Colour code your Doctor and live longer

Dear Doctor Max Price, Vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town,

          "Mrs Smith I'm the hospital Superintendent and I'm sorry to have to tell you that Doctor Nzimande gave you a hysterectomy instead of removing your appendix. But it wasn't his fault because he got his doctor's degree at the University of Cape Town."

        “I’m her son and I can’t believe what you have just told her Superintendent. Are you saying that because he is Black this kind of monumental muck up is excusable?"

        "I'm afraid so. And what's more the Government has passed a new law that prevents anybody suing a Black doctor for damages in cases  of this kind."

          That’s an example of the kind of conversation that patients might hear in hospitals all over South Africa unless they colour code their doctors. As is always the case the poor will suffer the most because they will not have a choice of doctors at our run down Government hospitals while the rich will be able to pick and choose.

          Your University I see Dr Price is leading the way with the most rigid of racially divided criteria for the admission of medical students. And similar policies have been adopted at other universities throughout the country.

          But your one takes the Master Race Prize for sheer unadulterated prejudice. Is it based on the same scientific formula that the Nazi’s adopted for getting rid of the Jews?

          Alright I know that Blacks were discriminated against in all walks of life under the previous White Government’s apartheid policy. But that was 17 years ago and since then we have had a Black Government that preaches equal opportunity for all. 

          It looks as though your University’s research has arrived at the brilliant new concept that two wrongs do make a right.

        How equal is this? Your University expects Whites and Indians to get an 80% mark before they can even be considered for admission to your Medical School. Blacks are regarded as such dunces that they only need 60%.

          Isn’t that another kind of prejudice all on its own?

          It galls me to think that if only I was Black I might be able to become a doctor now although that 60% might be a bit beyond me. But I do come from a broken home and while he was around my father was a serious drunk and family basher. So surely these would be good enough excuses to compensate for my lack of marks.

          According to The Times you justify the policy because you say the school system is in a mess. Presumably you are referring to the Government schools. And who do you think is responsible for this mess as you call it. It’s the Black Government of course.

          The unfairness happens in the schools, you believe, not at universities. Of course there’s no sign of it being perpetuated at your University is there?

          Black school children don’t have the same advantages as Whites like the internet and parents helping them with homework. You give these reasons for favouring Blacks when they apply to enter your Medical School.

          To look only at marks would be unfair to disadvantaged students, you say. If only they had had that philosophy when I was at school.

          If you are just going on Colour how you do know that some of your White applicants haven’t come from poor backgrounds and those rubbish schools you talk about? And by not going strictly on marks you are allowing people to get qualifications based on Colour rather than ability.

          It is this kind of dangerous thinking that has already done untold damage to our business and Government structures because people have been employed in all kinds of jobs purely on their Blackness.

          Now you are nurturing a host of medics with dodgy qualifications who are expected to take the right life saving decisions for trusting patients. And in the background Whites who have passed matric with seven distinctions are sitting on the sidelines hoping for a place. Others have completed BSc and PhD degrees while they’ve been waiting but they still can’t get into a medical school. It’s sickening.

          I was hard pressed to think of any profession that is worse than medicine in which to conduct social engineering experiments. People’s lives are at stake but who cares if some patients die in the interests of uplifting the Black downtrodden.

          In the same edition of The Times that I have referred to there is a letter from your University’s director of marketing, Gerda Kruger in which she says your University’s mission speaks about our aim to produce graduates whose qualifications are internationally recognised.

          Surely the Black doctors you produce will not be able to compete in first world countries with a background of having gained entry to your University on the basis of having the highest marks for Colour.

          Disappointedly yours,

          Jon, Not Black enough to be a Doctor or perhaps anything else.

PS. In my humble opinion your policy needs major surgery. 

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone? ' on Amazon.com   It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

University justifies Racial Prejudice.

Here is the University of Cape Town’s reply to my post about racialism at this establishment of higher learning and my comments in red.

Dear Jon
            Your blog titled “Colour code your Doctor and live longer” refers.
You assume that because a black medical school applicant is admitted with slightly lower matric scores, (‘Slightly’ – there’s a huge difference between requiring 80% for Whites and only 60% for Blacks) he or she will graduate, after seven years of gruelling study and clinical work, without knowing the difference between an appendectomy and a hysterectomy. This kind of faulty logic is really where the surgery is needed. (Do they take everything that literally at UCT?)
            What you have overlooked is that once a student is admitted into any course of study at the University of Cape Town, that student must graduate on merit. UCT does not lower its standards for graduation. Students who take exams under an invigilator identify their papers with their student numbers rather than their names, so those who do the grading have no way of knowing the race of any person taking the exam.
            Admittedly, students who come to UCT with lower matric scores will struggle in the first year to adjust to working at university level – but then, so do many who enter with matric scores of 91% or higher. UCT offers all such students opportunities to be tutored or to take a bridging year to improve their knowledge of subjects like chemistry and maths. (And it is not just black or coloured students who take up these offers).
            Critics of UCT’s admissions policy like to draw parallels with Nazism and apartheid. But again, this thinking is in need of some critical therapy. How can South Africa become a truly non-racial society if one race continues to dominate in terms of education, career and lifestyle opportunities? How can South Africa be transformed if opportunities are not created to offer higher education to black South Africans who have demonstrated an ability to learn under conditions of hardship and poverty? 

          Through the race-based admissions policy, UCT is trying to create opportunities for those who previously never had them. We don’t expect to need such a policy for long; (How long is ‘for long’. A Black Government has been running the show in South Africa for 17 years now) we are hard at work seeking better indicators of disadvantage.
            It is true that there are white university applicants who come from a disadvantaged background. For this reason, in 2009 UCT embarked on an on-going investigation into measures of disadvantage – including not only race, household income and school attended, but also the many intermediate determinants of school performance. (You’ll need an army of investigators to work this out and this is surely not economically viable)

            It is far more complex than simply saying that ticking a “race” box is good or bad. One of the reasons UCT has made public statements about our admissions policy is to allow for thoughtful discussion of the topic. Such discussion might indeed produce a viable alternative to a race-based admissions policy. (The only just and perfectly viable admissions policy is to give preference to the students with the highest marks. Q.E.D.) But so far this has not been the case.
            Sincerely,
            Gerda Kruger, Executive Director: Communication and Marketing, University of Cape Town.         

           
Dear Gerda,

          All the perpetrators of racial hatred like the Klu Klux Klan, the Nazis and the old South African Apartheid Government had what they considered to be good reasons to justify their views. Is UCT any different?

       Possibly the most disturbing aspect of your racial policy is that it is being promoted at a place of learning. Aren’t you thus producing more generations of people who will believe it is right to go on having prejudice of some kind based purely on Colour?

          Regards,

          Jon (Disqualified from Medical School on old age grounds; not being a member of the ruling African National Congress Party; disagreeing with the University’s Blacks come first policy; having been born at the time of the Apartheid Government; having a clubbed foot and because my wife has left me; even though I had a 100% pass mark)