Citing Harms, Momentum Grows to Remove Race From Clinical Algorithms

B. Kuehn

JAMA

Published Online: January 17, 2024.

doi:10.1001/jama.2023.25530

Here is an excerpt:

The roots of the false idea that race is a biological construct can be traced to efforts to draw distinctions between Black and White people to justify slavery, the CMSS report notes. For example, the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, claimed that Black people had less kidney output, more heat tolerance, and poorer lung function than White individuals. Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright, MD, subsequently rationalized hard labor as a way for slaves to fortify their lungs. Over time, the report explains, the medical literature echoed some of those ideas, which have been used in ways that cause harm.

“It is mind-blowing in some ways how deeply embedded in history some of this misinformation is,” Burstin said.

Renewed recognition of these harmful legacies and growing evidence of the potential harm caused by structural racism, bias, and discrimination in medicine have led to reconsideration of the use of race in clinical algorithms. The reckoning with racial injustice sparked by the May 2020 murder of George Floyd helped accelerate this work. A few weeks after Floyd’s death, an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine recommended reconsidering race in 13 clinical algorithms, echoing a growing chorus of medical students and physicians arguing for change.

Congress also got involved. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, Michelle Morse, MD, MPH, raised concerns about the use of race in clinical algorithms to US Rep Richard Neal (D, MA), then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Neal in September 2020 sent letters to several medical societies asking them to assess racial bias and a year later he and his colleagues issued a report on the misuse of race in clinical decision-making tools.

“We need to have more humility in medicine about the ways in which our history as a discipline has actually held back health equity and racial justice,” Morse said in an interview. “The issue of racism and clinical algorithms is one really tangible example of that.”

The info is here.

My summary: There's increasing worry that using race in clinical algorithms can be harmful and perpetuate racial disparities in healthcare. This concern stems from a recognition of the historical harms of racism in medicine and growing evidence of bias in algorithms.

A review commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found that using race in algorithms can exacerbate health disparities and reinforce the false idea that race is a biological factor.

Several medical organizations and experts have called for reevaluating the use of race in clinical algorithms. Some argue that race should be removed altogether, while others advocate for using it only in specific cases where it can be clearly shown to improve outcomes without causing harm.

The arc of the moral universe won't bend on its own

Adam Fondren
Rapid City Journal
Originally posted August 11, 2019

Here are two excerpts:

My favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quote -- one of 14 engraved on a monument to his legacy in Washington, D.C. -- is, "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

I like that quote because I hope he was right. But do we have evidence to support that?

A man just drove for hours in order to kill people whose skin is a little darker and food a little spicier than his culture's. He opened fire in a mass shooting inspired by the words or politicians and pundits who stoke racist fears in order to win votes for their side. Calling groups of refugees invasions, infestations, or criminals and worrying about racial replacement are not the sentiments of a society whose moral arc is bending toward justice.

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Racism isn't solved. White nationalists are not a hoax, and they are a big problem.

There are no spectators in this fight. You either condemn, condone or contribute to the problem.

Racism isn't a partisan issue. Both parties can come together to make these beliefs unacceptable in our society.

Another King quote from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail sums it up, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Rev. King was right about the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice, but it won't bend on its own. That's where we come in. We all have to do our part to make sure that our words and actions make racists uncomfortable.

The info is here.

The Moral Determinants of Health

Donald M. Berwick
JAMA
Originally posted 12 June 20

Here is an excerpt:

How do humans invest in their own vitality and longevity? The answer seems illogical. In wealthy nations, science points to social causes, but most economic investments are nowhere near those causes. Vast, expensive repair shops (such as medical centers and emergency services) are hard at work, but minimal facilities are available to prevent the damage. In the US at the moment, 40 million people are hungry, almost 600 000 are homeless, 2.3 million are in prisons and jails with minimal health services (70% of whom experience mental illness or substance abuse), 40 million live in poverty, 40% of elders live in loneliness, and public transport in cities is decaying. Today, everywhere, as the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests make clear yet again, deep structural racism continues its chronic, destructive work. In recent weeks, people in their streets across the US, many moved perhaps by the “moral law within,” have been protesting against vast, cruel, and seemingly endless racial prejudice and inequality.

Decades of research on the true causes of ill health, a long series of pedigreed reports, and voices of public health advocacy have not changed this underinvestment in actual human well-being. Two possible sources of funds seem logically possible: either (a) raise taxes to allow governments to improve social determinants, or (b) shift some substantial fraction of health expenditures from an overbuilt, high-priced, wasteful, and frankly confiscatory system of hospitals and specialty care toward addressing social determinants instead. Either is logically possible, but neither is politically possible, at least not so far.

