NIH Adopts the Term “Systemic Racism” as They Systemically Do Nothing But Talk
The fact that some think the “systemic racism” explanation is nothing more than leftist polemic is no secret. Others, on the other hand, are skeptical that it does explain everything. Skeptics are afraid of the consequences for their careers if they publicly disagree with the new orthodoxy.
Still, it’s not impossible that placing the blame for racial disparities in a national culture will prompt independent scholars and conservative think tanks to produce opposing research on black-on-black killings and other taboo subjects.
We are not witnessing a sudden and unanticipated shift in the healthcare industry. When it comes to civil rights activism mirrors social justice movements that seek to expose alleged structural racism that permeates all aspects of American life.
Race-neutral laws and color-blind norms that create racial and gender inequalities and harm non-white groups are discussed by activists in those fields, as well as medicine.
Medical sociologist Thomas LaVeist had a lot of trouble getting his research on racism’s effects on black people’s health published in the past. Those same journals are now asking me to write articles for them, says Tulane University’s 60-year-old public health and tropical medicine dean.
As LaViest’s story shows, medical research has undergone a sea change in the last few years. People of color have shorter life expectancies and higher rates of chronic health problems, but the medical community has looked for explanations outside of race and culture. It was considered an amateurish diversion from serious intellectual inquiry when studies like LaVeist’s focused on racism.
In today’s medical journals, editors are calling for the use of racial lenses and apologizing for what they see as their previous moral blindness. Systemic racism has gone from being a fringe theory to a canonical truth in the last few years, especially since the protests of Black Lives Matter last year.
Scientifically, LaVeist’s hundreds of peer-reviewed articles can now be cited by medical researchers to explain racial disparities in health, giving the study of systemic racism the imprimatur of scientific authority and even settled science.
For all those harmed by structural racism in biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health’s top official, Francis Collins, apologized in 2018. To address health disparities and structural racism, the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research, has announced a commitment of $90 million and more than 60 initiatives for diversity and inclusion.
The NIH says it will use “every tool at our disposal to remedy the chronic problem of structural racism.”
“Wrong,” “misguided,” and “uninformed” are all adjectives used to describe those who disagree with the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) position that systemic racism is a scientific fact that cannot be disputed. Medical researchers should treat systemic racism as a given rather than as a sociological hypothesis to be tested.
“Dismantling” the social institutions and cultural norms that, in the words of the National Institutes of Health, were built and are maintained to support white supremacy is the political rationale for systemic racism, according to the framework’s advocates.
JAMA’s top two editors were forced to step down after the organization ran a podcast that questioned whether systemic racism explains health disparities between blacks and other Americans, underscoring the dangers of not following this new primary directive for race-focused research.
“These are the highest-level determinants of what research will be done in this country in the coming years,” said Shervin Assari, an associate professor of family medicine and urban public health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s leading research institutions.
A call for research on structural racism has never been made before by the National Institutes of Health.” This is the first time JAMA has fired an editor for saying something wrong about racism,” said Assari, who has more than 350 papers on the subject. As a result, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now funding the best researchers in the country to investigate how structural racism works rather than whether it exists.
There is no evidence that systemic racism directly causes diabetes, hypertension, or depression; instead, advocates claim that it creates the conditions in which these conditions can thrive.
According to this theory, unsafe neighborhoods, aggressive policing, subpar schools, discriminatory workplaces, and subpar medical care contribute to a person’s sense of hopelessness, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions.
Health care equity, a term that refers to reducing or eliminating racial health disparities, is the goal of JAMA’s new policy, which is being implemented by revising its peer-review standards and increasing diversity in its ranks.
Cluster-hiring of minority applicants, hiring of diversity and equity officers, and training staff on “white privilege,” implicit bias, microaggressions, and allyship are all examples of similar steps being taken in the medical field.
The newly installed executive editor and executive managing editor of JAMA, along with other JAMA leaders, co-signed a lead editorial in the August special issue, saying that all medical journals have a moral obligation to assume systemic racism as a fact and document this fact in their research.
There must be “new editorial and journal missions” for all medical and scientific journals that include “a heightened and appropriate emphasis on equity,” according to JAMA, “and the publication of information that addresses structural racism in order to overcome its effects in medicine and healthcare.”
