The Other Side of Racism

Welcome to Family Policy Matters, an engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, this is John Rustin, president of NC Family, and we're grateful to have you with us for this week's program. It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged, and inspired by what you hear on Family Policy Matters, and that you will feel better about your work. You are equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracey Devitt-Griggs.

Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Many of us probably don't realize how deeply embedded preferences for diversity, equity, and inclusion have become in our institutions. A sincere effort to be more diverse is a worthy goal for all of us, but there are those who believe that the focus has shifted so dramatically that it's placing the value of diversity over the value of hiring the most highly qualified people. Well, Kenny Hsu, president of Color Us United, has seen this problem personally in the field of medicine. He believes it could be leading to less qualified medical school graduates, and as a result, less qualified doctors. Kenny Hsu, thank you for your willingness to talk to us about this very interesting issue today.

Thank you so much for having me. Tell us what's your story today? How did you get involved in working on this issue? I started learning this when I covered the Harvard discrimination case against Asian-Americans, which I cover in my book, An Inconvenient Minority, where Harvard used the diversity rationale to discriminate against Asian-Americans in the application process. They wanted more black people and they wanted more Hispanic kids, but they wanted fewer Asian kids and fewer white kids.

And that's what got me to my current skepticism, and that's what got me to my current criticism about DEI in society. What happened with that case? The case is at the Supreme Court right now, actually, and it is being litigated.

The arguments were done on October 2022, and they're going to come out with a decision in 2023, but I'm optimistic. I think that they are going to censure Harvard for their discriminatory policies that they use in the name of diversity. Well, tell us about your experience with UNC School of Medicine because you're at it again, right? You're seeing this elsewhere. Yeah, you know, I'm president of Color Us United, and we believe in a vision of diversity that is based in merit, right?

We love and support everybody, but the goal of America should be to be a meritocratic, race-blind society, and we're moving in the opposite direction. And UNC School of Medicine shows this in their health system. They released a thing called a task force to integrate social justice. Now, when this caught my eye, I was interested because I live in North Carolina, and I wanted to see, well, what's the impact of this on future doctors? Are they going to be the most qualified doctors? And in fact, they won't be because this task force for social justice gives explicit racial quotas in the hiring and admissions process for their doctors.

That means that if you're an Asian doctor who is extremely well qualified, you are likely to be passed in residency for a doctor who is not your race, who is perhaps less qualified, who has less of the objective metrics, MCAT scores, GPAs, to become, you know, some of the best qualified doctors. And so this, this is worrying. And so we, Color Us United, have launched a campaign, which you can find on colorusunited.org, and we're doing it in partnership with many other nonprofits, and also the North Carolina General Assembly, to expose DEI in the healthcare system and then cause the dean of the School of Medicine, Wesley Burks, to renounce DEI. Okay, so let's talk about this. You mentioned that this campaign, which I saw on your website, is in partnership with some folks at the General Assembly. Be a little more specific.

Who are those people? The Joint Legislative Commission on oversight just recently requested UNC turn over materials related to DEI at their university. And I actually received their document.

And it's blisteringly bad. First of all, they don't have any outcomes to actually measure the scope of their DEI efforts, which include things like unconscious bias training includes things like teaching about healthcare from a social justice perspective, I'm sorry, your doctor should be teach to be treating you based on your biology, not based on social justice. And they have these things integrated throughout their entire curriculum. And so it is my job now, and you know, the members of the North Carolina General Assembly, especially on the Joint Oversight Commission, John Torbett, Hardister, Senator Paul Newton, those people as well, to really excise the influence of DEI from our healthcare system. Some of these goals when you first read them, you're like, Hey, I don't see anything wrong with it.

So where did these goals break down? How did they become problematic? Most all Americans like the fact that we are a country of a multitude of cultures and backgrounds. You know, I myself am Chinese American.

I was born here. You know, I have many friends who are from various different countries all over Asia, and Africa and Europe, international people as well. We like that where a lot of Americans start disagreeing is when you start lowering the standards to achieve a sort of multicolored diversity. For example, at UNC med school, 10% of the incoming doctors are Asian American. Okay, you might think, well, that's overrepresented Asians are overrepresented at North Carolina, because they make up 3% of the North Carolina general population, but they make up 10% of the student body of the medical students. But what you fail to factor in is that Asian Americans by and large are being pushed and have a passion and also have the requisite qualifications to get into med school to become doctors, which is an extremely hard time consuming and cognitively intensive profession. And if you start saying, Well, we need to lower the population of Asians at the med school to achieve a racial balance, or to achieve diversity, then you're actually discriminating against people, Asian Americans who by and large are very well qualified to attend med school and to compete in that system.

And you're actually harming your own healthcare prospects in the future because you are admitting lower qualified doctors over higher qualified doctors. So we all support diversity, but we don't support lowering our standards for diversity. Talk about why you think so many institutions have pivoted so dramatically toward the focus of diversity, equity and inclusion. Because I think that there is a guilt on the part of a lot of, well, mostly liberal Americans, but many Americans to rectify the injustice, the historical injustices that you know, America has put upon black Americans, I think that that is what happens.

