacks on critical race theory, whose precepts are central to health equity work: critical race theory acknowledges that race is a social construct, identifies the mechanisms by which racism is embedded throughout society’s systems and policies, and opposes colorblind solutions to racial inequities.

Most recently, the mainstream media has promulgated attacks on the language of health equity, contributing to an environment in which extremism can thrive. In the days leading up to the neo-Nazi protest, right-wing media mischaracterized tenets of race-conscious medicine, claiming that efforts to overcome inequities would result in White people being denied medical care.

Well, let’s take a look at whether that concern is wholly unfounded. “Anti-racism” specifically holds that “the only remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination, and the only remedy for current discrimination is future discrimination.” That would certainly at least imply the possibility.

Then, there was an earlier column in the NEJM that urged the Biden administration to “distribute resources differentially in order to benefit groups that are persistently disadvantaged” based on race (among  other categories).

Moreover, there have been explicit attempts to prioritize access to anti-Covid therapeutics to people of color — that is, effectively deny health care to some when it is open to others who are similarly situated medically based on race — such as by the New York Department of Health.

At the very least, the health-care anti-racist activists are fairly criticized for rejecting “colorblind” policies toward achieving access equality. It is hardly racist to believe patients should be treated based on the condition of their bodies, not the color of their skin. But rather than probe deeply into these differences in good faith, the NEJM authors instead haul out the ad-hominem “white supremacism” broad-brush, including — ludicrously — dragging the Canadian trucker protests into the mix:

White supremacism has proved resistant to eradication over centuries. It appears in different forms–as denial of structural racism, in simplistic narratives of individualism and meritocracy, in stories that lay the blame for health inequities on the beliefs, behavior, or biology of historically marginalized people. And yes, White supremacism appears in the swastikas and uniforms of “freedom” protests against vaccination mandates and antiracist doctors…

Inaction in the face of White supremacism must not be an option

This is the kind of guilt-by-association pedestrian prose one would expect to see in an MSNBC blog post or, perhaps, Mother Jones — not one of the world’s great medical journals.

Eliminating racial disparities in health care is important work. But demonizing critics who oppose the discriminatory approach of “anti-racism” by wielding the “white supremacist” cliché is worse than counter-productive. It is a canard that drives people of goodwill apart, impeding the realization of that deeply desired end.