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November 07, 2003
Affirmative Action Right-Wing Bake Sales - Same Shit, Different Day
Some right-wingers may not get what's really behind affirmative action, as is evident in the latest bake sale bashing race relations. Do they really want those Jillionaire Rich Right-Wing Idealogues to tell them what they should think? It isn't your Average Joe or Jane who benefits from the right-wing version of affirmative action. Wealthy and Middle-Class White Men primarily benefit the most from affirmative action, if you consider legacies and other benefits passed on via inheritence and the Old Boys Network. Then there are the white women who suck up to white male benefactors, like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. The moment you stray from what the White Boys Network expects of you, you are so much trash on the modern midden heap. Midden heaps traditionally display hierarchies in a society, something those who sell out should consider before they follow the road to no return.
Posted on November 7, 2003 at 05:07 PM | Permalink
Comments
Interesting story, although opposite to your viewpoint:
Affirmative action has never escaped controversy ever since it was first enforced under U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to make it easier for minorities (blacks) to compete for jobs.
Some felt then - and still feel today - that lowering the bar of standards to increase minority participation can have a reverse effect and creates prejudice and resentment.
The issue came to a head in 1978 when Allan Bakke, twice refused admittance to the University of California medical school, while black applicants with lower marks were accepted, won a Supreme Court ruling that he was discriminated against on the basis of his race. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bakke's favour, yet upheld the principle of affirmative action.
Over the years, there've been similar cases argued, yet Bakke's remains a landmark decision.
Bakke eventually graduated as a doctor - as did Patrick Chavis, the black student with lower marks whom the university preferred over him.
The American lib-left sort of adopted Chavis as its affirmative action poster boy. Sen. Ted Kennedy lavished praised on him in 1996, while defending the benefits of affirmative action.
As reported then by Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, Kennedy called Dr. Chavis a "perfect example" of affirmative action: "He is the supposedly less qualified African-American student who allegedly 'displaced' Allan Bakke ... and triggered the landmark case. Today, Dr. Chavis is a successful ob-gyn (obstetrics-gynecology) in central Los Angeles, serving a disadvantaged community and making a difference in the lives of scores of poor people."
In 1995, Dr. Chavis was profiled in The New York Times Magazine. Nicholas Leman's cover story extolled the virtues of affirmative action and belittled Dr. Bakke, who had moved to Minnesota and "has no private practice" and has not "set the world on fire as a doctor."
Writing in the left-wing The Nation, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda's ex, praised Dr. Chavis for "providing primary care to poor women" and asked from whom had society benefited more, Bakke with higher grades or Chavis with greater achievements? Dr. Chavis became a symbol for racial preferences, and was featured in the California media to refute the conservative view that affirmative action created an erroneous impression among the public that minorities couldn't compete on an equal footing without preferential treatment.
In 1997, the beatification of Dr. Chavis came crashing down when the California Medical Board suspended his licence to practice medicine. He was found guilty of "gross negligence and incompetence" with an "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician." The case revolved around three "poor women" Sen. Kennedy and The Nation felt benefited from Dr. Chavis' ministrations. One of them died and the other two were hideously treated.
Michelle Malkin, a columnist with Creators Syndicate, has updated the Chavis story and quoted from journalist William McGowan's book Coloring the News, which notes that the "difference" Dr. Chavis made in the lives of these three women was "gruesome pain - and death - as a result of botched 'body sculpting' operations at his clinic," which he set up after taking a four-day cosmetic surgery seminar in Beverly Hills.
One, Yolanda Mukhalian, lost 70% of her blood after Chavis hid her in his home for nearly two days after bungled liposuction. When she finally got to hospital she had a severe abdominal infection.
Another Chavis victim, Valerie Lawrence, suffered severe bleeding after surgery and was taken by her sister to a hospital emergency room. Chavis barged in and discharged her, still hooked to an IV and catheter, and stashed her in his home.
Tamamaria Cotton underwent liposuction in his clinic and was abandoned for over four hours, her blood pressure plummeting from abdominal hemorrhaging. The floor was covered in her blood. By the time her husband got her to hospital she was in cardiac arrest, and dead.
A doctor who worked with Chavis gave medical investigators tape recordings of Chavis' patients screaming in pain, and the good doctor telling them to shut up.
Chavis claimed he was a victim of a racist medical system that didn't like to see a black doctor doing well. Local newspapers which reported on the "egregious medical malpractice" and had profiled him in glowing terms, were reluctant to identify him as the Dr. Patrick Chavis of the Bakke case and affirmative action.
All this has only recently surfaced, thanks to a gritty, perceptive column by Michelle Malkin in The Washington Times Aug. 9. A month ago, Malkin discovered, on the night of July 23, Dr. Chavis was murdered in a depressed area south of Los Angeles.
Three unknown assailants shot him during an alleged robbery of a Frosty Freeze. Malkin says that while the murder was the buzz of the L.A. media community, it was ignored by The New York Times and Los Angeles Times which had glorified Dr. Chavis.
The murder remains unsolved, just as the virtues of affirmative action remain unresolved
Posted by: at Nov 14, 2003 6:23:32 PM
