In this episode we talk with Camisha Russell, Assistant Professor in Philosophy at University of Oregon & author of The Assisted Reproduction of Race, about histories of race and their continued influence in reproductive medicine and technologies. We discuss how critical philosophy of race can help bioethical analyses of health inequalities and racial injustices in reproductive medicine and society in general.
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Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
In this episode we talk with Camisha Russell, Assistant Professor in Philosophy at University of Oregon & author of The Assisted Reproduction of Race, about histories of race and their continued influence in reproductive medicine and technologies. We discuss how critical philosophy of race can help bioethical analyses of health inequalities and racial injustices in reproductive medicine and society in general.
References
Music & Art
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Christopher Mayes: Welcome to undisciplinary a podcast where we talk across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health. We're recording today on the unceded lands of the Wathaurong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and Melbourne, Australia
And as always, I'm joined by my co-host Courtney Hempton, welcome.
Courtney Hempton: Thank you. Hello.
Christopher Mayes: And today we are joined by special guest friend and colleague Camisha Russell from Oregon welcome Camisha.
Camisha Russell: Thank you.
Courtney Hempton: Yes. So Camisha is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Oregon and also serves as the editor of Hypatia a journal of feminist philosophy.
Camisha's research interests are in critical philosophy of race by ethics African American philosophy and feminist theory Camisha recently published her first book, The assisted reproduction of race in 2018 with Indiana University Press. So welcome Camisha
Camisha Russell: Thank you.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, it's really great to have you with us and today it would be good to talk about your work in
Christopher Mayes: Specifically in relation to your book on assisted reproduction of race, but also maybe more broadly. Some questions around bioethics and critical philosophy of race and interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary approaches to thinking about some of these bioethical issues.
Christopher Mayes: We started with a clip from GATTACA that is a very popular bioethical film. I think a lot of people are subjected to it in first year bioethics courses of some kind and it's perhaps a bit old and a bit cliché, but the same that we had the quote from is a scene where the parents are in, I suppose the context of a genetic counselor or doctor talking about the selection of their embryo.
And I find this particularly interesting and maybe I was re watching this film while reading a book Camisha so that maybe that's why I'm associating the two things. But one of the things that interested me is that the genetic counsellor in the context of the film is really the only black or non white character with a speaking part in the whole film, there are I think there's a maître d’ who ushers some people to their chair, but that's it so that's one thing that struck me about that particular character and role, but the second, as you say in your book, race seems to always be lurking just below the surface when it comes to assisted reproduction and in this scene and yeah, as I mentioned, we don't need to delve into an analysis of GATTACA but in this scene we see race break slightly to the surface, or at least in terms of phenotypic choices available to the parents. And the place or absence of race in sci-fi I think reflects certain realities and projects and certain features. So in the context of this film, there's this future where whiteness dominates and maybe that's due to consumer choice or it could just be simply a reflection or the unconscious expression of the dominance of whiteness in many of today's society is including film industry.
So I guess just reflecting on that and perhaps as a general question about your work on the ethics and politics of consumer choice in reproductive technologies and particularly the way race is configured and reconfigured in these spaces and yeah that's a sort of long introduction, but if you have any reflection on that.
Camisha Russell: Yeah, I mean I think the, um, you know, it's interesting about the only person of color who speaks in the film. I, you know, as I was saying before we started. This is a film. I think I saw on theaters. When I was like a teenager, so it is old, indeed, um, but yeah I don't I you know at the time. I don't think I remembered it and I actually don't show it in my bioethics classes. So I haven't seen it recently. Um, but I think it's really interesting. I think it, you know, whenever you have a conversation about eugenics or a movie about eugenics race is always kind of lingering in the background, the spectre of sort of racism in eugenics is always there. And so I suspect that whether consciously or not. The choice of that actor to be the genetic counsellor, you know, sort of, designed to remove race from the conversation, you know, in this in the movie right the movies just going to be about other genetic factors not at not about race. And thereby sort of having that that African American man.
