How does Colorado pick state judges? Can we do better? Obstetric racism? A good place to find a county fair if you're wanting to go (a good FB page to follow too).
Educate yourself (if you were not already aware) on the process Colorado uses to pick judges, and an interesting proposal for how we might do better.
Colorado picks its state-level judges via what is known as the Missouri Plan. The way this plays out here in Colorado is that our governor is presented with a list of candidates for state level judicial appointments that were picked by a group of advisors. The governor then picks who he thinks is best and that person is now the judge (there is no confirmation by our legislature like at the Federal level).
The other half of the Missouri Plan is that we get to vote on whether that judge should keep his or her job (a vote for retention).
If you want more detail on the process, check out the screencap from the op ed linked below. The op ed is also a good resource on the different kinds of judges we have in this state.
In terms of its set up, I think the Missouri Plan is as good as any for picking judges. At first blush, I might be inclined to say that the legislative branch should have a hand in the process of appointment, but I'm soothed by the idea that we the people get to weigh in at specified intervals. That is, the judgeships are not lifetime appointments and thus I'm okay with fewer checks at the beginning.
I do, however, take issue with the bland reports we get in our Blue Books every election as to whether or not we should retain any given judge.** As I have written about before, I would like for this section to be expanded and for more detail given as to the process used to determine this judge's performance (record of being overturned on appeal, use of bail, etc.)
Ms. Madsen, in her op ed also runs through some interesting thoughts as to how we might change our judicial retention process.
I'll leave it to you to read up in more detail, but besides a mention of more detail in the Blue Book (something she dismisses), she tosses out things like higher percentages of "retain" votes to keep a judge at his or her first retention vote, and the ability for other judges to run against a judge when he or she is up for their first retention vote.
Interesting ideas (though the latter seems to not be in keeping with the Missouri Plan, something intended to reduce the amount of partisanship in judicial offices).
Among the ideas I saw in the op ed, the ones I support would be expanding the information in the Blue Book and requiring a 2/3rds or 3/4ths vote to retain a judge at his or her first election. I'm a no on allowing other candidates in on the first retention election for the reason I hinted at above--it would, I think, inject too much campaigning and politics into the judiciary.
What do you think?
**In case you haven't yet seen it, I will reiterate my position from earlier that I intend to be an automatic "do not retain" vote for any appellate or higher level judge due to their handling of judicial discipline and plain bypassing of the will of the voters with their decisions. Judges that are closer to home (local), I will read up on and decide.
https://denvergazette.com/opinion/columns/perspective-picking-colorados-judges/article_7db074e8-66fb-5fa6-b8d6-f41aadb99d0f.html
Obstetric racism?
The first link below is to a recent Colorado Sun article alleging racism (structural and otherwise) in the healthcare system, in particular racism in OBGYN care.
Let me start off by saying that there are racist people. There are racist people in every single field. Unfortunately, sometimes these racist people get into positions where they have the discretion to make decisions that affect others, and they use their racism to motivate those decisions.
But doing as the Sun does in their story linked below, that is, painting an entire field with a charge as nasty as racism, whether you claim that racism is overt or whether you claim it is structural, is an extraordinary claim.
And extraordinary claims, those that accuse others of character flaws, complicity in bad behavior, stupidity or dullness to same demand more than just hints and associations as to their veracity. We should be brave enough to risk accusations against ourselves to hold claims like this to the same kind of scrutiny we would with any other.
A good habit to get into when you start reading about claims of discrimination or racism is to ask yourself the question of whether what you are presented is an example of discrimination or a disparity. There are always disparities in the world--some thing is different for one person or group vs. another--but not all disparities are discrimination.
Taking the example of the woman in the article, it is implied that because of the color of her skin, her concerns were ignored and she was sent away from the doctor's office, to have one of her children die in the womb and the other be a close call.
I'll leave it to you to read the article and come to your own conclusions, but I would ask the following. Is it possible that the same set of facts could be explained by there NOT being racism involved?