Neither will happen unless and until an attack on racism and other social determinants of health is motivated by an embrace of the moral determinants of health, including, most crucially, a strong sense of social solidarity in the US. “Solidarity” would mean that individuals in the US legitimately and properly can depend on each other for helping to secure the basic circumstances of healthy lives, no less than they depend legitimately on each other to secure the nation’s defense. If that were the moral imperative, government—the primary expression of shared responsibility—would defend and improve health just as energetically as it defends territorial integrity.

The info is here.

Perceptions of Harm and Benefit Predict Judgments of Cultural Appropriation

Mosley, A. J., Heiphetz, L., et al. (2023).

Social Psychological and Personality Science, 

19485506231162401.

Abstract

What factors underlie judgments of cultural appropriation? In two studies, participants read 157 scenarios involving actors using cultural products or elements of racial/ethnic groups to which they did not belong. Participants evaluated scenarios on seven dimensions (perceived cultural appropriation, harm to the community from which the cultural object originated, racism, profit to actors, extent to which cultural objects represent a source of pride for source communities, benefits to actors, and celebration), while the type of cultural object and the out-group associated with the object being appropriated varied. Using both the scenario and the participant as the units of analysis, perceived cultural appropriation was most strongly associated with perceived greater harm to the source community. We discuss broader implications for integrating research on inequality and moral psychology. Findings also have translational implications for educators and activists interested in increasing awareness about cultural appropriation.

General Discussion

People disagree about what constitutes cultural appropriation (Garcia Navaro, 2021). Prior research has indicated that prototypical cases of cultural appropriation include dominant-group members (e.g., White people) using cultural products stemming from subordinated groups (e.g., Black people; Katzarska-Miller et al., 2020; Mosley & Biernat, 2020). Minority group members’ use of dominant-group cultural products (termed “cultural dominance” by Rogers, 2006) is less likely to receive that label. However, even in prototypical cases, considerable variability in perceptions exists across actions (Mosley & Biernat, 2020). Furthermore, some perceivers—especially highly racially identified White Americans—view Black actors’ use of White cultural products as equally or more appropriative than White actors’ use of Black cultural products (Mosley et al., 2022).

These studies build on extant work by examining how features of out-group cultural use might contribute to construals of appropriation. We created a large set of scenarios, extending beyond the case of White–Black relations to include a greater diversity of racial groups (Native American, Hispanic, and Asian cultures). In all three studies, scenario-level analyses indicated that actions perceived to cause harm to the source community were also likely to be seen as appropriative, and those actions perceived to bring benefits to actors were less likely to be seen as appropriative. The strong connection between perceived source community harm and judgments of cultural appropriation corroborates research on the importance of harm to morally relevant judgments (Gray et al., 2014; Rozin & Royzman, 2001). At the same time, scenarios perceived to benefit actors—at least among the particular set of scenarios used here—were those that elicited a lower appropriation essence. However, at the level of individual perceivers, actor benefit (along with actor profit and some other measures) positively predicted appropriation perceptions. Perceiving benefit to an actor may contribute to a sense that the action is problematic to the source community (i.e., appropriative). Our findings are akin to findings on smoking and life expectancy: At the aggregate level, countries with higher rates of cigarette consumption have longer population life expectancies, but at the individual level, the more one smokes, the lower their life expectancy (Krause & Saunders, 2010). Scenarios that bring more benefit to actors are judged less appropriative, but individuals who see actor benefit in scenarios view them as more appropriative.

In all studies, participants perceived actions as more appropriative when White actors engaged with cultural products from Black communities, rather than the reverse pattern. This provides further evidence that the prototypical perpetrator of cultural appropriation is a high-status group member (Mosley & Biernat, 2020), where high-status actors have greater power and resources to exploit, marginalize, and cause harm to low-status source communities (Rogers, 2006).

Perhaps surprisingly, perceived appropriation and perceived celebration were positively correlated. Appropriation and celebration might be conceptualized as alternative, opposing construals of the same event. But this positive correlation may attest to the ambiguity, subjectivity, and disagreement about perceiving cultural appropriation: The same action may be construed as appropriative and (not or) celebratory. However, these construals were nonetheless distinct: Appropriation was positively correlated with perceived racism and harm, but celebration was negatively correlated with these factors.

The research is here.

Patients need doctors who look like them. Can medicine diversify without affirmative action?

Kat Stafford

apnews.com

Originally posted 11 September 23

Here are two excerpts:

But more than two months after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, concerns have arisen that a path into medicine may become much harder for students of color. Heightening the alarm: the medical field’s reckoning with longstanding health inequities.

