Standard arguments against affirmative action
According to Dr. Wang, who did not respond to a request to comment for this article, allowing minority students into medical school with academic records that are weaker than their classmates sets them up for failure.
“Many do not complete their intended programs or do not attain academic success to be attractive candidates for subsequent educational programs or employment,” he wrote.
This is a standard argument of opponents to affirmative action, said Quinn Capers IV, MD. Dr. Capers, a longtime advocate for diversity in medicine, acknowledges that, “on average,” test scores for Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans tend to be lower than for White applicants for a wide range of reasons, many of which are related to systemic racism.
“This is the strongest weapon opponents to affirmative action have, and they keep coming back to it, but it’s out of step with how many in academic medicine feel,” said Dr. Capers, who is an interventional cardiologist and the vice dean for faculty affairs at Ohio State University, Columbus.
This is why, he added, most medical schools have embraced the Association of American Medical Colleges’ concept of “holistic review,” which judges potential physicians on their academic records, their personal experiences, and their individual attributes.
“Standardized tests and academic records are important, but so are the experiences one has gone through and the individual attributes they may have. How resilient are you? How compassionate? Our embrace of this more holistic approach, I believe, is helping many medical schools move toward having a more diverse class that is closer to reflecting the needs of our multicultural and multiracial society,” Dr. Capers said.
To be clear, Dr. Capers is not afraid of having a discussion on this topic and denies that the uproar against this article represents “cancel culture.”
“Hey, I love to debate and I’m not against hearing divisive voices, but then let’s have a debate and hear both sides. But there are several problems with the way they did this. No. 1, they called it a ‘white paper,’ which to most people means it reflects the views of the organization, not a specific individual, and, secondly, it’s more than an opinion piece in that he manipulates facts to make his points, with no chance for rebuttal.”
Several have also questioned how this paper, which is written by a nonexpert in the field, passed peer review.
The article contains some accurate historical references, said Dr. Capers, but intertwined with this history the author editorializes in a fashion that is “charged with racism.” In other places, Dr. Wang is just outright wrong, he added.
“I can also tell you that, in one place where he quotes me specifically, what he says is quite damaging and completely wrong. He quotes something we wrote but cuts off the final sentence, making it seem as though we acknowledged that we had to artificially rank minority applicants high, just so we could say we have a diverse fellowship program.
“It’s frankly very hard to believe that was an accident,” Dr. Capers added.