An additional major reason to oppose government takeover of health care: race

(Note, August 12: more comments have been added to this entry )

A fighting mad reader writes:

Not only am I against nationalized health care because it represents an inexorable path towards socialism, but also because the expanding ranks of bureaucrats will be filled with inept blacks, who simply lack the administrative and cognitive skills to process the mounds of paperwork resulting from such an imposing bureaucracy. Anyone who has spent a few years in the Army can tell you how the administrative, personnel and financial systems are screwed up. And the reason—incompetent blacks. This link demonstrates the incredibly frightening extent in which blacks are overrepresented in the federal work force.

For example, just today a black retired sergeant major, who is our division’s office manager, asked me, “Is Boston in New England?” I said it was. He then inquired, “Then how come it does not show up in my list of states?” Think about that. A 48 year old retired sergeant major thinks that New England is a state.

Perhaps New England, Mid Atlantic, Midwest, South, Rocky Mountain, Southwest and Pacific Coast are where Obama got his statement about having been in 57 states.

- end of initial entry -

Karl D. writes:

I completely agree with your commenter. As he rightly points out, blacks will be the ones to fill the untold thousands of bureaucratic positions. In any hospital or doctor’ss office in most cities in America, it has already happened. As someone who has to visit doctors and hospitals more often then I would like, I can attest to this fact. While I have great respect for my doctors, the support staff which is entirely black and Hispanic are not only downright surly with the patients but grossly incompetent. Botched appointments, overcharges, messages not getting through to the doctor, phone calls not returned, pharmacies given the wrong information, the list goes on and on. And to make matters worse, it is almost impossible to get them fired. A family member of mine worked in a famous NYC hospital. She is an educated, well dressed, punctual and respectful white employee. She would tell me horror stories all the time of black nepotism throughout the hospital along with constant tardiness, rudeness to patients, work left undone (usually she would have to do it), inappropriate attire, flirting openly with staff and patients and even theft and fights breaking out. And these were all black women. One finally got fired for fighting but got an attorney and is now happily on the job again! Needless to say my family member fell victim to nepotism and lost the job. Patients sent her cards of how upset they were that she was gone. To add insult to injury, the management people who hire, fire (yeah, right) and are ultimately responsible for these employees are almost all middle aged liberal white woman who are scared of their own shadows. From this little snapshot one can imagine what the future holds.

Dan writes:

I’d like to add to what the Fighting Mad reader said.

I spent several years in the Navy and it’s the same over there. Government service attracts ambitious idiots and emotionally unstable people who thrive on conflict. I hope Obama’s healthcare proposal gets passed for entertainment purposes only. It won’t even reach the level of socialized medicine, because it won’t function at all. Idiots can be trained over a period of years to do simple repetitive tasks, but you can’t train an army of incompetent government employees to do their job overnight. Especially considering that those who are expected to do the training are idiots too.

LA replies:

This, in addition to America’s history and character as a country of liberty in comparison with statist Europe, is the major reason why America must not, and I believe will not, opt for national health. First, it’s often been pointed out that unlike in Europe, which (even today) has greater white homogeneity, in America the vastly greater use of health care by misbehaving, violent, fast-food eating, obese, sickly blacks and Hispanics will very quickly bankrupt the system, with whites paying for it. But the comments here bring out a further reason why America’s particular type of racial diversity makes any kind of socialized or quasi-sociaized medicine suicidal. We have a combined black and Hispanic population of 70 million, with a combined average IQ of 88. (I’m roughly averaging the 85 black IQ with the 90 HIspanic IQ.) And these sub-competent and often anti-white people will largely be running the huge government bureacracy.

So for America to nationalize its health care system is out of the question—a collective national act of jumping the shark. My hope is that there are enough people who sense the hell that national health will bring to America that it will not pass, just as school vouchers, though constantly pushed by Republicans, keep being rejected because suburban whites recognize that vouchers will flood private schools with urban blacks and browns.

Jonathan W. writes:

To build on your last point about school vouchers, the proponents of such can never adequately explain what exactly makes a school a “failing school” (the standard used for determining when vouchers would be issued). They complain about unaccountable teacher unions, leaky roofs, and other so-called impediments to learning. However, the upper income and mostly white suburbs also suffer from greedy and demanding teacher unions and perform fine on the state tests. Further, I fail to see what water leaking into a bucket in the hallway has to do with students properly learning history and mathematics. Clearly, the problem in “failing schools” is the quality of the student body itself. Granted, that disruptive or violent low IQ minorities are almost definitely an impediment for learning for the few high performing blacks and Hispanics, but none of the voucher proposals I’ve seen include testing students for ability before moving them into private schools or other public school districts. In fact, the very schools that do test for ability before admission, such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New York City, are routinely attacked by the left for their low percentage of blacks and Hispanics relative to those groups’ share of the city population.

Also, to add to the mad reader’s point about incompetent blacks in administrative positions, I was at the Birmingham, Alabama airport waiting for a connecting flight last year. I overheard a European traveler ask the black desk attendant what time zone Chicago was in (presumably, he had a connecting flight at O’Hare). She looked puzzled, thought for a second, and said, “I think it’s in the Pacific Time Zone.” I was so stunned that it took me a few seconds before I turned around and corrected her answer. Normally, I don’t like to embarrass people in public like that, but in my view, it’s absolutely inexcusable for someone who works for an airline not to have a general idea where our nation’s largest cities lie on a map. I shudder to think what will happen if people like her (who will now be on the government payroll and impossible to fire) are given tasks like keeping track of which MRI belongs to which patient.

LA replies:

Jonathan writes: “Clearly, the problem in ‘failing schools’ is the quality of the student body itself.”