Black Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population, yet just 6% of U.S. physicians are Black. Increasing representation among doctors is one solution experts believe could help disrupt health inequities.

The disparities stretch from birth to death, often beginning before Black babies take their first breath, a recent Associated Press series showed. Over and over, patients said their concerns were brushed aside or ignored, in part because of unchecked bias and racism within the medical system and a lack of representative care.

A UCLA study found the percentage of Black doctors had increased just 4% from 1900 to 2018.

But the affirmative action ruling dealt a “serious blow” to the medical field’s goals of improving that figure, the American Medical Association said, by prohibiting medical schools from considering race among many factors in admissions. The ruling, the AMA said, “will reverse gains made in the battle against health inequities.”

The consequences could affect Black health for generations to come, said Dr. Uché Blackstock, a New York emergency room physician and author of “LEGACY: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.”

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“As medical professionals, any time we see disparities in care or outcomes of any kind, we have to look at the systems in which we are delivering care and we have to look at ways that we are falling short,” Wysong said.

Without affirmative action as a tool, career programs focused on engaging people of color could grow in importance.

For instance, the Pathways initiative engages students from Black, Latino and Indigenous communities from high school through medical school.

The program starts with building interest in dermatology as a career and continues to scholarships, workshops and mentorship programs. The goal: Increase the number of underrepresented dermatology residents from about 100 in 2022 to 250 by 2027, and grow the share of dermatology faculty who are members of color by 2%.

Tolliver credits her success in becoming a dermatologist in part to a scholarship she received through Ohio State University’s Young Scholars Program, which helps talented, first-generation Ohio students with financial need. The scholarship helped pave the way for medical school, but her involvement in the Pathways residency program also was central.

The info is here.

Confederate monuments and the history of lynching in the American South: An empirical examination

Kyshia Henderson, et al.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Oct 2021, 118 (42) e2103519118

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103519118

Significance

The fight over Confederate monuments has fueled lawsuits, protests, counterprotests, arrests, even terrorism, as we painfully saw in August 2017 in Charlottesville, VA. The fight rests on a debate over whether these monuments represent racism (“hate”) or something ostensibly devoid of racism (“heritage,” “Southern pride”). Herein, we show that Confederate monuments are tied to a history of racial violence. Specifically, we find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates. This finding provides concrete, quantitative, historically and geographically situated evidence consistent with the position that Confederate memorializations reflect a racist history, marred by intentions to terrorize and intimidate Black Americans.

Abstract

The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching, an explicitly racist act of violence. We obtained and merged data on Confederate memorializations at the county level and lynching victims, also at the county level. We find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of the number of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates. This finding provides concrete, quantitative, and historically and geographically situated evidence consistent with the position that Confederate memorializations reflect a racist history, one marred by intentions to terrorize and intimidate Black Americans in response to Black progress.

From the Discussion

Activists have long argued that Confederate memorializations are hateful, that they represent violence and intimidation, and that they are racist. In 2015, after scaling a flagpole at the South Carolina State House to remove the Confederate flag, activist Bree Newsome wrote in a statement, “It’s the banner of racial

intimidation and fear ... a reminder how, for centuries, the oppressive status quo has been undergirded by white supremacist violence with the tacit approval of too many political leaders”.  Similarly, activist De’Ivyion Drew, in response to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s making a deal with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to keep a monument on campus, stated, “Not only is UNC actively emboldening white supremacy through giving monetary support to them, but they’re also giving them the power with the statue to harm communities of color in the state”. Both Newsome and Drew call to the symbols’ racist and harmful associations, and the current data are consistent with these claims. In the present work, we find that county-level frequency of lynching predicts county-level frequency of Confederate memorializations. Statistically linking lynching, a recognized form of racial oppression intended to maintain White supremacy and suppress civil rights for Black Americans, with Confederate symbols provides compelling evidence that these symbols are associated with hate, and intentionally so.

The research is here.

Getting AI ethics wrong could 'annihilate technical progress'

Richard Gray
TechXplore
Originally published July 30, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Biases

But these algorithms can also learn the biases that already exist in data sets. If a police database shows that mainly young, black men are arrested for a certain crime, it may not be a fair reflection of the actual offender profile and instead reflect historic racism within a force. Using AI taught on this kind of data could exacerbate problems such as racism and other forms of discrimination.

"Transparency of these algorithms is also a problem," said Prof. Stahl. "These algorithms do statistical classification of data in a way that makes it almost impossible to see how exactly that happened." This raises important questions about how legal systems, for example, can remain fair and just if they start to rely upon opaque 'black box' AI algorithms to inform sentencing decisions or judgements about a person's guilt.

