At The Hill Jonathan Turley remarks on a court challenge to some of the provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Bid Administration’s “stimulus package”:
The question is, when should preference be given over a common resource desperately needed by everyone? For example, the Biden administration and many states gave preferential treatment to minority communities in the allocation of early vaccines; states like Montana and Vermont gave people of color priority in receiving shots. That meant many other citizens had to wait, due to their race, for a vaccine in the middle of a lethal pandemic. Yet, advocates cited greater vaccine “hesitancy†in minority areas and other historic barriers to medicine as justification.
The court’s concern in the Greer case is that the Biden administration’s rationale would allow the use of racially discriminatory policies throughout the government. This is a far more nuanced constitutional issue than past challenges. Rather than impose a quota system or a direct exclusionary policy, Greer and others complain that the government can achieve the same result by prioritizing certain groups in the receipt of benefits.
The alternative is to maintain a bright line against the use of racial criteria in government programs. In a 2007 case, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that position most succinctly by declaring that the “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.â€
Chief Justice Roberts had it precisely correct. Two wrongs still do not make a right.
I do think that such provisions will be increasingly common even after they’re struck down by the courts. Receiving a handout from the government too readily becomes a way of life and the ability to secure them becomes a form of discrimination of its own. If everyone were equally able to game the system, we’d all be Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
We prioritized older people because they were more likely to die and people were OK with that. We prioritized some minorities because they were more likely to die and it is declared discrimination. This may be the first time in US history I can think of where prioritizing a high risk group was considered discrimination.
Steve
“Age”, is not a race nor mentioned in the bill of rights.
If you have selected a group by race for different treatment you have become a racist. I don’t see any way around it.
That’s pretty disingenuous, steve. The following article shows exactly what happens when medicine and social engineering get mixed – which they inevitably will. The author’s rational is pretty thin gruel except for the notion of actual co-morbidities such as diabetes. The rest a thinly veiled run at social grievances. The potential for mischief is huge.
As for the real medical issues, a large fraction of the elderly generally cannot do much about it, hence a real medical need to prioritize them. Aging is aging. Even then, you have the issues of a lifetime of eating, drinking and smoking or other behaviors that fall under personal responsibility, not necessarily medical need. Show me a minority with an inherent physiology issue and I’ll show you a potential preference candidate.
And what next? Outlawing soda pop in in the black community in case of another covid outbreak? Shipping people off from the south side of Chicago to a ranch in Montana? Don’t laugh. Just think of what has happened under heavy handed governors the past 15 months.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid19-racial-disparities
Steve,
The problem with your argument is that risk from covid wasn’t the criteria for preferencing certain races, unlike age.
If one looks back over time, we have never been able to get away from quotas of one kind or another. During the Irish immigration it was NINA, then Jim Crow, then Jews were excluded from the Ivies… Once colleges in Massachusetts were banned from asking for photographs of applicants, in order to prevent discrimination. There were men’s and women’s colleges; the former have disappeared. Now Progressives are insisting on segregated facilities and special privileges for select persons. So be it.
I would suggest we throw out all the equality/equity nonsense and go to rigid, enforceable quotas. And the quotas would have to cover every category: race/ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation/preference, religion, political affiliation, and whatever else you can think of, perhaps even IQ.
Every organization and department would have to be 50% male, 50% female, 2% homosexual, 1% transgender, 60% nonhispanic White, 18% Hispanic, 12% Black, 6% Asian, 3% multirace, 1% American Indian, 43% Protestant, 20% Catholic, 2% Mormon, 2% Jewish, 1% Muslim, 26% unaffiliated, 47% Democrat, 44% Republican…
Quotas would be adjusted every decade using the most recent census.
Following the South African example, everyone would get a federally issued a photo ID card specifying all their categories.
Since the Ivies, California, and other colleges are dropping the ACT/SAT tests for admission, we can dispense with admissions departments entirely. Simply create a national pool of college applicants, and assign them to each school randomly by computer in accordance with the quota scheme above.
Do the same for hires. Create a national pool of job applicants, and assign them randomly to companies according to the quota scheme.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 story “Harrison Bergeron” in the October issue of “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” is a good starting point.
And no, I am not being sarcastic or ironic. I am serious. Once the quotas and random assignment are in place, no one can complain about discrimination.
Outlawing soda pop?
Menthol cigarettes first as a trial balloon.
Stress caused by discrimination?