And we're still trying to work through that. So what a lot of institutions are doing is that they're instituting dei programs in an attempt to say I'm moral, and I'm virtuous, and I'm on the right side of history, and I'm committing to be anti racist. If you remember back in 2020, Ibram X. Kendi was the author of the book, how to be anti racist. But in that same book, Ibram X. Kendi said, the only way to rectify past discrimination is present discrimination. The only way to rectify present discrimination is future discrimination. So what Ibram X. Kendi wants is he wants to discriminate the other way around. So if America historically discriminated against black people, well, now we need to discriminate against white people and Asian people to make room for black people.

And that that's how a lot of the dei ideologues think. But what they don't understand is that you're harming black people in the process, because you're basically saying to a black person, we're going to put you through this medical school, this intensive medical school, when you're not fully qualified, when you're around a competitive block that is going to discourage you because you're frequently going to be at the bottom 25%. And we're going to give you all of this inclusion until you actually go out in your career, and you start treating people and you start seeing the results of the efforts and you're not fully trained, and that's going to look bad on you in your career. So instead of saying, well, we're going to try to get you up to the standard, but it is ultimately your responsibility to meet the same standard as everybody else. We are now lowering standards for diversity and that is going to harm the black population in America. If it isn't stopped, look at the task force to integrate social justice, we colorist united unveiled the task force to integrate social justice at UNC and it says things like punctuality, objectivity, rational thoughts, being on time, these are all quote unquote, white supremacist values. That is, if we ask black people or minorities to adhere to the same standards that white people do of being punctual and on time, then we are actually bringing white supremacist values upon black people. And that is one of the most racist things that you can say to black people in this country that we can't expect you to be on time that we can't expect you to pay attention to a lecture.

In fact, that was one of the points that they made in his task force for social justice. They said, the lecture format privileges white people over black people. You're we're just lowering the standards more and more in the name of diversity in the name of inclusion. And this is going to harm black people. And it's also racist towards white people to think that asking people to adhere to the same standards that they've adhered to is racist.

It's not racist. What is the solution in your mind for this? I haven't unveiled this yet. But I will start unveiling this on my social media, which you can follow me at Kenny M. Shue, Kenny M. X, you were unveiling a new framework called the meds framework. Meds merit equality of opportunity, diversity of thought and straight talk.

There's a lot that I can get into about this. But it's a new framework for health care for diversity and health care. And basically it says we're going to commit to merit based principles and hiring and missions and promotion. But we are going to try to expand equality of opportunity. We want to make sure that the standards are transparent. We want to make sure that financing is transparent so that everybody has the same access to the information, but you still have to work your way up to succeed in this profession. We value diversity, but we value diversity of thought, as well as all of these other instead of diversity of background, which really doesn't matter in your ability to be a skilled doctor, we should be valuing diversity of thought, which means that you're intellectually capable, which means that you're willing to make reasoned arguments, just like all doctors should be doing. We value straight talk. Yes, the causes of some disparities in health care in our country.

But by and large, your health care is mostly determined by your family, by your own behaviors, and by your own trust and willingness to get with a doctor at the first sign of any kind of condition. So we need to value those things as well. We need to eliminate this to the relevant legislators and nonprofit groups, and then also UNC itself, the Board of Trustees and Board of Governors as well, because people have been clamoring. They've been asking for an alternative to DEI. Well, if we don't do this, if we don't do what the DEI officers say, what are we going to do to expand access? The word is access in our state for health care. And the answer is there are some things that you can do, like making prices more transparent, you know, by making sure you promote the most qualified doctor so that people have access to health care.

There's also things that you can't do. You can't force people to live closer to a hospital, even though living closer to a hospital improves your rate of surviving cardiac arrest by five times the level of your survival rate if you live far away from a hospital. You can't force people to do that. You know, there are equity issues that are just completely unrelated to racism that you can't force people to change their own behaviors and uproot their life just to improve their health outcomes. So you can't force people to do that. There are equity issues that are just completely unrelated to racism that you can't force people to change their own behaviors and uproot their life just to improve their health outcomes. So that's why we have to talk about this in a straight way. And I think that politicians have been talking about this in a non-straight way.

And that has led to a lot of confusion and ultimately the adoption of DEI, which we need to stop. Where we can go, Kenny Hsu, if we want to follow your organization, Color Us United, and connect with your work. That's where you can read our petition. The petition is to the North Carolina legislators to act on your behalf to stop DEI in healthcare.

We're aiming for 10,000 signatures and we're getting there, but we need your help. So go to colorusunited.org and sign our petition. That's where you can read, by the way, a lot of what's going on at UNC healthcare. It is not becoming about excellence in quality in healthcare anymore. It's becoming about activism and social justice.

And we have to put a stop to that because we care about the future of our doctors for people like me, people like you. We have been speaking with Kenny Hsu and that's Hsu as in X-U. And if you want to follow him on social media, it's Kenny M-X-U on your choice of social media. So thank you so much, Kenny Hsu for joining us today on Family Policy Matters.

Thank you. We've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. To listen to this show online and to learn more about NC Family's work to inform, encourage, and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family. you