You know, sort of participate in and be even to serve in charge of this this embryo selection. They're sort of saying, Well, this isn't we're not talking about a racist future we're talking about some other kind of dystopian future. So I think it's really interesting that that that happens. And I think it's a sign of kind of the discomfort with thinking about the deep connections between race and eugenics and whether those connections are kind of lingering and contemporary forms of: eugenic medicine. So yeah, so this is completely fascinating. I'm sure that this will i'm sure now and my my classes or at least talk about the example if I don't actually show the movie and we I mean consumer choice, I think, is a way is also a way of kind of deflecting from sort of ideas about racism or the possible racism of contemporary eugenic technologies. It's a way to sort of minimize the idea of race, it's sort of, it's a mere consumer choice. It's really just about people's personal attitudes. It's not a sort of, it's not a coercive your eugenics. It's not a eugenics with a sort of, you know, racialized program. It's, it's just something that people sort of do and do and then that's further sort of neutralized by the idea that people just do this because that's how they want. Just want to match, right. They just want to sort of have a child who's racial identity matches their own or they just kind of want to approximate nature, and I think this like notion of just approximate nature right and not kind of trying to change it. Even though of course you know that you know eugenic any genetic technology is, you know, is trying to change nature in some way. But I think it's often sort of seen as just kind of correcting nature or kind of going along with nature, or just, you know, but like it. So I think that yeah i think that i think about race as a consumer choice and especially where it's just about matching the parents matching the consumer.
You know, so as a way to kind of just make it just a just another feature. Right. And even that clip we sort of hear the list. You're looking for him to have brown hair and he's lies and fair skin, you know, just to kind of just kind of list like those are all the same, you know, bond brown haired, you know, blue eyed his light it's all, it's all the same, just like you're light skinned dark skinned right so I do think there is this yeah this neutralizing and diminishing of the role that race continues to play on in most societies by just sort of thing is this is one option on the bio genetic menu, you know, not judging.
You know, it's just how it is. You know, it's interesting. I feel it. There's a bit of a look on, what your listeners will not have seen, but a bit of a look on his face. Yeah. Yeah. But just kind of fascinating, but
Christopher Mayes: Definitely, I think, yeah, the way that he pauses and smiles. This is the second episode and that we've done where it's required a visual element and perhaps podcasting isn’t where we should be. Yeah, he definitely has that pause and smile as he says, “fair skin as well”.
Camisha Russell: I think, I mean, in my experience with people knew which is limited with people who do you know sort of practitioners of reproductive technologies. They are sort of constantly. They don't want to induce any kind of uncomfortable feeling or guilt or anything in their patients or customers, right, their consumers right they want to
Camisha Russell: Put them at ease, like all your choices are fine. We don't judge, everything's okay don't worry, whatever you want. We're here to help you make your reproductive dreams come true. So I think he's very true. In a sense, to that kind of practitioner in kind of
Camisha Russell: You know, sort of listing that off with a bit of a smile and you know you're okay Everything's fine.
Christopher Mayes: So you explore these issues at greater depth and also talk about some cases where there are some judgment, particularly when it comes to race matching and those sorts of things, but in your book assisted reproduction of race way you looking at the way assisted reproductive technologies. So, I suppose. Most commonly, things like IVF and donor insemination, and gestational surrogacy. But the way that these technologies. And the way that race plays out in the context of these technologies in our societies, both historically and in contemporary forms of these, whether it's consumer mobile consumer driven approach, but an object, an objective, the site in your book is about shifting our thinking on race from debates over what race is to an investigation of what race does and how, and I guess it'd be interesting to hear more about why you think shifting from those debates about what race is important and you know what you mean by this. What race does in those contexts.
Camisha Russell: Yeah, I mean you in the first place. Philosophers spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about what things are and the precise nature. Of various things so that most people I think don't care about at all. So, I mean, there's, there's one sort of relevance factor as well.
Um, you know, these debates about the metaphysics of race are probably not most interesting thing philosophy has to offer scholarship on race and racism.
But also, um, you know, I think that medically speaking or scientist, I think often think that they are sort of helping fight racism by trying to clarify that race is not a scientific concept.
Or, you know, it can be can't be sort of shown scientifically but can't group people together on the basis of race in a meaningful scientific way.