How about the stress of living alongside an armed, angry, violent minority?
Anyone can play this game, as long as it benefits them.
I can link to several more medical organizations wanting to prioritize vaccinations for minorities because they were hit harder. This is just one. So I know that within the medical community the reason to prioritize was because of the higher risk.
No one really knows why minority communities got hit harder. Dave has been the one advocating for genetics. Black peiople cant do much about being black and Hispanics cant do much about being Hispanic. (Note that Hispanics tend to live longer.)
https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/video-player/18551637
Steve
Only true if the objective were proportional representation which it is not. The Lightfoot example suggests that the objective is 100% black “representation”.
Not precisely. What I’ve been saying is that there is at least some objective evidence for the hypothesis. The alternative seems to be that blacks and Hispanics receive inferior care which I see as an unfair indictment of medical professionals. I do wonder how much disparity in outcomes are consequences of obesity. It’s completely anecdotal but every time there’s a teary human interest piece here on the news about someone whose father died of COVID-19 the pictures they show of the deceased are invariably someone who’s grossly overweight.
Here’s what I really think.
We’ll be at each other’s throats until war breaks out.
We can’t help it.
War will unite us.
I think more the opposite—the war will be among us. See Portland, Seattle, Chicago this past summer, and others.
“I do wonder how much disparity in outcomes are consequences of obesity.”
Its not that hard to look up. Blacks are about 1.3 times more likely to be obese with nearly all of that among women. Blacks are about twice as likely to die from Covid. It isnt all obesity. (Numbers are worse for Hispanics.) No need to guess.
https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/video-player/18551637
So it is clear that we do not know why blacks, and even more Hispanics, catch Covid and die more from Covid but they do. W3e know that the medical societies advocate for preferential vaccination because of the higher risk. We have some guy named Turley who claims it is because of hesitancy (which only really matters because of the higher death rates.)
So explain why it is is discrimination to treat those at highest risk first. That is what we do with other diseases.
Steve
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html
You guys just make up stuff. Here are some numbers.
Steve
I’m aware of the obesity, etc. statistics. I think they’re suggestive but don’t necessarily indicate causality.
I’ve posted in the past about lack of trust in the health care system among certain groups of people and its implications.
So you are not going to explain why it is discrimination to treat high risk groups first? Your right I guess.
Steve
Was that addressed to me? I think the standards of the practice of medicine and the standards of government are necessarily different, i.e. what is right for the practice of medicine is not necessarily right for government. For one thing physicians are bound by a code of ethics; not so for politicians.
We have laws that restrict what politicians may do, specifically in this case the 14th Amendment. The government must be able to demonstrate a “compelling government interest” to discriminate on the basis of race. If such an interest can be demonstrated, I have no opposition to the discimination; if it cannot be I do.
So dying at twice the rate of other people is not compelling? It is in medicine. What would your limit be or do you not have one? I am getting the feeling here that you would oppose prioritizing medical treatment based upon disease incidence but only if it is race linked.
Steve
“Protected classes” include race and sex. It isn’t for me to decide what’s a compelling interest but the court’s. I believe in the law and equal treatment under the law.
I am getting the feeling here that you think that “separate but equal” is perfectly okay.
Link goes to more discrimination. Why should Peru get more vaccines just because they are dying at 10 times the rate of Ghana?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/vaccine-covid-distribution.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Separate but equal? Havent said anything about that. What I have clearly stated several times is that we should prioritize those at highest risk. You disagree with that because in this case the risk is based upon race/ethnicity.
Steve
Actually, you have—you just don’t realize it. Race-based laws and policies have a bad history. By embracing them you are on a slippery slope that leads to rejection of Brown v. Board and a restoration of separate but equal.
No, I am embracing risk based medicine like most people who practice. As I noted up above, most of us would prioritize Peru over Ghana and Ghana is almost all black. The problem here is that avoiding prioritizing treatment when there is a clear race based predominance of a disease leads to worse outcomes and more deaths for that race. The only way you can justify supporting worse outcomes for a given racial group in the face of known higher disease risk would be actual racism. If the group at risk is white, Asian, young, old, male, female or whatever the at risk group should receive priority. (Yes, there are caveats. In the case of infectious disease you might want to prioritize the group which is the vector rather than the group suffering the most, but you would still prioritize the group suffering the most over those suffering less aside from the vectors.)
“Actually, you have”
The groups are not equal. One group is twice as likely to die as the other.
Steve