The next step for the project will be to look at potential interventions that can be used to address some of these issues. It will look at where guidelines can help ensure AI researchers build fairness into their algorithms, where new laws can govern their use and if a regulator can keep negative aspects of the technology in check.

But one of the problems many governments and regulators face is keeping up with the fast pace of change in new technologies like AI, according to Professor Philip Brey, who studies the philosophy of technology at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

"Most people today don't understand the technology because it is very complex, opaque and fast moving," he said. "For that reason it is hard to anticipate and assess the impacts on society, and to have adequate regulatory and legislative responses to that. Policy is usually significantly behind."

The info is here.

White Evangelicals Shun Morality for Power

Charles Blow

The New York Times - Opinion

Originally published 19 Sept 21

Here is an excerpt:

I had hoped that there were more white evangelicals who embraced the same teachings, who would not abide by the message the Grahams of the world were advancing, who would stand on principle.

But I was wrong. A report for the Pew Research Center published last week found that, contrary to an onslaught of press coverage about evangelicals who had left the church, disgusted by its embrace of the president, “There is solid evidence that white Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than white Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.”

That’s right, the lying, philandering, thrice-married Trump, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct or assault, may actually have grown the ranks of white evangelicals rather than shrunk them.

To get some perspective on this, I reached out to an expert, Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies and the chair of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of the recently released book “White Evangelical Racism.”

As Professor Butler told me, the reason that some people might be surprised by these findings is that “they believed the hype.” For years, evangelicals had claimed that they were upholding morality and fighting injustice. But what the movement has really been since the 1970s, said Butler, is “a political arm of the Republican Party.” As Butler put it, evangelicals now “use moral issues as a wedge to get political power.”

Butler concluded, “We need to quit coddling evangelicals and allowing them to use these moral issues to hide behind, because it’s very clear that that’s not what the issue is. The issue is that they believe in anti-vaxxing, they believe in racism, they believe in anti-immigration, they believe that only Republicans should run the country and they believe in white supremacy.”

The info is here.

Prejudiced and unaware of it: Evidence for the Dunning-Kruger model in the domains of racism and sexism

K. West and A. A. Eaton
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 146, 1 August 2019, Pages 111-119

Abstract

Prior research, and high-prolife contemporary examples, show that individuals tend to underestimate their own levels of bias. This underestimation is partially explained by motivational factors. However, (meta-) cognitive factors may also be involved. Conceptualising contemporary egalitarianism as type of skill or competence, this research proposed that egalitarianism should conform to the Dunning-Kruger model. That is, individuals should overestimate their own ability, and this overestimation should be strongest in the least competent individuals. Furthermore, training should improve metacognition and reduce this overestimation. Two studies on racism (N = 148), and sexism (N = 159) partially supported these hypotheses. In line with the Dunning-Kruger model, participants overestimated their levels of racial and gender-based egalitarianism, and this pattern was strongest among the most prejudiced participants. However, diversity training did not affect participants' overestimation of their egalitarianism. Implications for contemporary prejudice, and prejudice-reducing strategies are discussed.

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Conclusions

For many reasons, contemporary discussions of prejudice can be quite acrimonious. Members of socially advantaged groups may find such discussions difficult, unpleasant, or threatening Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008; Dover, Major, & Kaiser, 2016; Norton et al., 2006). Political divisions may lead members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups to attribute overly negative motivations to the other group (Goff et al., 2014; Reeder, 2005; Taber, Brook, & Franklin, 2006). Motivation certainly forms an important part of the picture. However, this research suggests that, even if such motivational considerations were accounted for, there may be important cognitive hindrances to understanding and reducing prejudice that would have to be addressed. In line with the Dunning-Kruger model, this research found that very prejudiced individuals (i.e., those low in egalitarianism) may be genuinely unaware of their shortcomings because they lack the meta-cognition necessary to perceive them. It is thus possible that some solutions to contemporary prejudice may rely less on motivation and more on education.

The research is here.

Black Bioethics in the Age of Black Lives Matter

Ray, K., Fletcher, F.E., Martschenko, D.O. et al. 

J Med Humanit (2023).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09783-4

Here are two excerpts:

Lessons Black Bioethics can take from BLM

BLM showed that telling Black people’s stories or giving them a space to tell their own stories is viewed as an inherently political act simply because Black people’s existence is viewed as political. At the same time, it taught us that we absolutely must take on this task because, if we do not tell our stories, other people will tell them for us and use our stories to deny us our rightful moral status and all the rights it entitles us.

