by James A. Bacon

Last month the University of Virginia School of Nursing sponsored an online event: “Dynamics of Prejudice: Antiracist Nursing Education 1968-1978.” A major theme to emerge from the presentation was that white nurses respond defensively when called racist and their reluctance to acknowledge their racism creates obstacles for “anti-racism.” The speaker, Cory Ellen Gatrall with the University of California-San Francisco, labeled white nurses’ resistance to hearing hard truths about race as “white discomfort.”

Although Gatrall’s research focused on the history of nursing a half century ago, she assured listeners that the power structure that supports racism is still with us:

‘The pattern of weaponizing white discomfort, especially within ostensibly white progressive spaces, has not changed,’ Gatrall said. ‘Nor has the outside power granted to whiteness and white comfort by racialized systems, including professionalism in academia as well as the nonprofit-industrial complex.’

“This was a powerful and provocative presentation,” exuded Dominique Tobbell, an endowed UVA professor and director of the Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, who hosted the event. “It has ongoing relevance to nursing students today. … I’m looking forward to assigning more of your work to my students.”

These people owe UVA nurses an apology.

We don’t hear this kind of rhetoric from UVA President Jim Ryan or Nursing School Dean Marianne Baernholdt. They speak in gauzy platitudes about the need for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Everybody hold hands and sing kumbaya. But Ryan has erected an administrative structure at the university level and Baernholdt at the nursing school that gives platforms to people like Gatrall and Tobbell, but not to anyone willing to contest their ideas.

Given this imbalance, it’s fair to ask if UVA’s executive leadership shares the same assumptions as advocates of intersectional oppression. Do they think the American healthcare system is structurally racist? Do they think that UVA Health is structurally racist? Are white nurses biased against people of color? Are UVA’s white nurses afflicted by “white discomfort?” Does that bias affect the quality of care they provide?

The University of Virginia has more than 8,300 employees — nurses, doctors, and many other medical practitioners and staff. They work long hours. They endure stressful conditions. As the COVID epidemic was receding, Ryan praised them as unsung heroes. “I am incredibly grateful for the efforts of so many across our community, which inspire and encourage us to continue looking out for one another,” he said.

How does Ryan square nurses’ sacrifices during the COVID epidemic with the academic theories widely embraced by UVA’s faculty — especially among those hired during his tenure as president — who insist that healthcare is structurally racist and white nurses are racially biased? While Gatrall and Tobbell did not single out UVA for such vilification in the seminar, they implied that structural racism and white discomfort are universal phenomena in the U.S., which by necessity would include UVA.

What evidence do these academic theorists have to back up their allegations of systemic racism and bias?

Opinion surveys?

Discrimination lawsuits?

An epidemic of marginalized minority employees fleeing hostile work conditions?

Studies documenting that white nurses provide worse care to minority patients than minority nurses do?

No, they have nothing of the sort.

By contrast, consider the annual awards conferred by the Leapfrog Group, an independent watchdog for healthcare quality and patient safety. Leapfrog recognized the UVA Medical Center last December as one of the top hospitals in the country — one of 132 hospitals out of 2,100 nationally — based on patient outcomes, safety measures, safe-surgery practices and maternity care. A healthcare system that provided sub-standard care to large minority populations like those served by UVA Health could not possibly qualify for a top rating.

It’s not the same world as 1968, not even as 1978. America has changed, but the proponents of intersectional oppression skip over such ephemera designed to close racial gaps in healthcare such as, oh, I don’t know… Medicaid, supplemental nutrition for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and Obamacare, not to mention UVA’s massive write-offs for charity care ($222 million in FY 2022) and bad debts ($162 million). They propound a closed-loop philosophy that cannot be rebutted or falsified. If racial disparities exist, the only explanation is racism. All white nurses are biased. If they deny their racism, their “white discomfort” is just further proof of it. If they claim to be “color blind,” they’re just adopting another racist rhetorical dodge.

It’s OK to have people who think this way at a large research university like UVA. That’s what ideological diversity is all about. A healthy institution needs people who look out for the poor and dispossessed. But it’s not OK to have only people who think that way. UVA should be a place where the idea that certain classes of people are presumed racist until proven innocent is open to debate. Sadly, there is no sign of that happening any time soon.