As I wrote a few months ago, this country is still working on eliminating systemic racism from health care. So I was intrigued by an op-ed from the editorial board at the right-wing site Washington Examiner titled: "Racism has no place in medicine."
To be honest, I wasn't surprised to find that the article focused on a finding by the Trump Justice Department that the UCLA medical school had discriminated against white and Asian applicants. A similar finding against Yale medical school was released on Thursday. So what we have are two more examples of how this administration is using the concept of "civil rights" to enforce white supremacy.
The intriguing thing about all of this is that now the shoe is on the other foot. Trump's DOJ must prove that these medical schools are discriminating against white applicants (let's be honest, Asians are merely thrown in as the so-called "good minority"). So in the midst of attempts by the Supreme Court to eliminate a results-based standard (disparate impact) and replace it with the need to prove intent, let's take a look at their arguments.
The word intent shows up all over DOJ's documents, demonstrating that they are very cognizant of this controversy. But how are they attempting to prove intent? In the case against UCLA, they point to a document circulated by the Director of Admissions that "outlines workarounds to achieve medical school 'diversity goals.'" Later in the document, they refer to these workarounds as "proxies" for race.
The intriguing thing about all of this is that now the shoe is on the other foot. Trump's DOJ must prove that these medical schools are discriminating against white applicants (let's be honest, Asians are merely thrown in as the so-called "good minority"). So in the midst of attempts by the Supreme Court to eliminate a results-based standard (disparate impact) and replace it with the need to prove intent, let's take a look at their arguments.
The word intent shows up all over DOJ's documents, demonstrating that they are very cognizant of this controversy. But how are they attempting to prove intent? In the case against UCLA, they point to a document circulated by the Director of Admissions that "outlines workarounds to achieve medical school 'diversity goals.'" Later in the document, they refer to these workarounds as "proxies" for race.
It's important to keep in mind that the Supreme Court has never said that seeking the educational benefits of racial diversity is illegal. As a matter of fact, they called it a laudable goal. When it comes to "proxies," the Supreme Court has said that it is OK to use "race neutral" things like neighborhood, socioeconomics and other factors.
We can also compare that argument to the one used in Louisiana v. Callais where partisan gerrymandering was validated as "race neutral." Conservatives on the Supreme Court were fine with using partisanship as a proxy for race.
The data used by Trump's DOJ to prove discrimination is where things get really interesting. They looked at median grade-point averages and the standardized test scores of admitted students broken down by race.
The median entrance exam score for admitted Black students at Yale’s medical school last year was 518 and for 517 for Hispanic students, according to the Justice Department. The median score was 524 for both White and Asian students. The highest possible score is 528.
The median grade point average in 2025 for admitted Black students was 3.88 and 3.91 for Hispanic students. For White students, it was 3.97 and for Asians 3.98.
First of all, the differences are minuscule. Secondly, these items were considered for admission along with all of the other "race neutral" factors, so it is impossible to prove that the differences demonstrate an intended racial preference.
But most importantly, the scores of admitted students is a perfect example of a results-based (rather than intent-based) standard for proving discrimination. If we eliminate the use of disparate impact, Trump's DOJ has no case.
In the midst of all of this, there are some things we need to keep in mind.While one in five people in the U.S. population was Hispanic, they accounted for just 7% of the physician workforce. Similarly, 12% of the population was Black compared to 6% of the physician workforce.
Beyond equality of opportunity, there are serious health outcomes at stake.
Research suggests that patient and provider racial concordance [when providers and patients share the same racial or ethnic background] may be linked to increased visits for preventative care, greater treatment adherence, and lower emergency department use. One study found that greater representation of Black primary care physicians was associated with increased life expectancy and lower mortality among Black people.
When it comes to these findings by the DOJ, what we have is an administration wallowing in ignorance and hypocrisy in furtherance of white supremacy. You can color me "not shocked" on that one.
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