According to critics of critical race theory, there is little room for other views—such as personal agency or cultural differences—in medical journals. This political ideology has replaced the scientific method with a political ideology.
Stanley Goldfarb, a former dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, there is a lot of groupthink. He taught about kidney disease before he retired in the summer. “You’re a bad person if you don’t agree with all of that.”
That’s the problem here, says Goldfarb, who has served on the editorial boards of three medical journals and was editor-in-chief of a renal journal.
Health disparities between blacks and whites in the United States account for the four-year gap in life expectancy. Chronic conditions, unintentional injuries, suicide, and homicide are among the leading causes of death for black males aged 44 and under, all of which exacerbate this disparity.
Scholars who believe in the systemic racism explanation blame high crime rates in poor black neighborhoods on discrimination, substandard schools, and other systemic racism.
Research on racial disparities in healthcare is now widely accepted because of the long-established academic citation and referral system. Over time, LaVeist’s small stream of articles has grown into a critical mass, allowing medical researchers to assume systemic racism as proven fact and cite evidence in footnotes rather than argue the case each time.
Consensus comes when “the weight of the evidence is so overwhelming that we no longer question whether or not [it is true],” LaVeist said. “The consensus is that gravity is real, and we no longer question it.”
While whites tend to spend more on dental, pharmaceutical, and outpatient care, African-Americans tend to spend more on emergency rooms and inpatient hospital care, suggesting that black people are more likely to be uninsured and lack access to routine medical care.
When asked to explain why this gap exists, the authors instead cite previous articles: It is already known that structural racism affects health and healthcare in various ways.
“The bible of health policy” Health Affairs is redoubling its focus on systemic racism, anti-racism, and equity, not only in its published content but also in the racial makeup of its authors and reviewers.
Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil wrote in January, “We acknowledge that the dominant voices in our work are those with power and privilege.”. We’ve increased the volume of our content on equity while those in power have written the narrative. That will no longer be the case,” we say.
“Merit and quality are often used to maintain power and privilege and these structures must be examined for bias,” said Weil, who was trained in critical legal theory, an early precursor to critical race theory, as a Harvard law student during the 1980s.
Forgive the language that believers use; Weil said, “We’re just talking about—forgive the language that is used by believers—interrogating ourselves.”
Critical race theory’s central tenet of systemic racism lacks a clear definition but has broad applicability. Systemic racism’s peculiarity is that the mechanism is not obvious to those who have not been initiated into the theory, but is pervasive to those who adhere to the doctrine.
Author and award-winning Ibram Kendi, whose writings are considered essential reading at some medical schools, see any disparity as a sign of racism. Even in the absence of black people in the corridor, portraits of medical school dignitaries and in the underrepresentation of black people in symphony orchestras are examples of disparate outcomes, which can be referred to as disparity.
The New England Journal of Medicine recently stated that “there is no ‘official’ definition of structural racism” in an article. “All definitions make clear that racism is not only the result of private prejudices held by individuals, but also produced and reproduced by laws, rules and practices, sanctioned and even implemented by various levels of government and embedded in the economic system as well as cultural and societal norms.”
Activists claim that long-accepted practices to promote merit and excellence, such as gifted and talented programs, gifted schools, and admissions tests for elite high schools, operate as colorblind mechanisms to produce unequal outcomes.
Examples would include standardized test scores for university admission. When it comes to medicine, Northwestern University and its Feinberg School of Medicine are eliminating an Honors Program in Medical Education that has been in place for six decades to help minority students pass the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination.
The concept, however, presents unique challenges to medicine. Systemic racism, on the other hand, is an invisible force that its perceived effects can only measure. Because the correlation between race and health is consistent across numerous studies for multiple chronic conditions, LaVeist believes systemic racism is the best explanation for racial health disparities.
“We are unable to draw direct causal conclusions. According to LaVeist, “the best we can do is look at plausible causality.” “What we have is a case where once you’ve ruled out all of the plausible explanations, the only thing left is systemic racism,” he said.
Many other factors can contribute to disparities in health and other areas of life, and sound scholarship should be aware of these different possibilities. Despite LaVeist’s assertion that people of color would have no free will if other factors were not considered, African American culture is shaped by white racism.
