Rock, Paper, Scissors

I've always found the rock, paper, scissors game that guilt-ridden white liberals engage in when it comes to dealing with other races to be quite interesting.

There is definitely a pecking order, a way of ranking which race must be treated with the most condescending piety. It usually works like this: blacks beat just about any other group when the two are head-to-head. For example if a woman and a black are at odds, the left will usually side with the black. Clarence Thomas being an obvious exception to the rule.

Women are a close second, followed by hispanics, then Native Americans and finally (when they are desperate to cling to something) Asians.

Which is why the current situation at the MLK/Drew Hospital in LA is so interesting. Here is a situation where a majority black-staffed hospital is engaged in widespread incompetence, killing off hispanic community members.

Makes for a dicey situation when you are a guilt-ridden liberal. Do you speak out against the hospital since they are in the position of power, letting poor hispanics die in misery in the waiting room of the ER? But, at the same time this argument empowers conservatives who warned what affirmative action would bring. Tough one.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kingb13jun13,0,4679488.story?coll=la-home-center

From the piece:

Forty-seven percent of 285 licensed vocational nurses failed to pass detailed skills tests on the first try, he reported. After several attempts, most passed, he wrote. Those who did not pass "were removed from patient assignment." More than 40% of certified nurse assistants did not pass their first skills test, though "virtually all" passed after additional training, he said.Competency tests of King-Harbor's registered nurses, who are more highly trained and perform more advanced medical procedures, are continuing, Chernof wrote.

Now the talk is around whether to close the facility down for good, chalking it up to a failed experiment in affirmative action that ended up costing the lives of some people. The price of progress I suppose.

Not that this will stop the next experiment aimed at boosting the self-esteem of a downtrodden community who could probably care less what color the person adminstering health care to them is as long as they are competent. This hospital was opened in 1972 through the work of guilty whites who thought that the lack of hospitals was somehow one of the reasons for the Watts Riots of the late sixties.

Another story of a guy who almost died at the hands of the hospital is here:

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/escaping-with-his-life/16446/

UPDATE: The LA Times did a pretty good in-depth piece a few years ago here. But there is no mention of the verboten subject matter affirmative action.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-kdday2dec06,1,503967,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true

UPDATE II: Here's part I of the series. Some of these pathetic community activists have some explaining to do.

When King/Drew is threatened, it is often Lillian Mobley--long the hospital's most visible defender--who takes the microphone. Last January, she stood facing about 200 people in an auditorium at Grant AME Church in Watts. As cheers of adoration washed over her, Mobley, a thin woman of regal bearing, thrust her chin forward in a characteristically defiant pose. Moments passed. When the last voice had been stilled, when every head turned her way, only then did she speak. "The hospital," she said gravely, leaning on a cane, "is being closed piece by piece." There were murmurs, shouts of dismay. "We have to stand together to fight this battle," said Mobley, her voice rising. "We have to rise every morning under God's will...to save Martin Luther King." That meeting, held to protest planned cutbacks at King/Drew, was one of many such gatherings she has addressed over the years.

Strong-willed and fiercely protective, Mobley, 74, is at the forefront of a coterie of African American leaders, most now in their 70s and 80s, who defend King/Drew with the same intensity that they once devoted to the civil rights movement. To them, it is part of the same struggle.