BLM let Black people’s stories fuel its social justice initiatives. It used stories to put Black people at the forefront of protests and social inclusion efforts to show the extent to which Black people had been excluded from our collective social consciousness. Stories allowed us to see the total impact of anti-Black racism and the ways it infiltrates all parts of Black life. And for those who were far removed from the experience of being Black, BLM used stories to make us care about racial injustice and be so moved that we were unable to turn our backs on Black people’s suffering. In this way, stories are an act of rebellion, a way to force people to reckon with BLM’s demands that Black people ought to be treated like the full and complex human beings we are.

Black Bioethics is also a rebellion. It is a rebellion against the status quo in bioethics—a rebellion against Black people’s lives being an afterthought, particularly in issues of justice. Stories aid in this rebellion. Just as stories helped BLM show the full range of Black people’s humanity and the ways that individuals and institutions deny Black people that humanity, stories help Black Bioethics demonstrate just how our institutions contribute to Black people’s poor health and prevent them from living full lives. In Black Bioethics, stories can create the same emotional stirring that they did for BLM supporters since they share many of the same challenges and goals. And just as it would be imprudent to underestimate the role of stories in social justice, it would be imprudent of us to underestimate what stories can do for our sense of health justice for Black people.

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Toward an intersectional bioethics

Bioethics is well-positioned to foster antiracism in scholarship, training, and advocacy (Danis et al. 2016). Although the field focuses on ethical issues in biomedical research and clinical care specifically, Danis et al. (2016) point out that many ethical dilemmas that impact health and well-being lie outside of healthcare settings. For instance, there are significant ethical dilemmas posed by the social determinants of health and complex disease. Social factors such as poverty, unequal access to healthcare, lack of education, stigma, and racism are underlying and contributing factors to health inequalities. These inequalities, in turn, generate the ethical dilemmas that bioethics grapples with (Danis et al. 2016). If the field genuinely values the just conduct of biomedical research and the just provision of clinical care, then it will need to draw upon intersectionality to understand and effectively analyze the many interlocking complexities in our world and in human experiences. Social activist movements like BLM and their use of intersectionality offer several lessons to those in the field working to secure justice in biomedicine, clinical care, and society.

First, as an analytic tool, intersectionality recognizes and understands that different social forces conjoin to produce and maintain privilege and marginalization. Therefore, intersectionality clarifies instances in which real lives and experiences are being erased. Bioethics cannot afford to “neglect entire ways of being in the world,” though it has and continues to do so (Wallace 2022, S79). Social activist movements like BLM are drawing attention to ways of being that are unjust yet largely ignored by mainstream hegemonic interests. For instance, BLM directly acknowledges within its movement “those who have been marginalized within [other] Black liberation movements” (Black Lives Matter n.d.). Using intersectionality, BLM heightens awareness of the ways in which Black queer and trans individuals, undocumented individuals, and people with disabilities have different experiences with White supremacy and advance colonialism. In doing so, it centers rather than erases real lives and experiences. Learning from this movement, bioethical scholarship grounded in the principle of justice will need to find ways to center the experiences of Black-identifying individuals without treating the Black community as a homogenous entity.

The info is here.

Natural-born existentialists

Ronnie de Sousa
aeon.com
Originally posted December 10, 2017

Here are two excerpts:

Much the same might be true of some of the emotional dispositions bequeathed to us by natural selection. If we follow some evolutionary psychologists in thinking that evolution has programmed us to value solidarity and authority, for example, we must recognise that those very same mechanisms promote xenophobia, racism and fascism. Some philosophers have made much of the fact that we appear to have genuinely altruistic motives: sometimes, human beings actually sacrifice themselves for complete strangers. If that is indeed a native human trait, so much the better. But it can’t be good because it’s natural. For selfishness and cruelty are no less natural. Again, naturalness can’t reasonably be why we value what we care about.

A second reason why evolution is not providence is that any given heritable trait is not simply either ‘adaptive’ or ‘maladaptive’ for the species. Some cases of fitness are frequency-dependent, which means that certain traits acquire a stable distribution in a population only if they are not universal.

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The third reason we should not equate the natural with the good is the most important. Evolution is not about us. In repeating the well-worn phrase that is supposed to sum up natural selection, ‘survival of the fittest’, we seldom think to ask: the fittest what? It won’t do to think that the phrase refers to fitness in individuals such as you and me. Even the fittest individuals never survive at all. We all die. What does survive is best described as information, much of which is encoded in the genes. That remains true despite the fashionable preoccupation with ‘epigenetic’ or otherwise non-DNA-encoded factors. The point is that ‘the fittest’ refers to just whatever gets replicated in subsequent generations – and whatever that is, it isn’t us. Every human is radically new, and – at least until cloning becomes routine – none will ever recur.

