As a young boy, I grew up reading of the triumph of good over evil in my favorite Indian comic book: Amar Chitra Katha. The tales of the virtuous vassals imbued by a godly spirit vanquishing the forces of darkness is powerful and appealing in large measure because we believe we inhabit a world where the good guys won. But unlike the comic books, the bad guys in the real world don’t have horns, and don’t look like J.R.R Tolkien’s trolls – they wear suits and have fancy degrees and appear quite respectable. Would it be really obvious if the bad guys won? History is after all replete with examples of revolutionaries who believe themselves to be virtuous, blindly following a degenerate elite into an amoral abyss.
With this in mind, a lawsuit from the world of American medicine, filed by Dr. Norman Wang against his employer and others is particularly enlightening.
This particular affair began when Dr. Wang published a paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association titled “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America From 1969 to 2019 “. The purpose of this white paper was to “provide an overview of policies that have been created to impact the racial and ethnic composition of the cardiology workforce, to consider the evolution of racial and ethnic preferences in legal and medical spheres, to critically assess current paradigms, and to consider potential solutions to anticipated challenges.”
At the time of the publication in March 2020, Norman Wang was a cardiologist, a member of the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and director of the fellowship program in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). His publications to this point had largely consisted of esoteric matters in the field of his expertise : electrophysiology. This publication, was of an entirely different nature. The article asserted that the medical profession had not been successful in its overarching goal of increasing the percentages of underrepresented races and ethnicities in the medical profession, and particularly in cardiology. The article also noted that programs to achieve these diversity goals applied different standards to applications by members of underrepresented races and ethnicities and thus raised questions about the legality of doing so because of how race was being used as a factor in hiring, recruitment, promotion and admissions.