A Minority's Report

I have been thinking a lot recently about group dynamics, especially relating to minorities. I'm not talking specifically about racial minorities; rather, minorities of thought/opinion have been more my focus.

What would a white male offspring of suburban middle-class parents know about minorities? Fair question. That's been part of my ponderings. I first became aware of what it was like to be a minority in medical school. When I chose to pursue Osteopathic Medicine, I chose a minority pathway to becoming a physician. According to the American Osteopathic Association's Osteopathic.org, only 6% of the physicians in the U.S. are DOs. I don't want to go in depth in the history and differences, but that site provides a great overview. Anyway, DOs have been scorned, castigated, ridiculed and segregated in the past. In fact, in the 1960s the American Medical Association (AMA) helped pass a law in California banning Osteopathic Medicine. The former Osteopathic Medical school in California became the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. This absorptive process involved granting the MD degree to DOs for $65 so that they could continue to practice... as MDs. Ironically, people later realized that the AMA had acknowledged the equality of DOs with MDs in granting the diploma so easily, and full integration and acceptance developed swiftly thereafter.

While I have never personally be discriminated against (that I know of) for being a DO, it does happen, especially in highly competitive fields and residencies. The Osteopathic profession has struggled for years on how to define ourselves and our relationship to our fellow physicians. Simplified, the issue revolves around identity. If we stress our uniqueness, and treasure our heritage, we risk self-segregating and producing foolish duplication of services and programs. If we pursue complete integration, minimizing our differences, we risk losing our identity and heritage, as people question why there are two types of medical schools and degrees, if they are so similar. This struggle has been a part of the psyche of many minorities throughout history.

I in no way mean to equate being a DO with being a racial minority, or other minorities based on inherent biological factors. But there were huge lessons for me to learn about the issues and discrimination faced by minorities.

Which brings me to my original ponderings. I have found myself more and more in the "minority" opinion on several church issues. Some are theological, some are practical, and some are silly little differences. But as I have pondered my "status" as a minority, and how that makes me feel, I have a deeper understanding of "division" than I have recently.

You see, I have begun understanding why some division/separation occurs. Growing up, I understood division(religiously speaking) to be wrong, but it was also the natural result of "error" and human desire, and therefore was unavoidable. In fact, it was important to maintain. As I emerged from that box of thinking, I began to see division as a lack of understanding. All division could be avoided if everyone took the time to learn the same facts. That seemed woefully inadequate an explanation, and I no longer accepted salvation by "knowledge", so that cause was thrown out. Then I began seeing division mostly as a matter of personality and spiritual pathways. This is my most effective lens with which to currently view division.

But I am beginning to see other factors play a role; one that would have eluded me previously. The role of "minority" can be very taxing. If this is true in terms of thoughts, I can only imagine the burden felt by racial minorities and other "true" minorities. Perhaps another contributing reason for division is simply a need to not be the minority. Regardless of what the issues are or what the reasoning is, there is a very real weight of being a minority. I do not support division. I will continue to work for unity (not uniformity). But I will also acknowledge the weight of minority views, and be more generous as minorities fall back and reconstitute as relative majorities.

So the question is, how can this tendency be counteracted? Can it be counteracted? Should it be counteracted? These questions are of less importance to me personally (because I am often in the majority, and can understand the philosophical construct in which my dissonance is placed), but has much more profound implications for how I relate to others, particularly racial minorities and theological views in groups outside of my home church.

My recent readings in Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? is making it all the more interesting to wrestle with these questions. Hopefully, more on that book later.