To give you a simple example, when I had a work-related injury (an infection that had formed an abscess deep in my leg) a thousand years ago which flared up after my treatment had ended, I had to make multiple calls and threaten to go to the ER before I was allowed back in to be seen by a doctor. The infection nearly traveled into my tibia and almost required surgery. My being white says it was likely not racism. My guess is that the people at the occupational medicine clinic simply thought I was malingering or trying to reopen the worker's comp case.
Not okay by any stretch of the imagination, (doctor's have a nasty habit of thinking themselves close to God), but not racism.
Further, I want you to ask yourself if you got a chance to hear the other side of the story. Was anyone at the clinic this woman went to asked about the interaction? Were there any records that indicate why the decisions were made the way they were? Answers to these questions would further illuminate what is going on and help answer the question of why this woman was treated the way she was; they would answer whether this was indeed discrimination or a disparity.
Claims about institutional (as opposed to individual) claims of racism require just as much care and scrutiny. There is more to digest here than I have space for, so I will limit myself to the claims I underlined in the screenshot attached from the Sun article.
Going in order, I attached a press release from CU and then the journal article itself below the Sun article. If you look at the study what you see is that induced labors have gone up significantly. Since the 90's the rate of induced-labor births has gone up by about 3 times (3.16x for black women, 2.97x for Hispanic, and 2.58x for white women).
The reasoning here is kind of convoluted, so I diagrammed it out for you in screenshot #2. As above, put your thinking cap on and see if the claims behind this study (and in the Sun article) are reasonable. Ask yourself, in other words if the claims in the bits of text are true and ask yourself if those arrows necessarily lead form one bit to another.
Now ask yourself if there could be any other drivers behind this pattern. Inducements have been increasing lately and a lot of that has been demand from patients filtered through their doctors: requests like "can we schedule an inducement for next week because my mother in law is going to be coming for a visit and I want to be able to show her the baby" are not unheard of. Further, inducements carry enough risk and have become so popular that many hospitals require doctors to justify any proposed inducement to a group of peers before they are allowed.
Return to the first screenshot and the second claim I underlined. The claim that some medical textbooks still claim black people have a higher pain tolerance is a tough one, and it's also a common one; anyone looking into claims about systemic medical racism will see this claim repeatedly. Interestingly, however, you will just as commonly see the inverse of this claim. The claim that black people have less pain tolerance and complain more about it.
What would be helpful here would be an actual citation for us to be able to ground our discussion. Without an actual reference, what we have is what you find when googling claims like the one made by the woman interviewed in the Sun: something reminiscent of the child's game of telephone. People repeatedly pass along this claim (and its inverse), but no one is giving the exact primary source.
Racism does exist. It can have real (and devastating consequences). When we find it, we should call it out.
At the same time, people making claims about others should be careful in their claims. It's just as bad (and can have just as devastating consequences) when someone gets labeled a racist.**
This is why it is critical that we subject claims of racism to the same kind of scrutiny that we would any other claims with such potential for harm. Not to reflexively disprove, but to test the claim and make sure that we don't over- or under-react.
**and here I include harms like people not seeking needed care because they believe they will face racism.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/07/19/obstetric-racism-colorado-america/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00221465231165284
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/04/26/obstetric-racism-prevalent-us-fueling-rise-questionable-labor-inductions
Related:
If you look up in the links I shared in this post, you will notice at least once the phrase "centered (or centering) at the margins".
If you're like me, you'll need to look that up and so I thought I would save you a step.
There are different fields and areas of study where this phrase is relevant, but since this is a post about medicine and health, I found a resource that would help you define and learn more about it in a health context. That link is below.
The short summary here is that "centering [your investigation] at the margins" refers to a researcher looking not at health outcomes for prototypical, average, and/or middle class subjects and instead looking at how the people at the margins of society are faring.
I.e. it refers to investigating how, say, the black poor are doing.
More below.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6142151/
Interested in attending a county fair in a rural area of Colorado?
The FB page Urban and Rural Allies for Colorado Agriculture is asking people to send in links and info about their fairs.
Good place to start, lots of fairs will be there and I bet you can find one that's close.
I would say that it’s a good place too if you want to learn more about Ag in this state, fairs or no.
https://www.facebook.com/alliesforcoag