The article is here.

UNC protests present debate of law versus morality

Ali Akhyari
Charleston City Paper
Originally posted September 5, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Immediately afterwards, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt referenced a 2015 law that protects historical monuments from being removed from any public property. Instead of making a public statement about the gross persistence of monuments to hate, she claimed her hands were tied and that students shouldn't break the law. Remember, after Charlottesville, it was president Trump who seemed incapable of acknowledging hate, saying there were "very fine people on both sides" after a woman was killed protesting the white supremacist march.

The debate regarding Confederate monuments and flags will never end so long as there are southerners more interested in rewriting history than admitting the Confederacy is intimately related to white supremacy. The true danger, though, is the normalization of white supremacy and nationalism in the Trump era. So it should follow, then, that Americans toppling monuments to oppression and hate will be increasingly forgivable as long as the the state and federal government coddles white nationalism.

Right after UNC, Trump tweeted a popular white nationalist talking point about land redistribution in post-Apartheid South Africa — a mirror of the battle minorities in this country have fought since emancipation.

So, I applaud the removal of Silent Sam. The monument fell at a time when the president has not only failed to recognize racism and historical oppression, instead encouraging it, pining for the return of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

The info is here.

How Should Psychologists Respond to Hateful Comments?

Samuel Knapp, Ed.D., ABPP

Director of Professional Affairs

Conventional words for ethnic groups vary over time, and what is acceptable for a group in one period of time would be viewed as offensive in another time or context. However, at times patients will use words or comments directed at others because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation that clearly offend standards of decency. How should psychologists respond in such situations? Should they ignore the comment or directly confront the patient about the terms that were used?

Discretion is needed to determine when a word is intended as offensive or not. For example, Hawaiians refer to European American residents of Hawaii as haole (pronounced “howlee”). At times it is delivered as a factual statement, “He is a haole” (a white person who lives in Hawaii), and European American residents of Hawaii commonly refer to themselves as haole. However, it could be used as an insult if it were combined with certain adjectives, voice intonations, or hand gestures (Rare storm, 2011).

The conduct of psychologists in addressing hurtful speech, as in other aspects of professional behavior, should be guided by adherence to overarching ethical standards. So, when a patient makes an ethnic slur, the response of the psychologist should be guided by the principles of beneficence (acting to promote the well-being of the patient), nonmaleficence (acting to avoid harming the patient), general beneficence (acting to promote the welfare of the public in general), or other ethical principles.

The context of the comment may be relevant. It is important to know if the comment is related to the patient’s presenting problem, or activated as a function of the perceived characteristics of the therapist (Bartoli & Pyati, 2009). However, I am aware of a few situations where patients have made such intense hate-filled and vitriolic comments (addressed towards groups represented by the psychologist) that a decision was made to refer the patient elsewhere.

In some situations the principle of beneficence (welfare of the patient) may be operative. For example, a young person may use an ethnic term in a manner that an adult considers offensive. Here it is most likely appropriate for correction or feedback because the person might not understand the implications or ways in which the words come across. An educational or non-judgmental exchange could help the young person understand the implications of this speech and how it might impair their social relationships in the future.

The overarching ethical principle of general beneficence holds that psychologists should act to protect the public in general. Consequently, it would seem that, according to this principle, psychologists should address hate-filled comments. However, this ethical principle should be balanced with concerns about beneficence or the welfare of the patient. One patient of mine made a derogatory comment about an ethnic group which I corrected, with as much tact as I could manage. The patient was embarrassed, apologized, and corrected himself. However, if the comment were made in the context of a psychotic episode, disclosure of suicidal intent, or other indication of serious emotional crisis, I probably would have ignored the comment altogether and focused entirely on the patient’s well-being. If the patient had made the comment in response to a particularly upsetting or stressful event, I might have deferred addressing the issue to a time when the patient could get more perspective on the situation.

It is often best to avoid assuming that there will always be a false dichotomy between general beneficence and beneficence. Except in extreme circumstances when patient welfare is at stake or when the hateful comments represent extreme social deviance, psychologists can often find a way to address the issue without harming the therapeutic relationship. Anger and judgmental attitudes should be avoided. Patients are more likely to respond positively to comments made in a calm and direct manner (e.g., “let’s use another word, it makes you come across as prejudiced”).

References

Bartoli, E., & Pyati, A. (2009). Addressing clients’ racism and racial prejudice in individual psychotherapy: Therapeutic considerations. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 46, 145-157.

Rare storm over races ruffles a mixed society. (2011). New York Times. Retrieved from here. 

