I have posted the following on my blog, at:
http://www.discriminations.us/2008/04/prescription_for_quotas.html
<b>Prescription For Quotas</b>
If I weren’t a product of both undergraduate and graduate programs at Stanford, I would be critical of this report (“Latinos underrepresented in medical profession”) of quota-mongering at the Stanford Medical School (HatTip to reader Ed Chin). But since I am, I am both ashamed and embarrassed as well as critical.
The Stanford Daily article begins by noting that
"Latino Americans only make up five percent of California’s doctors, according to a recent study at UC-San Francisco, though they constitute one-third of the state’s population[,]"
and goes rapidly down hill from there.
[Begin Indented Quote}
Fernando Mendoza, Associate Dean for Minority Advising and Programs at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the lack of diversity within the medical profession can actually reduce the effectiveness of physicians.
“A lot of work has been done that’s shown how physicians communicate with patients and the barriers to that communication,” he said. “Studies have reported that there are biases in health care and that they are quite often unconscious; in order to deal with those unconscious biases, we need to diversify the work force and develop more culturally competent positions.”
[End Indented Quote]
Along with their diplomas, perhaps medical schools and/or state medical licensing boards could begin issuing certificates of cultural competence. Of course, before they could do that they would have to develop a curriculum in it, devise tests to measure it, etc. Or in the alternative, they could simply let skin color or ethnicity (visible or claimed) be a certified proxy. In any event, after the Stanford Medical School or the California Medical Association develops a valid test for “unconscious biases,” I hope they will share it with the world.
But I digress. Let us listed to Dr. Mendoza’s prescription:
[Begin Indented Quote]
In order to increase diversity in the medical school student population, Mendoza ... encourages the admission office to evaluate potential candidates on a broader spectrum of criteria.
“One thing I think is evident,” he said. “We’re well behind the curve and have a long way to go to get the number of Latino physicians up to where they represent the proportion of the general population.
[End Indented Quote]
Note that Dr. Mendoza does not say that he endorses quotas. Defenders of affirmative action never say they they endorse quotas, and usually hotly deny that they do. No, Dr. Mendoza doesn’t call for quotas. All he wants is for the number of Latino students admitted to the Stanford Medical School, and the number of physicians practicing in California and presumably the rest of the United States “to represent [their] proportion of the general population.”
And while we’re speaking of proportional representation (not quotas!), if the goal (not quota!) is for the proportion of doctors who are Latino to reflect the proportion of Latinos in the general population, then Stanford and the remainder of the medical establishment must take some rather dramatic steps to reduce the proportion of admitted medical students and physicians who are Asian or Jewish, since those groups are now substantially “overrepresented” at Stanford and everywhere else.
Weeding out the Jews and Asians, however, can be a tricky business. Asians are usually easy to spot, even where their names are not giveaways, but Jews are not always so obvious. We don’t all have Jewish-sounding names, and many Jewish-sounding names aren’t even Jewish. Nor is photographic evidence, even in profile, completely reliable.
And even if those problems were solved (if Stanford can combat “unconscious bias,” surely it can come up with ways to spot Asians and Jews), what of the “Latino” category itself? Should all of the “Latino” physicians in California be Mexican or Mexican-American, or do Dr. Mendoza and his Stanford colleagues think that, say, Cuban-Americans are “culturally competent” enough to treat Mexicans?
Sorry, but that’s all I have time for right now. I’m off to meet with our accountant re taxes, though now I’m worried that he’s not culturally competent enough to figure out how the tax code applies to us

The Third Reich banned the use of IQ tests in public schools because the Semites as a group scored higher than the Germans. Because of unbiased admittance policies in the University of California university system, Asian-Americans are the majority student body. In acceptance figures, Whites are equal to Asian-Americans in acceptance numbers, but because of fears of discrimination outside of California, a higher percentage of Asian-Americans applicants prefer to stay in California for their college education than Whites.

Aggressive outreach has not been determined to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, but to give African-Americans or Latinos extra "points" in the application process because of their race has been determined to be unconstitutional.

Trying to put round pegs into square holes by using Stalinist revisionary theories of racial equality does not advance the social cause of the human race one bit. It only promotes division and hatred for those cause under its Communist Party axe.

How many intellectuals did Mao send to the collective thought farm for an education in humility and equality?