Department of Philosophy
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/1177
2024-03-29T12:46:01ZResponse to Feder and Mills
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/27196
Response to Feder and Mills
Russell, Camisha
6 pages.
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZBioethicists Should be Helping Scientists Think About Race
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/27195
Bioethicists Should be Helping Scientists Think About Race
Russell, Camisha
In this essay, I argue that bioethicists have a thus-far unfulfilled role to play in helping life scientists, including medical doctors and researchers, think about race. I begin with descriptions of how life scientists tend to think about race and descriptions of typical approaches to bioethics. I then describe three different approaches to race: biological race, race as social construction, and race as cultural driver of history. Taking into account the historical and contemporary interplay of these three approaches, I suggest an alternative framework for thinking about race focused on how the idea of race functions socially. Finally, using assisted reproductive technologies as an example, I discuss how bioethicists and scientists might work together using this framework to improve not only their own but broader perspectives on race.
3 pages.
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZPositivism and Progress in Firmin’s Equality of the Human Races
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/27194
Positivism and Progress in Firmin’s Equality of the Human Races
Russell, Camisha
With The Equality of Human Races , Haitian intellectual Anténor Firmin offered the world its first sustained, philosophical, book-length response to scientific European racism. With the publication of the English translation in 2000, we in the Anglophone world finally have the opportunity to reclaim Firmin and his work as a part of Black intellectual history. What is perhaps most striking for the modern day reader is Firmin’s critical project. Firmin proceeds systematically through the key “scientific arguments ” in favor of racial inequality, casting doubt on the methodologies, countering what passes for evidence, and revealing the underlying assumptions, prejudices and ideologies behind them. Along with this critical project, however, Firmin puts forward an original thesis about the origin, development, advancement, and ultimate equality of the human races. In this essay, I discuss Firmin’s notion of progress , the idea at the heart of that positive thesis, situating him relative to several key figures of his time. On the one hand, progress is the key to the difference between Arthur de Gobineau’s Inequality of Human Races and Firmin’s Equality of Human Races—the latter viewing it as an absolute certainty, the former as an idealistic illusion. On the other hand, progress is what unites Firmin with such key nineteenth century figures as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, who clearly serve as models for the type and scope of Firmin’s positivist project. Progress is also that for which Firmin must provide a new, anti-racist theory in order to successfully counter the social Darwinist arguments of scholars like Clémence Royer (while positioning himself as proponent of Darwin’s theories).
24 pages.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Race Idea in Reproductive Technologies: Beyond Epistemic Scientism and Technological Mastery
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/27193
The Race Idea in Reproductive Technologies: Beyond Epistemic Scientism and Technological Mastery
Russell, Camisha
This paper explores the limitations of epistemic scientism for understanding the role the concept of race plays in assisted reproductive technology (ART) practices. Two major limitations center around the desire to use scientific knowledge to bring about social improvement. In the first case, undue focus is placed on debunking the scientific reality of racial categories and characteristics. The alternative to this approach is to focus instead on the way the race idea functions in ART practices. Doing so reveals how the race idea (1) helps to define the reproductive “problems” different groups of women are experiencing and to dictate when and how they should be “helped”; (2) helps to resolve tensions about who should be considered the real parents of children produced by ARTs; and (3) is used to limit ART use where that use threatens to denaturalize the very sociopolitical landscape the race idea has created. In the second case, scientific knowledge regarding reproduction is thought to call for technological control over that reproduction. This leads to an overemphasis on personal responsibility and a depoliticization of racialized social inequalities.
30 pages.
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z