Before finding a publisher, LaVeist’s co-authored paper concluded that black people who are rudely treated by whites have a longer life expectancy when they blame systemic racism or some other external factor for the rudeness they experience.
Black people are more likely to blame someone else’s racism, boorishness, or insensitivity for their rudeness than to blame themselves, despite the fact that the disrespect is not caused by racism or an external factor.
LaVeist states: “Racism or some other external attribution.” An external attribution will be healthier than a self-blaming mentality, such as thinking, “Oh they’re right; I’m a bad person and deserve to be mistreated.”
When it comes to “diminished returns” in quality of life and health, Assari specializes in studying black people and other marginalized groups in the United States.
According to his research, structural racism may be to blame for the fact that black people receive fewer benefits as they advance in education than their white peers. On that topic, the National Library of Medicine cites about a half-dozen academic papers written by him.
He connects dots that aren’t obvious to those who aren’t trained in his field. According to one of his recent studies, Americans become less likely to smoke as their income increases.
On the other hand, high-income Chinese Americans are more likely to smoke because they earn more money. Since the anti-Asian bias they face in this country’s elite institutions is so significant, Assari hypothesizes that upwardly mobile Chinese Americans turn to nicotine to deal with it.
Although the anti-racist movement appears invincible, he said that overweening claims about systemic racism would eventually attract scholarly criticism, especially if implemented equity policies and interventions fail to produce results.
Assari predicted a “very strong backlash” against critical race theory in the near future. In my opinion, this is not a long-term plan.” It’s also a testable hypothesis. Anti-CRT protests among other social scientists would be inevitable.”
However, Assari argued that systemic racism is a sound theoretical framework because it provides a comprehensive explanation for the marginalization of a wide range of racial groups.
Many of our findings can be explained by this theory, Assari said.
An observation or assumption can be considered reliable if it is true no matter what context it is made in or where it is made. A wide range of settings, age groups, resources, and outcomes have been replicated.”
One of the main causes of disparities, according to LaVeist, was the practice of redlining and Jim Crow laws. Polluted, close to highways and industrial zones, and lacking in access to high-quality eateries, grocery stores, public schools, and green spaces are some of the characteristics of poor neighborhoods. As a result, crime and overzealous police response are common in these environments.
In the 1980s, critical race theory argued that the constant stress of dealing with these irritants and micro-aggressions wears down the body, and research into health disparities agrees.
Residential segregation is the foundation of structural racism, according to a medical paper published in The Lancet in 2017 and cited more than 1,500 times by November. “Growing research is linking interpersonal racism to various biomarkers of disease and well-being, including allostatic load; inflammatory markers; and hormonal dysregulation,” the paper notes.
This research direction has been criticized by some in the medical community.
Health disparities research has become so popular that “white scholars have colonized research on health disparities,” according to STAT News in September.
There appears to be “a gold rush mentality” among white researchers and a “rush to scoop up grants and publish papers,” according to a STAT investigation. In a new form of exploitation practiced by “health equity tourists” and “opportunistic scientific carpetbaggers,” white scholars are re-creating work done by black researchers without giving them proper credit.
A special issue on health disparities in JAMA’s August issue is one of the worst offenders. No Black or Hispanic lead or corresponding author was listed in any of the five research papers published in the issue, according to STAT.
Welcome to the show: Whether the issue of race or with Pandemic Panic Theater, voter fraud, and other “taboo” topics rose to prominence, conservative news outlets were unable to compete. You’ll notice that they are extremely selective in the subjects they cover.
Even though they’ll attack Critical Race Theory, Antifa, and the Biden-Harris regime, you won’t see them going after George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, or the Deep State, among other things.
To put it plainly, this is a no-brainer. Because Big Tech doesn’t allow certain topics to be discussed, they will cut you off if you discuss them. Conservative news outlets rely on Google, Facebook, and Twitter to a large extent.
They can’t keep the sites running unless they receive regular payments from Google ads. Because of this, I’m not going to hold it against them. To survive, we all do what we must. I just wish more people would do what we’ve done, which is to completely eliminate Big overbearing, greedy mofo’s like Big Tech and Big Pharma.
The American Psychological Association recently made a similarly empty apology, and much like the NIH, they throw money at it that no one sees. Help never arrives…
