Antiracism and the level of health services: a sociomedical hypothesis

Little attention has been paid to the validity of the "reverse discrimination" position that antiracist initiatives in the health sector would be associated with reduced services for whites. This paper advances the sociomedical hypothesis that antiracism leads to an increase in the level of health services and opportunities available to both minority and white populations.FOUR TYPES OF US HEALTH CARE UTILIZATION AND TRAINING DATA ARE EXPLORED: annual rates of discharge from short-stay hospitals, percent of population seeing a physician during the year, rates of hypertension treatment and control, and admissions to the first-year class of US medical schools. These data are examined according to race for years prior and subsequent to the upsurge of antiracist activity that characterized the Civil Rights Movement era.From the early or mid-1960s to the mid- or late 1970s, hospital discharges, physician visits, and hypertension treatment and control for minorities and whites increased substantially. Generally these increases were proportionally greater for minorities. Although the percentage of increase in minority medical school admissions was necessarily accompanied by a decline in percentage of admissions of whites, the absolute number of whites admitted rose substantially as overall class size grew.These data do not support the "reverse discrimination" notion of one racial group benefiting at the expense of another. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that antiracist efforts in the health sector lead to an expansion of services and opportunities for minority and majority populations.