You people , except for Corps and one other, are living in a dream world.
I have not only grown up poor as hell, I have worked, volunteered, taught, and everything else with poverty stricken people, uneducated people, of every race and creed under the sun. You would be hard pressed to find someone on this thread with more experience than me in healthcare working with varying populations, with my sort of background.
80-90% of my patients are poor and black or hispanic. Some are poor and white. Of those poor people, most of whom ARE black and hispanic, the majority live in goverment subsidised housing. They get welfare, food stamps, and everything else for free from the government. Their kids go to camp for free, get free daycare while their parents sit on their a*** or go to training programs that they never get jobs after, and everything else. Know what else? THEY HAVE THE BEST HEALTHCARE ON THIS PLANET. They have Medicaid, because they have no real income. FOR FREE.
On the other hand, my patients that work their asses of in jobs that they make a pittance at to barely PAY their rent (rather than getting free rent through Section 8 or some such thing), can't get any health care coverage vbecause they "make too much" for Medicaid type programs. So tell me who is "underprivilaged" here, huh?
My parents came from another country with two cents to their name. My grandfather didn't even get past the 4th grade because he had to drop out of school to start working to help support his family when he was only ten years old. But want to know what? My family STRESSED EDUCATION. My parents had 10 of us living in a studio apartment that they struggled to pay for themselves, working all day, so that me and my siblings could go to decent public schools. Poor, poor, poor by any standards, but they would have rather cut out their own kidneys and sold them than accept a hand out, food stamps, welfare, or anything else. When I was in school I remember being horrified when I was told my family was eligible for free food lunches because we were poor, but my mother refused that help in lieu of working to feed us herself. It's a matter of pride, not race. It's a matter of personality, not color of your skin. Dont blame the fact that some people are just stupid on race. If you are an intelligent person you can make things happen for your kids. If you are a ***** then I guess that's your effing problem, but somehow it becomes tax payer's problems like myself.
You people are blind and pathetic if you think that things like affirmitive action and "historically"-any-colored colleges are acceptable. You know how racism perpetuates? By continuing to flag people as different.
I have had NO better opportunities in my life by being white and of a background that some consider to be "rich", which is ridiculous because that's as stupid as saying all blacks are poor. There are poor, underserved whites, and rich, affluent blacks. I have had NO hand outs, and NO benefits from being white. NONE. In fact, one of my best friends, a perspn I've known and is like my sibling my entire life, and who also has a simliar financial background and grew up in the same neighborhood, except they're black, has been actually BLESSED to be black.
When we applied to college, I had marginally better grades than them. I did about 100 points better on the SAT's. I worked my a**s off even in high school in a job to have some spending money, and worked 40-60 hours a week all throughout undergrad to support myself. My friend never had a job until they graduated college. They had worse extra-curriculars than I did. They couldn't even pass the exam to get into the high school I went to, but hey, because they were black and also poor they got a full ride to a boarding school on a 'minority' scholarship.
guess who also got into Yale with a scholarship? They did. Guess who didn't get any of that? Me. Did I have better grades and experiences? Yep. I didn't fit their URM mold tho. I ended up in a good university anyway, but I guarantee you I had to try much harder than my friend did. I love this person like a family member, we are close friends to this day, but even they will admit they had a leg up in the school process.
So before you tell me I "don't understand" the "struggles" of "minorities" (the word itself is a joke...as a person of a certain background, which I won't list for anonymity, I am more of a minority than a black person as there are far fewer of us...isn't that what the word 'minority' means???), then think that I do, very much so understand, both from growing up poor AND working in so-called 'underserved' communities. I understand VERY well that the ability to succeed has little to do with skin color. It has NOTHING to do with it. It has to do with how much you want it and how much your family supports you. Family support also has nothing to do with skin color. It's not my fault that black and hispanic men have such a high rate of leaving their children with single mothers, whereas in my culture it was not even a question-- if you got a girl pregnant, you married her and stayed with the kids. Different cultures....but somehow I am punished for being white, right?