Um, but I, you know, but at the same time, you know, scientists themselves, you know, various scientists themselves and people are always kind of looking for race again and again. So even, you know, no matter how many times
There seems to be a scientific consensus on the sort of non existence of biological race. Always it's reappearing people are fine, trying to find new ways to explain the sort of belief that we have that race is this real thing. And so I feel like, you know what, what we should do is is except that when we're looking at our current society. People are really predisposed. You know, through, you know, all kinds of social training to think that race is a real thing to see it to believe it to interact, you know, according to the rules. Associated with different racial identities and racial individualized interactions. And so if you know and that doesn't seem to change a lot when
When scientists or, you know, say that race doesn't exist, or people repeat that what scientists say about race, not existing
So, you know, my idea is, in which is not unique to me but. But what I do want to push in the book is, yeah, we need to stop talking about whether it exists and stop spending time on that and really sort of look at what is it that people are doing with this concept. Why, how you, how is it useful to people in their everyday lives? Why do they keep coming back to it? Why do scientists keep looking for it in different ways, right, what is it, what's, what's our attachment to this concept that it seems you know not to go away? No matter how many times, you know, science scientific views evolve or new, you know, new ideas occur. Right. So there's no concept of genetics as we have it now at the time that race is created, but there's a concept of heredity and even as that notion of heredity changes with new scientific information. Still, we see race persist and persist. So if it's going to sort of be there and we, I think we do better to kind of really think about okay well
Why are people clicking into these ideas? What is it doing for them? How is it making sense of their world?
We know what sort of shortcuts, is it telling them about how they should act or what they should do or who should receive which resources and so on and so forth. So if we spend time really kind of laying out what is raised doing for people why and what is it doing to organize society, then I think we sort of get points where we can think about okay well you know, what does this say about us and what is it maybe what maybe what does it mean that we should do about this whole thing so it just seems to be a more productive sort of focus of attention to really track these specific ways in which she bore using and thinking about race and how it's you know how it's working for them, rather than to just sort of repeat you know, endlessly. It doesn't exist, and then endlessly have some scientists, saying, Oh, no, I've actually figured it out. Here's where it is and so on and so forth.
Courtney Hempton: But yeah, I mean I guess I was really, I guess drawn to the idea that you're developing around. Yeah, I guess, acknowledging the kind of constitution of race, but also thinking about how you know, embrace in terms of technology and how that's both produce but also is productive, in a sense, and kind of being, I think, use the term kind of being racist being put to work and how we can kind of consider race in that term.
Yeah, and I was also I was watching an interview that you gave in which you kind of talked about one of the prompts for writing this book and with us, which seemed like a great reflection of being in a hotel room, getting ready at a conference and kind of having morning TV on in the backdrop ground which seems like you know, such an idealistic moment in the times of COVID
Yeah, I guess if you just want to retell that story because I think I found quite interesting in terms of a prompt for leading you to consider race in terms of assisted reproduction.
Camisha Russell: Yeah, you know. Yeah. So back in the days when I could travel, I travelled to Florida for feminist philosophy conference and one of the sort of unusual things that one does while traveling in a hotel room or what I do anyways, to turn on the TV while I'm getting ready in the morning. And so, yes, I saw an episode of Good Morning America and they were talking about the outsourcing of surrogacy so they were talking about the surrogacy industry in India.
Which has since really been closed down to foreigners, but at the time it was, you know, on the rise there. And when they had was Michael and Tracy this. I don't even know that was the real names, but this this couple who had gone to India to have IVF and to have their embryo implanted in an Indian surrogate and there was this moment where the announcer the you know the person you know the newscaster was saying, you know, these this couple is cut, you know, thinks that admit that it's weird that you know, this idea of this Indian woman carrying their baby but they're colour-blind. They just want a baby. And so, so what really shocked me at the time was the use of this word colour-blind. I was just like, this is, this is very odd and he spent all this time talking about how much cheaper, it is to get surrogacy in India, so it doesn't seem to me that they're colour-blind. It just seems to me. They want to discount surrogate, um, you know,
Just, you know, like if I, you know, if I go to a store and I see I'm going clothing shopping again in times pre coated perhaps and you know, I see two sweaters and you know I like one color better, but the other ones on sale. Yeah, maybe I get the one on sale. Right. It doesn't mean that I'm colour-blind. It means that I wanted the cheaper sweater. Right. So, so I was really struck by this and then what was really fascinating it for me was that I went home. And was trying to kind of look this story up. And so first I looked on the website. The ABC website and they had the story, but the word colour-blind was nowhere in the story. Um, and so they're not in the and I'm like, Okay, did I just make this up. So then I went on Lexis Nexis which you know has actual transcripts of televised things and stuff. And so, and then if any found it. It was there, like I hadn't made it up. So I was also really intrigued by this idea that at some point along the way, along the way from this sort of, you know, live Good Morning America discussion and this the placing of it on the website. Someone was like, let's just remove that word. Um, so there's those are fascinated by that.
