Date: Friday, November 11, 2022
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm
Place: Clement Hall 317
Speaker: Dr. Yolonda Wilson
Title: Anti-Racist Bioethics, Structural Racism, and the Struggle for Hearts and Minds Abstract:
Bioethicists have paid a lot of important recent attention to the ways that structural
injustice, particularly structural racism, impact patient encounters and outcomes,
institutional policies and procedures, and even topics of inquiry within the field
of bioethics itself. While heightened interest in structural racism is an important
intervention in bioethics, it is also important to remember that structures are created
by and maintained by people whose attitudes about race reenforce unjust social structures.
Beyond simplistic attempts to “change [individual] hearts and minds,” I argue that
dismantling structural racism requires a shift in the underlying values that structural
racism reflect.