This paraphrases a great Patrick Buchanan column about New York City’s problems that I read in the New York Post about 20 years ago. Buchanan said something like: “The problem with New York City is the quality of the people who live there.” Ah, those were the days when the mainstream conservative media actually said inspiring things from time to time.

David B. writes:

A commenter says that a black retired sergeant-major, who is an office manager asked, “Is Boston in New England?” Many years ago, I was talking to a black co-worker about the NBA finals. The two teams were from Seattle and Washington D.C. He remarked, “How about that? Both teams are from the same state.” This black sports fan thought Seattle, Washington and Washington D.C. were in the same state.

[Deleted Name] writes:

Your thread about incompetent blacks as future administrators of a US national health system reminded me of my first experiences with bureaucrats in Canada. When I first moved to this small town I went to the municipal offices to get a driver’s license and it was a thoroughly pleasant experience. The staff were all polite, attentive and helpful, could answer any question, and performed their tasks with speed and courtesy. At one point a couple who came in for some service were discovered to have been given incorrect information about something, and the lady who was taking driver’s license info apologized and got up from her desk to help them sort things out. As I left I wondered why the atmosphere of that office was so different from what I was used to in similar offices in the US, and then it hit me—DMVs in the US (at least the part where I’m from) are staffed by surly blacks and hispanics who stare at you with dead eyes if you ask them an unusual question.

August 12

Jack S. writes:

Found at drudge, video, and Washington Post story. Look at the pretty, well-dressed white woman trying to ask “her congresswoman” (what a joke) about health care reform.

This woman could be a typical air-headed white female Obama supporter from last year. At this town hall meeting she is trying to speak, searching for just the right phrase while Lee takes a call on her cell phone as if the woman is not there.

Perfectly illustrative of what white America can expect from our new African overlords.

ANM writes:

The story of the aptly titled Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital demonstrates your commenter’s point. It was to be a hospital run by blacks, for blacks, between Watts and Compton.

Suffice to say, it did not become a leading light of American health care. A series of Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times articles revealed the gross incompetence at the hospital. It was wrought with catastrophe after catastrophe. It spent more than rival county hospitals, with inferior outcomes.

Here is the LA Times series.

Karl D. writes:

The recent thread on blacks in the healthcare workforce really got me thinking about blacks in the cultural sense and their love of collectivism. These are patterns I have noticed from observing black behavior up close for a long time. They seem to love things that involve great numbers of people. Government is a perfect example. I had a black friend once who told me “Black people love them some government. Just about as much as they love them some Church.” And he was right. Think about the relatively small, sedate congregations of whites (excluding southern Baptists), and the sheer size and volume of your typical black church. Also, think about when you have seen blacks when on vacation or in a museum somewhere. You might see a smattering of individual black families but what you will always see is a large organized group of them moving along and generally being loud. Anyone who has ever been on a cruise ship can attest to this fact. Blacks also dominate in the government and medical workforce where the power of the collective is felt most strongly. Everybody knows everybody’s business and anyone with even the slightest streak of individualism is dragged back into the fold lest they be cast into the outer darkness as a snob or as they like to call it “Fake.” This collective streak is why it is so easy to get blacks to protest in large numbers. The group-think is almost genetically imprinted and they know that even a protest will eventually turn into a rolling party. Which is something I have noticed when blacks congregate in large numbers for almost any reason. It is always about fun. That is the eventual endgame. Food, dancing, sex, loudness and fun. It almost harkens back to the African village setup. And I don’t say these things in a derogatory sense. Merely as something I have observed for years now.

PS. In regards to blacks being “Loud.” I read something recently about the prisons in California. What was interesting is that the white and Hispanic inmates prefer the prison to be more quiet, especially at night. But the blacks make the din intolerable because they are shouting and laughing all the time. They say it is enough to make you go insane.

Paul K. writes:

You wrote, “[I]n America the vastly greater use of health care by misbehaving, violent, fast-food eating, obese, sickly blacks and Hispanics will very quickly bankrupt the system, with whites paying for it.”

According to a recent news article, blacks have a 51 percent greater prevalence of obesity than whites. The opening sentence of the article read, “The obesity epidemic in the United States is hitting minorities the hardest, U.S. health officials report,” using the ever-popular passive voice to imply that there’s something deeper going on here than black people over-eating. [LA replies: Yeah, blacks are just sitting there minding their own business, and then that old obesity epidemic came rolling along and hit ‘em. The black man in America just can’t catch a break.]

Over the years I have seen a number of articles alluding to the difficulties of providing health care to blacks: they rarely follow an exercise program; pregnant women do not avail themselves of pre-natal care and do not follow up with immunizations for their babies; blacks generally have a poor record of keeping follow-up appointments; they tend not to donate blood or organs, making matches more difficult; and nearly half of young black women have a sexually transmitted disease, compared with 20 percent of whites in the same age group.

How does Obama plan to address these problems? Will he gently chide the black community in his speeches, get an indulgent laugh from the audience, and then move on? Will he levy fines on black people if they don’t make sufficient efforts to manage their own health? It is more likely that he will offer cash payments to blacks who bring their babies to see the doctor, or who manage to lose weight, while assuring us that this is cost-effective in the long run.

In a multi-racial society such as ours, with such significant differences among groups, a universal health plan becomes just another burden to place on those who make an effort to be responsible.

LA replies:

It would be more than “just another burden.” It would be catastrophe, hell on earth. And it would break down. If liberals want to discredit the idea of racial equality forever, there could be no more effective way to do it than pass nationalized health in this country.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2009 04:06 PM | Send