Um, yeah, so that's kind of what got me started. In the whole investigation of kind of what what is going on here. I'm like you said, what, what I eventually concluded was that race gets used in these situations. Yes. There's a lot of anxiety that goes along with with reproductive technologies, especially surrogacy or in a particular way. Right. Those are the, you know, the stories about surrogates trying to keep babies and things like that. Right. And there's a sort of fear. And I, and I don't I don't mock that fear. And I think it's you spend a lot of time and effort and money and you're very intent on having a child and you have this, you know, I think it's very natural fear that you know that somehow after everything you won't she won't get to take home the child. Right. So, but what I think race does here is to kind of mitigate that fear so um, you know, you have this idea that, well, here's this woman and she looks completely different than us and she's going to have this baby. That is our you know, our genetic baby, and it's going to completely different than her. And you know that she's in a country and in this situation. Having chosen to be a surrogate where she's not going to have a lot of financial resources, right, she's not gonna want to hire a lawyer muscles tighten up all these kinds of ways in which through race and other socio economic inequality is globally right this surrogate is positioned as not a surrogate, who's going to try to keep this baby right and so I think, I think race plays this productive role and in sort of assuring the, the family that you know the intended parents that this this child will be theirs and not the surrogates, and also sort of giving them a certain power a certain racialized and global economic power over the surrogate so that it's just not going to be in her interest to keep the baby. And furthermore, where she should try to fight legally for the baby should be at a disadvantage. And so on and so forth. And then you also have the people who've been in who were running these surrogacy clinics in India also assuring couples on that. This is safe. Right. And this is not going to happen. And there have been some really interesting ethnographic studies about kind of how Indian surrogates were how they were talked to about what they were doing and and sort of the ways that they were you know instructed and you know to think about what they were doing, right. This is not your baby, you're just caring for it, you're like a babysitter. You're an aunty you know this kind of stuff. So there's, you know, sort of hold all these norms within the surrogacy hostels which of course or another drop off were another draw for Indian surrogacy since you could you knew that your surrogate was being monitored. Right. There's also fear and he says, In popular culture as well you know that you know surrogates as poor women will be sort of possessive of many bad habits as well like smoking and drinking, they'll be quite untrustworthy. And so you know you're there, they have your baby. And then you don't know what they're doing or how they're eating or with it. Yeah, so they also had that to offer by having these hostels were circuit state during their pregnancies. Anyway, so, you know, so it didn't cover as I sort of looked into this more and more a lot of really interesting any qualities were raised was a part of that. And we're so anxieties about reproduction and assisted reproduction could be mitigated through the use of race and other forms of difference.
Christopher Mayes: So, I mean, something that I also really liked about your book. And while it's perhaps not a history as such. You do look at sort of the longer history of race, both in terms of philosophies of race and the philosophers such as current who contributed to the creation of race, science, I suppose, but also the way different technologies were used to categorize demarcate and police reproduction and race, particularly in the US and be interesting to hear more about why you think this and having a historical perspective on both race technologies and also philosophies of race are important for these kinds of bioethical analyses.
Camisha Russell: Yeah and there's so many reasons. You know, I mean, it's always, you know, it's because conscious still so canonical in philosophy. It's always important to highlight his contributions to theories about race, which is a personal mission but then also yeah, yeah. Well, as you were talking about earlier alluding to earlier, there's this idea every time we're talking about a technology that is kind of selecting or involving genetics or, you know, involving a genetic modification of genes or anything like that right you sort of there's always kind of as always eugenics in the background is always like Nazi Germany in the background.