Eight Things Every White Person Should Know About White Privilege

By Sally Kohn
The Daily Beast
Originally published May 7, 2014

White folks went to great lengths in the last weeks to denounce the overt racism of figures like Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling. At the same time, a lot of white folks—especially conservatives—continue to deny there is implicit or structural racial bias in America. One example surfaced just days later on Time magazine’s website, an essay by a young white male college student who not only denies racial bias, and thus white privilege in America, but also basically accuses those pointing out such bias of being racist.

The entire article is here.

Have our tribes become more important than our country?

Jonathan Rauch
The Washington Post
Originally published February 16, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Moreover, tribalism is a dynamic force, not a static one. It exacerbates itself by making every group feel endangered by the others, inducing all to circle their wagons still more tightly. “Today, no group in America feels comfortably dominant,” Chua writes. “The Left believes that right-wing tribalism — bigotry, racism — is tearing the country apart. The Right believes that left-wing tribalism — identity politics, political correctness — is tearing the country apart. They are both right.” I wish I could disagree.

Remedies? Chua sees hopeful signs. Psychological research shows that tribalism can be countered and overcome by teamwork: by projects that join individuals in a common task on an equal footing. One such task, it turns out, can be to reduce tribalism. In other words, with conscious effort, humans can break the tribal spiral, and many are trying. “You’d never know it from cable news or social media,” Chua writes, “but all over the country there are signs of people trying to cross divides and break out of their political tribes.”

She lists examples, and I can add my own. My involvement with the Better Angels project, a grass-roots depolarization movement that is gaining traction in communities across the country, has convinced me that millions of Americans are hungry for conciliation and willing to work for it. Last summer, at a Better Angels workshop in Virginia, I watched as eight Trump supporters and eight Hillary Clinton supporters participated in a day of structured interactions.

The article is here.

"I Wish I Were Black" and Other Tales of Privilege

By Angela Onwuachi-Willig
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published October 28, 2013

To be white is to not think about it," a white legal scholar named Barbara Flagg wrote two decades ago.

After the University of Texas at Austin denied Abigail Fisher admission, she made several statements that revealed just how little she had ever had to think about her race. Fisher, the petitioner in the Supreme Court's recently decided affirmative-action case, said in a videotaped interview made available by her lawyers: "There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin."

As decades of debates over affirmative action have revealed, many whites spend so little time having to think about, much less deal with, race and racism, that they understand race as nothing more than a plus factor in the admissions process. Like Fisher, they fail to see the many disadvantages that stem from simply existing as a person of color in this country—disadvantages that often hamper opportunities to achieve the badges that help students "win" in the admissions game.

The entire article is here.

Children Prioritize Humans Over Animals Less Than Adults Do

Wilks M, Caviola L, Kahane G, Bloom P.

Psychological Science. 2021;32(1):27-38. 

doi:10.1177/0956797620960398

Abstract

Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two preregistered studies (total N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency than adults to prioritize humans over animals. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human. Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired.

From the Discussion section

What are the origins of this tendency? One possibility is that it is an unlearned preference. For much of human history, animals played a central role in human life—whether as a threat or as a resource. It therefore seems possible that humans would develop distinctive psychological mechanisms for thinking about animals. Even if there are no specific cognitive adaptations for thinking about animals, it is hardly surprising that humans prefer humans over animals—similar to their preference for tribe members over strangers. Similarly, given that in-group favoritism in human groups (e.g., racism, sexism, minimal groups) tends to emerge as early as preschool years (Buttelmann & Böhm, 2014), one would expect that a basic tendency to prioritize humans over animals also emerges early.

But we would suggest that the much stronger tendency to prioritize humans over animals in adults has a different source that, given the lack of correlation between age and speciesism in children, emerges late in development. Adolescents may learn and internalize the socially held speciesist notion—or ideology—that humans are morally special and deserve full moral status, whereas animals do not. 

A pdf of the research is here.

Richard Swinburne’s Toxic Lecture on Christian Morality

By J. Edward Hackett
Philosophical Percolations
Originally published September 24, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

While Swinburne did not think homosexuality was intrinsically wrong in the same way that adultery was wrong, he argued (if that’s the right verb under some principle of charity) that homosexuality was extrinsically wrong. Homosexuality was a disability in the lacking of the ability to have children, and God’s commands of abstaining from homosexuality might prevent others from fostering this incurable condition in others.

Yeah. I know.

My response was mixture of abhorrence and overwhelming anger, and I tried as I might to encounter this idea calmly. I told him he medicalized being gay in the same way that phrenology medicalized racism. It was obnoxious to listen to Christians lay claim to sacrificial love at this conference, but at the same time not see the virtue of that same love as a possible quality underlying other configurations, yet I told others this is the reason why Christians should read Foucault. When you do, you start to notice how power manifests in local contexts in which those discourses occur.

