‘Woke’ identity politics has been fully embraced by medical schools
It’s becoming more obvious with each passing day that America is obsessed with identity politics, the belief that laws, regulations, and policies boil down to cultural, ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or social interests; evidence of this reality can be seen in the promotion of white privilege, Critical Race Theory, Marxism, radical feminism, and the LGBT agenda in every sector of life, including in the schools of higher education responsible for raising up the next generation of medical professionals.
Get ready for the Columbia Medical School Class of 2025 (via BizPacReview.com):
The 2025 Columbia Medical School class opted to update the Hippocratic Oath administered at the White Coat Ceremony back in August, with the new oath including a commitment to “acknowledge and embrace the diversity that exists within all communities.”
“The 140 members of the Class of 2025 were welcomed into the profession of medicine at August’s White Coat Ceremony with the usual traditions but with one twist: The class decided to write and recite a new class oath that updated the Hippocratic Oath usually recited each year,” Columbus Medicine Magazine reported.
“We enter the profession of medicine with appreciation for the opportunity to build on the scientific and humanistic achievements of the past. We also recognize the acts and systems of oppression affected in the name of medicine. We take this oath of service to begin building a future grounded in truth, restoration, and equity to fulfill medicine’s capacity to liberate,” a woman stated as she recited the oath before the students.
“I acknowledge the past and present failures of medicine to abide by its obligation to do no harm and affirm the need to address systemic issues in the institutions I uphold,” it reads. “I promise to critically examine the systems and experiences that impact every person’s health and ability to receive care. I vow to use this knowledge to uplift my patients and disrupt the injustices that harm them as I forge the future of medicine.
“I promise to self-reflect diligently, to confront unconscious prejudices, and to develop the skills, knowledge, and character necessary to engender an inclusive, equitable field of medicine.” (Emphasis added)
The best medical schools in the country have begun weeding out applicants who fail to embrace identity politics or are insufficiently devoted to the leftist creed of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), according to a report released by the non-profit Do No Harm (via National Review):
“A review of the admissions process at 50 of the top-ranked medical schools found that 36 asked applicants their views on, or experience in, DEI efforts,” reads the Do No Harm report, which was obtained by National Review. “Many were overt in asking applicants if they agreed with certain statements about racial politics and the causes of disparate health outcomes.”
According to the report, medical schools are asking these questions in order to “turn ideological support for health equity and social justice initiatives into a credential that increases an applicant’s chance of acceptance,” “screen out dissenters,” and “signal to all applicants that they are expected to support this new cause.”
“Top medical schools have woven their commitment to woke politics into their application process, asking future doctors to prove their commitment to divisive ideologies or risk being rejected from medical school.” concludes the report.
Some examples of what this looks like in practice include the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where prospective students are asked to share their “thoughts on opposing… systemic racism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and misogyny” and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School where prospective attendees are asked to “describe [their commitment] to understanding and aiding in the pursuit of equity and inclusion in your academic, professional or personal life.”
At the University of Minnesota, applicants are told that “our country is reckoning with its history, racism, racial injustice, and especially anti-black racism” before being asked to share their “reflections on, experiences with, and greatest lessons learned about systemic racism.” And at the University of Miami, applicants are bluntly queried about what they have “done to help identify, address and correct an issue of systemic discrimination?” None of the aforementioned schools responded to a request for comment. (Emphasis mine)
Washington began playing a role in the spread of identity politics in healthcare when Barack Obama and the Democrats created Obamacare as the first step to a government-run healthcare based on the woke philosophy that the free market has been used as a tool of white entitlement and the spread of racism and must be destroyed to fix any “inequities” within the healthcare system.
Obama often resorted to the use of race-baiting when he lacked a legitimate defense of one his policies, and healthcare was no exception. Shortly after his reelection, Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, gave a speech at an NAACP convention and compared opposition to Obamacare to opposition of Civil Rights laws passed in the 1960s.
Now that Obama’s former partner-in-crime, Joe Biden, is calling the shots, we are seeing a revival of woke identity politics and Obamacare, a revival that got its legs thanks to COVID tyranny.
In February 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Sexual Orientation Disparities in Risk Factors for Adverse COVID-19–Related Outcomes, by Race/Ethnicity — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States, 2017–2019. The study was conducted because “Inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity data in COVID-19 surveillance and other data collections could improve knowledge about disparities in infections and adverse outcomes among sexual and gender minority populations, overall and by race/ethnicity.”
In May 2022, the National Institutes of Health released Racism, Violence, COVID-19, and Public Health, a report that concluded that systemic and structural racism had negatively affected many residents of Black communities during the so-called pandemic. This led the Presidential COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force to direct money and other resources to promote public health in Black and other underserved communities.
The most notable application of identity politics to the healthcare issue came to us courtesy of Joe Biden’s plan to “update” Title IX regulations. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded health-care programs or activities by incorporating Title IX’s prohibition against sex discrimination. This meant that whatever Title IX regulations say about sex discrimination in the education context has a direct impact on the medical profession.
In retrospect, one has to wonder if medical schools would be forcing woke identity politics on future healthcare professionals if Donald Trump and the Republican Party had kept their oft-repeated promise to repeal Obamacare.
I guess we’ll never know.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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