But then I think the debate kind of gets really oversimplified. So it's either like exactly like Nazi Germany or it's nothing at all like Nazi Germany, which is the same thing of, you know, how vibrant eugenics movement was in the US, before it became so unpopular after Nazi Germany but you know, and, you know, the Germans were of course, you know, reading American scientific or you can use some scare quotes there but scientific texts about race and eugenics as they were in a planning their, their eugenics program. So certainly the US doesn't have the sort of high moral ground there but, um, yeah. So there's, I think there's a tendency to simplify like it either is completely like the old eugenics, or it's nothing like the old eugenics. And I wanted to, you know, sort of try for something a bit more complex. So one of the reasons for looking at the history of race and history of eugenics are together with the kind of place them within as or same frame of mind, the same kind of epistemological framework where you were science, you know, we're pretty young sciences, we're realizing what heredity was and trying to understand how it worked and and so you know this, but I guess what I wanted to argue was that it's not just that they were trying to discover heredity, or can unlock, you know, sort of the an understanding of how it works, but they're actually also always in my argument interested in controlling it, and part of the part of the way that I argue for that is the point out that, you know, animal, plant breeding you're trying to sort of bring about certain characteristics in plants or animals livestock or, you know, plants on farms, there's a word for that. I don't know what it is right now.
Christopher Mayes: Crops.
Camisha Russell: There we go. Crops. And so you know that people could if you could do this for a long time before they knew exactly why they could do it right so they could read different strains And in lines in animals and without sort of understanding exactly how the genetics were working. And so what I wanted. What I tried to say is that, okay, this idea of controlling nature and sort of perfecting nature was around for a long time and there was definitely debate about whether that should be appropriately applied to humans and some people thought know and some people thought, Yes, but it was always kind of, I think, I argue there in the back of in the back of the minds of people are trying to figure this stuff out, like, Well, once we know how these things work. Shouldn't we improve on the human race? Shouldn't we, you know, if we're going to spend all this time improving our crops and our livestock, why wouldn't we do the same for ourselves, right? And so, so I yeah I want to impart my argument is that there's a whole sort of idea about mastery of nature and the importance of improving the course of nature. And sort of taking control of evolution that you know that was around during the height of the old eugenics and is still around today. And that the end that the concept of race is appearing at the same time, and it's all you know it's all intertwined with what's going on in terms of understanding heredity right and you know races actually standing in for some of the finer points of genetics that are not known at the time, right. So this is so this big visible form of hereditarian inheritance and that people are kind of using to think about how traits are passed. So, so you know the thing I want to sort of point out is that it's not that you have an old racist eugenics because people were racist before and then you have this new non racist eugenics and people aren't racist. Now, it's not just because people are not not racist. Now, but also because this idea of controlling and mastering and what lives and ways of being our most valuable and what traits we should, you know, you know, perpetuate or stamp out within the human population.
All of this is linked up with the thinking that gave us the race concept. So that's one of the reasons for the history that then also the history talks. That's one history chapter and then there's another sort of history chapter, talking about the US. And history of racial, racial classification in the US and the laws around your marriage and reproduction instead of to whom a child belongs, and to whom much. How does related and how that child is classified racially, you know, which was particularly important during chattel slavery where you know the genetic father of many enslaved also African descent, a person was, you know, the white master.
So, you know, and there were laws that specifically a place to that child as his property, rather than you know his daughter or son, even though some men did choose to sort of acknowledge in certain ways that that those were there were their children, but many didn't. So anyway, so you know again to sort of suffer in that particular case I really wanted to look at how the development of kinship in the US on with this idea of race, playing a major role effects how Americans, particularly, but, you know, but also beyond the US, have you will think about using race in reproductive technologies, how they think about you know, the sort of natural child as being one that matches, that matches racially
Christopher Mayes: So something that is or an idea that seems to be quite dominant in a lot of bioethics around reproductive ethics is this idea of reproductive autonomy or reproductive liberty and that seems, you know, a lot of the debates around say whether it's commercial surrogacy or whether it's around sex selection or a range of areas. This idea of reproductive autonomy and liberty depending based really on an idea of informed consent as well that if primarily, you know, women are free and making free choices and fully informed choice then everything is okay. Maybe that's simplifying the position somewhat, but in what ways do you see reproductive autonomy playing out in the context of race and assisted reproduction?