There was a way power was working in this discourse. Specifically, Foucault exposes how medicalizing discourse divorces the condition apart from the body of the patient. Swinburne advocated “sympathy and not censure” for homosexuals, those with the “incurable condition” and “disability.” In this medical context, medicine acts as a way to dehumanize the person without appearing as if that’s what you’re doing.

The blog post his here.

Mapping Principal Dimensions of Prejudice in the United States

R. Bergh & M. J. Brandt

osf.io

Abstract

Research  is often guided  by  maps  of  elementary  dimensions, such  as core  traits, foundations  of  morality,  and principal stereotype  dimensions. Yet  there is no comprehensive  map of prejudice dimensions. A major  limiter of  developing  a prejudice map is the ad hoc sampling of target groups. We used a broad and largely theory-agnostic  selection  of  groups  to  derive  a  map  of  principal dimensions of expressed prejudice in contemporary American society. Across a   series   of exploratory and confirmatory studies, we found three principal factors: Prejudice against marginalized groups, prejudice against privileged/conservative groups, and prejudice   against unconventional groups(with some inverse loadings for conservative groups). We documented distinct correlates foreach factor, in terms of social    identifications, perceived    threats, personality, and    behavioral manifestations. We discuss how the current map integrates several lines of research, and point to novel and underexplored insights about prejudice.

(cut)

Concluding Remarks

Identifying distinct, broad domains of prejudice is important for the same reason as differentiating bacteria and viruses. While diseases may require very specific treatments, it is still helpful to know which broad category they fall in. Virtually all prejudice interventions to date are based on generic methods for changing mindsets based on “us” versus “them” (Paluck & Green, 2009). While value-based prejudice might fit with this kind of thinking (Cikara et al., 2017), that seems more questionable for biases based on status and power differences (Bergh et al., 2016).  For that reason, it would seem relevant to outline basic kinds of prejudice, and here we propose that there are three such factors, at least in the American context: Prejudice against privileged/conservative groups, prejudice against marginalized groups, and prejudice expressed toward either conventional or unconventional groups(inversely related).

With this research, we are not challenging research programs aimed to identify specific explanations for specific group evaluations (e.g., Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Mackie et al., 2000; Mackie & Smith, 2015). Yet, we believe it is important to also recognize that there are–in addition –clear and broad commonalities between prejudices toward different groups. Studying racism, sexism, and ageism as isolated phenomena, for instance, is missing a bigger picture–especially when the common features account for more than half of the individual variability in these attitudes (e.g., Bergh et al., 2012; Ekehammar & Akrami, 2003). In the current studies, we also showed that such commonalities are associated with broad patterns of behaviors: Those who were prejudiced against marginalized and unconventional groups were less likely to donate to in general, regardless if charity would benefit a conservative, unconventional or marginalized group cause. In other words, people who are generally prejudiced in the classic sense seem more self-serving (versus prosocial) in a fairly broad sense. Such findings are clearly complementary to specific, emotion-driven biases for understanding human behavior.

The research is here.

Google Employees Call Black Scientist's Ouster 'Unprecedented Research Censorship'

Bobby Allyn

www.npr.org

Originally published 3 Dec 20

Hundreds of Google employees have published an open letter following the firing of an accomplished scientist known for her research into the ethics of artificial intelligence and her work showing racial bias in facial recognition technology.

That scientist, Timnit Gebru, helped lead Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team until Tuesday.

Gebru, who is Black, says she was forced out of the company after a dispute over a research paper and an email she subsequently sent to peers expressing frustration over how the tech giant treats employees of color and women.

"Instead of being embraced by Google as an exceptionally talented and prolific contributor, Dr. Gebru has faced defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and now a retaliatory firing," the open letter said. By Thursday evening, more than 400 Google employees and hundreds of outsiders — many of them academics — had signed it.

The research paper in question was co-authored by Gebru along with four others at Google and two other researchers. It examined the environmental and ethical implications of an AI tool used by Google and other technology companies, according to NPR's review of the draft paper.

The 12-page draft explored the possible pitfalls of relying on the tool, which scans massive amounts of information on the Internet and produces text as if written by a human. The paper argued it could end up mimicking hate speech and other types of derogatory and biased language found online. The paper also cautioned against the energy cost of using such large-scale AI models.

According to Gebru, she was planning to present the paper at a research conference next year, but then her bosses at Google stepped in and demanded she retract the paper or remove all the Google employees as authors.

The info is here.