Nearly a Dozen Medical Schools Undergo an 'Antiracist Transformation'

There I was recently, at the podiatrist.

And fretting was afoot. I worried: Has the fixing of my phalanges been preceded by proper woke protocol?

If you’re touched by this tale of toes, here’s news to warm the heart.

Leading American universities have agreed to improve medical education.

A three-year plan’s being bankrolled to the tune of $377,536.

According to its website, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation is “the only national [endowment] dedicated solely to improving the education of health professionals.”

Its mission: “To serve the public’s needs and improve the health of the public.”

Hence, it’s enacted the “Antiracist Transformation (ART) in Medical Education program.”

If I’m accurately adding two and two, whiteness is bad for one’s health.

After all, “antiracism” appears aimed at curtailing Caucasian crappiness.

Courtesy of UCLA Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw:

“Antiracism is the active dismantling of systems, privileges, and everyday practices that reinforce and normalize the contemporary dimensions of white dominance. This, of course, also involves a critical understanding of the history of whiteness in America.”

From Forbes:

While the sudden interest in [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] and anti-racism is encouraging, there must be a concerted effort to ensure that the…education that is being done doesn’t center whiteness. … [D]EI practitioners and anti-racism educators must resist the urge to water down diversity education to placate white feelings.

And as stated by the Smithsonian:

For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color.

ART’s webpage sums up the ugliness of us:

Like all American institutions, medicine has been shaped by a legacy of racial injustice.

“Racism,” it asserts, “permeates clinical practice and biomedical research, public health policy, and academic advancement. Its influence on medical education is even more profound.”

More on medicine being mussed:

It is through medical education that racism and bias in medicine are perpetuated across generations.

ART reckons the R-word’s a “deeply-ingrained reality” of students becoming doctors.

Therefore, the project’s approach is two-fold:

Develop the capacity of medical schools to dismantle systemic racism and bias in their work and learning environments.

Promote shared learning on how to dismantle racism within and across medical schools.

If any institution’s discovered proof of “systemic racism” — that is, a specific instance of racism embedded into a system — it seems the reasonable response would be to make it known and remove the mechanism.

Yet, all entities which confirm the existence of structural racism refuse — the best I can tell — to do so.

Rather, initiatives abound.

For the sake of ART, the following elite universities are all-in:

Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University

College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles

Duke University School of Medicine

The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences

The Ohio State University College of Medicine

University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix

University of Minnesota Medical School

University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine

University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine

As noted by Campus Reform Columbia released a statement on the antiracism endeavor.

From its Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons:

ART seeks to replicate a model originally developed by the Icahn School of Medicine to dismantle systemic racism and bias in work and learning environments and to promote shared learning on this process within and across medical schools. … ART brings a systemic point of view to its approach, entailing the creation of a transformative strategy that is continuous, empowers people within the medical school to take action, and responds to the changing world around us.

It’s not Columbia’s first woke rodeo.

In June, Vagelos’s “anti-bias” guidelines touted “people with uteruses” and insisted that “race is a social construct.”

At the end of July, it launched workshops on “disrupting racism” and microaggression management.

And last month, the college christened a VP of “Humanism, Equity and Antiracism.”

Culture’s getting recarved, and all of medicine’s going under the knife:

Medical School Professor Suggests Hate Crime Charges for Anyone Who Criticizes Government Scientists

Medical School Hosts Seminar on ‘Body Terrorism’ Against ‘Fat LGBTQ+ People’

Breastfeeding Academy Bails on 'Breasts' https://t.co/VOpCElORT0

— RedState (@RedState) August 10, 2021

Add ART to that update; such is the panoply of progress.

Between this story and others, headlines have, as of late, been ARTsy-fartsy:

Biden Wants to Reduce Emissions, but Camilla Parker Bowles Can't Stop Talking About His Fart https://t.co/VVUON0LQVZ

— Alex Parker (@alexparker1984) November 9, 2021