Camisha Russell: Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, it's such an interesting question because on the one hand, there are a lot of people non-white people, especially who have sort of not had a lot of reproductive autonomy. Right, so you know, within this sort of larger discussion on reproductive justice, you know, we do want to be really concerned about women's control over their bodies and not restricting that, but then on the other hand, you know, that sort of that use of autonomy is often associated with with privilege or with the aims of people who have a certain amount of privilege. Right. So even the argument that you know surrogates should be allowed to you know get money from performing this is gestational labor, which if they're going from gestational labor, they should but, but even that idea sort of serves the purposes of the people who want them to perform the labor right so it's always, I think, you know, I think autonomy is important in a lot of context and reproduction is definitely one in which it can be very important. But when you start talking about, you know, multiple people involved in reproduction, especially in terms of surrogates or egg donors or things like that then you have to really look at this or structural factors you know what makes these choices appealing right what you know what makes people so intense on having a new baby right you know if you know if they want children. There are children around who need parents. Yeah. So, so why and why this need to create a new child on in this in this scenario or you know what, what, lack of other opportunities do women or did women in India face such that they were willing to serve as surrogates right um you know I live in answer. We even live in this hostel only their own families for, you know, a good number of months, um, is this, you know, I think it's not, it's sort of, it's not against autonomy, but it's but it's asking for a sort of larger picture of the context of choice. Thread the context in which people make their choices see certain things as appealing or see certain types of work as their best possible option or you know what structural any qualities are required for large number of women to serve as gestational surrogates, like if everybody you know, had relative equality in terms of income and, you know, financial security. Right. Would a lot of women choose to be surrogates, it seems to be the case that some women definitely would.
You know they're there are surrogates who talk you know about how much they love being pregnant how much they love helping a family, you know, I mean, so there are other reasons for sure. But, but you just, yeah, it's just a really good question about sort of analyzing these circumstances, and in my particular interests analyzing the way that race plays into these circumstances, yes. The stuff we talked about before in terms of the sense of security of using a foreign surrogate who's not white. And, you know, maybe you know relatively desperate for the money being offered right, what that sort of, what that gives to people why people go and find that appealing.
Courtney Hempton: Um, so I guess, perhaps a slight change of trajectory. But part of the interest of why Chris and I started this podcast was, I guess. People and the kind of work that's able to be done in terms of transgressing disciplinary boundaries are kind of working in what we've kind of referred to as undisciplinary ways and obviously, as, as we've discussed, your work crosses a number of kind of fields or some fields and draws on texts from different areas within philosophy and ethics and beyond.
So I guess it was interesting, the ways that you found working in disciplinary way useful. What ways has it been perhaps challenging, and yeah, whether that's reflecting on your work in terms of reproduction and race or other things that you're working on?
Camisha Russell: Yeah, I mean, I think, in contrast to some types of philosophy which were happening a lot around me in graduate school. You know, I was always much more interested in thinking about some kind of problem.
Through philosophy then in sort of choosing some figure, you know, some persons work, who I thought was great and interpreting that are reading it with another figures work, um,
So yeah and that's by because that was an interest. And then, you know, starting from that. Good Morning America episode. And going forward, you know, reproduction really draws you in a lot of different ways, you know. There's just, there's, you know, a lot of different work on reproduction, especially when one moves away from a notion of autonomy or starts to try to talk about race. There was a real lack of. And I think this is beginning to change. In some ways, but there were not a lot of texts really thinking about race and reproduction and particularly assisted reproduction.
So, you know, and so when, when did not find those texts only by looking at people with PhDs and philosophy or in a working philosophy departments. And then similarly, you know, looking at the history of genetics and things like that also required sort of looking in different places. Um, so, I think, you know, it was the problem itself that that drove the delving into other areas and thinking about those. But I do like the freedom to read texts and other disciplines. It's always very interesting it both points to me to the limitations of philosophy, but also, it tends to also remind me of why I like philosophy. So I also tend to, in reading almost any other disciplinary texts feel like somehow there was just not enough theoretical work or just not quite the right lens. I don't know, you know, many texts which I've loved the lot. I still feel like, but if only this had been a philosophy texts about this exact same thing run. Great. So, you know, so it's, it's an interesting. It's an it ends up being a nice way both to affirm my interest in philosophy, even as you know I recognize that I'm not doing the philosophy that a lot of people expect and to really explore a lot of things that philosophy hasn't paid enough attention to, so like, you know, like those details. Well, I guess the downside, there is one is a lot of imposter syndrome. I think insofar as I then go into a sort of more strict philosophy space. I often feel like, well, am I really doing this stuff, but then also I often think, Why is anyone doing this stuff so? And also you know so I think philosophy is happy to put me on the margins and I'm happy to hang out in the margins. That's why I don't think I'd be having a lot of fun otherwise.But you know it's, it's worked out okay.
