5. The use of racial and ethnic categories is now also affecting national healthcare
There is a United States government office directly concerned with “equalizing” the health of “minorities” with that of the rest of the population who are deemed to be “not minorities”. It is called the Office of Minority Health. It was created in 1986, as a response to the Heckler Report, which found that there were “health disparities” among minority populations and that such disparities were “an affront both to our ideals and to the ongoing genius of American medicine.”
The Affordable Care Act has as part of its goal the reduction of minority disparity in overall health, and there is now an action plan to bring this about. If that action plan is anything like the way minority education and employment goals are being brought about, it may well mean reducing the health of all those who are not deemed disadvantaged for the sake of the health of those in certain protected groups. If you think this will hurt only “whites”, then think again. Anybody not in the protected class will be targeted, and in all likelihood the prosperous and healthy Asians among us will be first to suffer.
If the goal is equality of health rather than overall improvement of health, the easiest way to achieve that goal is to reduce the health of all those people who are deemed too healthy. This will not help any individuals or any minorities, and it will in all likelihood injure all those who are doing better than the overall population at present.
The smallest minority of all is the individual. Each of us has a unique genetic heritage, a unique personal history and unique strengths and disabilities. Affirmative action does not care about any of that. All it seeks to do is to make things harder for everybody who does not belong to some artificially created category.
If minorities are defined as “African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans”, then the majority is defined as “anybody who isn’t African American, Hispanic and Native American.” That majority group includes people whose ancestors come from all over the world, including Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands and Europe. Affirmative Action has nothing whatever to do with improving diversity or helping actual visible ethnic minorities. It has everything to do with making it harder for people who are successful to compete with others who are less successful. And it hurts African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans by assuming that they must necessarily be unsuccessful and that they cannot achieve health, wealth and happiness without being given a head start in every competition