In fact, I went to a special high school that I got into because I worked hard to get in there, and I recall 'minority' parents protesting my school one year because they felt the entrance requirements were 'biased' to minorities. Are you effing kidding me? The entrance requirements tested natural intelligence. My black friend who went to Yale couldn't get into my high school as they took the exam and failed miserably. This person WENT TO YALE and couldn't pass an IQ test to the level my school required. What's the point of testing intelligence if you make allocations for lower scores based on skin color? I never understood that. It's like black people or other minorities who protest such things are saying that THEY themselves feel they are too stupid to pass the standards us "white" people do, so we should dumb down the admissions process for them. Isn't that an insult to themselves? Don't you want to be based on the same merits as everyone else? In my world, and I have been in healthcare a long time now, the black doctors are treated exactly equal to the white ones. They are respected based on their knowledge and work ethic, not on their skin color.
You people who think we are still living in 1943 where segragation was a feasible alternative for some people....YOU are the only ones perpetuating the race issues.
There will ALWAYS be bigots, racists, and idiots on BOTH sides of the fence. It is a part of humanity to be hateful and stupid and ignorant, you can't erase that from all of humanity. But nowadays there is no such thing as blacks not being allowed entrance to a school just because they are black and therefor the notion of a "black" university or anything simliar is idiotic. Do you see Asian univerisities? Jewish ones? Hispanic ones? There's Yeshiva University, but I guarantee you they arent allowed to classify themselves as "historically jewish" and show obvious preference to anyone with the last name of Steinberg. Give me a break. If I have to have a 32 MCAT and 3.6 GPA to get into a certain school, you better believe that someone who is Protestant, Jewish, Christian, Black, Asian, Indian, male, female, and everything else should be measured by the SAME EXACT expectations. To say that given two people, one black and one white, and given the same EC's, experience, and background, that the black person should be admitted to this school over the white person purely on skin color is absolute bull.
The only people who are racist and blind are you ignorant fools who really think that underserved medical communities are that way because of race. Underserved medical communities are that way for ONE reason and one reason only...MONEY. Poor people have less money for medical facilities, it has nothing to do with black or white. If you go to the country my mother is from, there are not really any black people. You want to know what's funny? My mother's "people" were considered "black", even though here we are considered "white". Strange eh? But hey, this is America. Land of the racist *****s. I lived in Europe for years and there was not NEAR this level of OBSESSION as there is in this country with focus on race. There are no historically "black" colleges in England, because people realise how STUPID that notion is. Underserved areas are such for ONE color and that is GREEN...money, not race, dictates where doctors want to work and hospitals want to be built. MRI machines aren't cheap. Doctors don't want to pay a quarter of a million dollars for school so they can be paid half as much as the guy in Johns Hopkins.
If anyone is going to tell me that a black student is more likely to work in a poor neighborhood out of some moralistic dedication to their "people" you are out of your mind. I work with doctors both black and white and they work where they get paid well to work. I work with one BLACK doctor who is working there specifically because she is in that program where she gets loans repaid in exchange for working in an "underserved' population, and not remotely because she wants to give back to her "people". She is planning on getting the hell out of dodge as soon as her contract is up and some loans are repaid by the program because she is sick of the salary and ungrateful patients who all live off the government. SHE IS NOT ALONE IN THIS> I see very educated, intelligent black physicians come through here with the same ideals, who are disgusted with the community because WE see first hand some of these people for who they really are. SOME are truly underserved. Some are just lazy a**h*les who spend generations living off our taxes.
Yes, it is true that people often feel comfortable talking to someone of the same race, but that gets less as time goes. You perpetuate race relations the way you are here, and things will STAY this way.
I am white. Probably 90% of my patients right now are black and hispanic, with the rest a mix of white and others. My patients love me, get along with me, and I treat them wonderfully no matter who they are, and they in return are comfortable with me. If I have ever had a person who was uncomfortable with me I can guarantee you it was not because I was just some white person, but because they themselves were brought up with a racist mindframe wherein only other black people can 'understand' them. Racism is racism, whether its black on white, white on black, asian on hispanic, or anything else. The term "reverse racism" is idiot at best, because it makes no sense.
Go tell schools you want to be treated the same as your white counterparts, which includes being admitted based on the same merits, grades, and everything else. But you won't, will you? No. Why? Because you are human and want a leg up just like anyone else. At least admit it.
You want equality? Then start practicing it.