The Department of Philosophy, in conjunction with the School of Public Health, holds a symposium every two years on “Race, Health, and Justice.” Historical and contemporary racism drives the health inequities between Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) on the one hand, and white people, on the other. The event, part of the Benjamin Rabinowitz Symposia in Medical Ethics, aims to identify the ways in which racism impacts health and to assess measures that should be taken to push back against racism and its effects on BIPOC people’s health and wellbeing.
The 2024 conference was held on April 12 with speakers from Social Work, Philosophy, Sociology, Nursing, and Bioethics along with community-based doulas from Open Arms Perinatal Services. The event included keynote addresses by philosopher Yolonda Wilson of St. Louis University and medical sociologist Jennifer James, University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Wilson questioned the shift to the individual patient for responsibility for health represented by advice such as “listen to your body” and “be your own best advocate”, arguing that BIPOC patients and their families experience “deficits in epistemic credibility.” Their reports about what is happening to their own or loved one’s bodies are often not believed or taken seriously enough. Reform of the healthcare system must include efforts to eliminate these deficits in credibility.
Dr. James discussed her research on the forced sterilizations that have occurred in California’s women's prisons, in the context of the history of incarceration, racism, capitalism, and reproductive injustice. Reform, she argues, requires abolition, with the aim of ultimately “eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.”