Justifications and needs for diversity in orthopaedics

America is founded on high humanitarian, democratic ideals. The historic fa cts of slavery, discrimination, and segregation challenge and taint these d emocratic principles. Although progress has been made, serious racial probl ems remain. In 1997, the United States had 474 active hate groups, up 20% f rom 1996. African American males who have the same education as white males doing the same work earn approximately 75% of what their white counterpart s earn. America, as predicted by the Kerner Commission Report, is two socie ties: black and white, separate, and unequal. Some astonishing disparities in healthcare exist. Peer reviewed medical literature documents that Africa n Americans have higher infant mortality rates, shorter life expectancies, fewer joint replacements, and more amputations than whites. Communications within a diverse group of students and teachers enriches the educational ex perience. The late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, LLD, asserted that a medical student from a particular background may enrich classmates' unders tanding of people whose cultures ability to serve a heterogeneous patient p opulation. Diversity on clinical teams can enhance rapport between patient and physician, and can diminish unthinking insults to patients, born of phy sician ethnic insensitivity. Healthcare facilities with diverse staffs are more likely than homogeneous facilities to attract and successfully serve t he nation's diverse population. A University of California at Davis School of Medicine study showed that diversity can be achieved without compromisin g duality of patient care. Clinically and ideologically, diversity in ortho paedics is goad for patients and for the country.