The scope of my involvement with the Veterans Administration was helping my father, a WWII vet, and my father-in-law, a Korean Conflict vet, deal with the bureaucracy. And that was mostly waiting on hold on the phone, which would be a full-time job in some cultures. When a human finally answered, they tended to be helpful and pleasant provided you could dedicate your life to waiting for them. I suspect the hold was no longer or shorter based on a lack of equity.
Yet, the VA, like the rest of government, is under orders to seek and destroy inequity, and so its resources have been diverted from reducing the wait on the phone to listening. Not to vets, per se, but to vets of a certain stripe.
The Department of Veterans Affairs wants to hear from its customers, so to speak, but check your skin color before raising your hand. The VA is holding dozens of “listening sessions” for patients at its medical facilities. Eight cities are being virtually canvassed, with hearings for “racial/ethnic minorities,” “LGBTQ+ veterans,” and so forth. By all means, hear out veterans and improve their care, but is this how the government should do it?
To be fair, the first question is whether there’s a need for it, and there’s no way to find out other than to ask. Are there problems with the treatment of gay, black and women vets that are distinct from others? Are there needs going unmet that straight white men fail to realize? Should they be given the chance to say so? Sure. And more to the point, the opportunity to talk about it should be offered without the overlay of white guys talking about their problems, or trivializing the problems of minorities they don’t have.
It doesn’t hurt to listen to people whose life was at much at peril as anyone else’s, and who might well have issues that the majority does not. So the VA did.
At a session on race last week in Augusta, Ga., a woman who described herself as white spoke in favor of inclusive language and safe spaces. “I appreciate your being upfront about the fact that you’re not a person of color yourself,” the VA’s facilitator chided, “because this listening session is for those from racial and ethnic minorities, to give them that kind of safe space.” The woman took the hint and shut up.
The ally conundrum, believing in the duty to speak out on behalf of others when your speech does two unproductive things: it uses the opportunity for people to speak for themselves and, more importantly, it reflects what this white woman believes black vets want rather than what black vets want. Do black vets want “inclusive language” or shorter waiting times?
Yet in reality, slicing people into narrow identity groups has reduced opportunities for public comment. A hearing in Augusta was canceled when not enough veterans joined. The needed quorum, as the VA’s facilitator explained, was “at least three participants.” Apologies to the one woman who showed up. Of six breakout groups in Louisville, Ky., last week, four were scotched, sorry again to the guy on the line. Broader open hearings might have at least let him speak.
This may reflect a lack of concern about unmet needs by the people whose needs are potentially unmet, or just a lack of interest in these “listening sessions,” a concept adored by people with a lot of time on their hands and the inherent need to let words emit from their mouth. It may also have something to do with vets having problems keeping a roof over their head and a computer with wifi at the ready.
Another Augusta call had a quorum but was ended after 10 minutes of dead air. That one was reserved for “religious minorities and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent inequality.” The VA’s hosts prodded, but nobody came off mute. Ditto at Louisville’s LGBTQ+ session.
But even when people showed up, little came of it. Does that mean there weren’t any needs of gay, black and women vets unmet? Not necessarily.
Some of the substantive points came from women veterans. One said she thought physicians sometimes spoke to her condescendingly and blew off her concerns. Who among us hasn’t ever felt that way? Yet the VA has a special reason to be on guard: Only about 10% of veterans are female, so women’s health issues in particular might come across, if unintentionally, as an afterthought. Good for the VA to know.
It is good for the VA to know that women, although only 10% of the military, are still every bit as entitled to care for their concerns as men. Perhaps her complaint was just about docs being condescending jerks, as they were taught in med school, or perhaps the physicians at the VA have spent so long focused on the medical needs of men that they don’t take women’s medical needs as seriously. If the latter, tough nuggies, doc. Women are in the army now, so treat them with the same respect as every other service member.
Was it weird and wrong to hold these listening sessions that came to naught? Weird, maybe, in the same sense that all of these pseudo-group therapy sessions are presumed to be everybody’s comfort zone. Maybe soldiers don’t want to whine in front of their brothers and sisters about their personal gripes, knowing that they all shared the possibility of having their head blown off as did their comrades, after which their gripes come off as petty.
But it wasn’t wrong for the VA to give people who aren’t part of the mass of the military the opportunity to raise issues that affect them differently, that they have needs distinct from those of straight white men that are left unnoticed and unmet. And if the opportunity was provided and nobody came, or nobody spoke up, maybe the VA got its answer, that their needs are pretty much the same as every other soldier’s needs, and the VA needs to do better serving all veterans.
Maybe soldiers don’t want to whine in front of their brothers and sisters about their personal gripes, knowing that they all shared the possibility of having their head blown off as did their comrades, after which their gripes come off as petty.
That’s not true of over 99% of female veterans, though. According to this 2020 article, there are currently about 900 women in combat roles in the Army and Marine Corps put together, with essentially none in special-forces units. Compare that to the roughly 95k women serving in the Army and Marine Corps in any capacity in 2018. Whatever the unique concerns of women in the military are – and I don’t dispute that they exist – they’re very unlikely to involve getting shot, at least by the enemy.
Key word is “possibility.” Every soldier has the possibility of being put in a combat role.
Hmm, I don’t know. Shouldn’t probability (seemingly very low here) matter, too? By way of comparison, police-union spokespeople love to emphasize the possibility of cops getting hurt on the job to justify special treatment, and I think it’s a valid counterarg that employment-safety statistics show policing to be a pretty safe job.
If I thought so, I would have said so. Do you think the affectation of prefacing your expression of doubt with “hmm” is effective?
If I thought so, I would have said so.
Fair enough.
Do you think the affection of prefacing your expression of doubt with “hmm” is effective?
It was meant to telegraph a mild sort of doubt, but since it just aggravated you instead, no, I don’t. My apologies.
It no more aggravated me than does it’s use by so many pseudonymous people with 6 numbers after their highly selective names on the twitters. They don’t apologize, so no reason for you to do so either. I’ll tough it out.
You could, however, have at least corrected my “affection” typo.
I took it as a sign of your affectation for me. 🙂
I miss you.
This reminds me of one of the traditions of Alcoholic anonymous; no opinion on outside issues.
Seems reasonable to think that a Vet reaching out to the VA has a specific concern that the VA might address. Why bring in outside issues such as equity etc?
When the VA expanded several years ago, they brought in a bunch of people that were woke, due to the schools and career paths they had chosen as social workers and counselors.
They didn’t have a clue about the military and thought everything ran the way they thought it did in school or the SJW environments.
They had some abrupt wakings when vets told them how it was in the real world outside of their bubble.
Military people make their own safe spaces in clubs, barracks, and in the field. They resent anyone else telling them that they need help doing it.
Going to the VA, vets want help dealing with nightmares from their platoon mate buying the farm from an IED and don’t give a damn that someone called them the n word.
Basically, this minority crap is being driven by civilians with no military expertise trying to justify their existence to the powers that be and they think that everyone should think like they do.
And yes, many military members don’t see active combat but they see the results. Equipment gets shipped back for repair and the mechanic sees the holes and dried blood. The transport people see the wounded and body bags. The admin types see the reports of the dead and wounded. It takes a toll on everyone.
I dont have to deal with the VA (yet) but live in a neighborhood of those that do and have many friends that do.
I asked a bunch (from all races and demographics) today what they thought of this move by the VA. The overall sentiment was “what the f$&@? Why are they wasting money on this crap when they cant figure out appointments?”.
I suspect hunting guy is right and vets aren’t shy about telling these guys they are nuts.