Kevin Jon Williams explains in a Federalist column that three Democratic U.S. senators should shift their focus if they really worry about anti-Asian bias.
Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, introduced a resolution recently condemning as “racist” anyone who calls the Wuhan coronavirus by its correct name, giving special attention to President Donald Trump for this alleged sin.
The three senators are barking up the wrong tree.
Asian Americans face much racism these days, but it comes from elite universities, especially their admissions committees. The problem may extend to our medical schools, where getting admissions wrong hurts us all because it deprives every American community of the best doctors and researchers.
A lawsuit against Harvard College by Students For Fair Admissions showed how Harvard punishes Asian-American applicants. The case revealed that because Asians’ test scores and grades were so high, Harvard held down their admissions by consistently scoring Asians lowest on “personality,” and then using those biased scores to dismiss the applicants. …
… We’re in the middle of a pandemic, meaning we need the best doctors possible. Do medical school admissions committees also impose race-based penalties and preferences, even at the expense of merit?
Maybe. Last August, the New England Journal of Medicine, a premier academic forum, published “that members of underrepresented minority groups score lower in all [medical school] clerkships and are less likely to be inducted into national [medical] honor societies.”
The author’s conclusion? He made a reckless, nasty accusation that our hard-working, dedicated medical school faculty are racists, overtly or implicitly. “The fear among [medical] students of color is not that our teachers secretly hate us, but rather that we are all so bathed in a culture of racism that we are blind to the biases that lie hidden within us,” the author said.