Actually, it's interesting. I think there are a lot of disciplinary boundaries. Still, but at the same time I have found that if you just sort of have a sense of what you want to do and don't let people overly deter you from that path. You can kind of do you kind of can do what you want it. Is it to not not believe that when people tell you, you'll never get a job that way, and then you do get a job. So it's great.
But, but, yeah, it's so I like I like being able to look at different things that philosophy hasn't always been talking about. And I do like to bring what I think of as a philosophical approach to some problems where I don't think you know people have thought as much, theoretically about it as they ought to or asked some of the, the questions that ought to be as
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, I think a good example of that in your work is around both on the one hand bioethics being a arguably marginal position in philosophy and then also critical philosophy of race, being hopefully less marginal. But I think it is, especially in a place like Australia, there aren't too many critical philosophers race. But bringing those two things together. I think in some of your work to make comment about race, particularly in the context of bioethics and where bioethics has been I guess, ignoring the impacts and the roles and its own connection to histories of racial injustice. So I'm thinking in particular of your article from 2016 questions of race in bioethics deceit disregard disparity and the work of decentering. And again, that sort of language of marginal and centers and those sorts of things and you argue that, among other things, the need to center racial justice in bioethics and just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on what this means and why it's important for Bioethics to center racial justice.
Camisha Russell: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the sort of major points is that, you know race is really links to health outcomes. And, you know, a lot of different ways and multiple links. So there are you know their effects of racism on health. Right. So there's, you know, the just the literal experience of racism in one's life can sort of increased one stress and the sort of wear and tear on one's body. You know, it's just recently doing a summer class or not, not a summer class, but the summer program and we were watching a documentary called Unnatural Causes about the subtleties any is any quality, making us sick and they touch about how you know immigrants who come to the US generally have fine health when they arrive are good health when they arrive, but over time living in the US will come to have worse health right so that it will put them in closer, you know, closer to Americans on that sort of health scale, especially Americans have the class that they then enter into the immigrants and you're entered into so, so there's this way in which, being in a in American society you know harms the health of non-white people. So that's one aspect you have is also sort of discrimination, you know, and things like that, by healthcare providers sort of stereotypes that affect you know how people get treated.
Serena Williams is an interesting case where you know she you know when she was giving birth. You know, was aware that she was having a problem which was probably a blood clot that could kill her, and the doctors just sort of like, oh, you know, you probably don't know you're talking about you know what she did. And you might assume that you know super high class athlete would know her body. Well, but apparently the assumption that black women don't know anything about their bodies or anything else won out until she insisted and eventually saved her own life. Um, but, you know, so you have those kinds of, you know, that kind of racism as well.
Um, and then you just have, you know, sort of, you know, you have environmental racism and the sort of health effects of that. So the various ways in which where you live and your exposure to toxins or the lack of, you know, fresh food or other kinds of things in your environment.
You know, can, can affect your health. So there's just all these ways in which, you know, in which raises implicated in health, particularly in the US.
Um, and so yeah I I tend to think and then as part of the argument, you know, the bell hooks and others have made is that if you if you looked if you create a health system which helped people at the margins. It would also be an excellent health system for people in the center, right, it would it would just be that, you know, they wouldn't be so much healthier and better off than everybody else. So there'll be a loss of a sense of superiority perhaps, but not an actual decline in in their good health. So yeah, so really the argument is just, okay, well, if we start from the position of people who are experiencing these various effects of race and racism on their health. And if we make a system that would actually work for them. Then we would, we would have a great system that would work for everybody. Um, so yeah. That's in a nutshell.
Courtney Hempton: Um, yes. I'm just wondering, I guess, as of a particular examples. I think you conclude that paid with this call to action of things that philosophers and perhaps other than bioethics should be doing in terms of I guess having an eye towards justice in terms of approaching some of these issues. I'm just wondering your thoughts on how I guess a critical philosophy of race can assist those working in this area to approach analytically, or in terms of critiquing the questions that we're asking the right kind of research that we're doing, providing the ways to think about what is, what are the issues that biothics is even kind of considering whether that's in in Reproductive Medicine or bioethical thinking more broadly.Camisha Russell: Yeah, now that I use and I like this idea in that article. This idea of structural competency. So there's, you know, a sort of language of cultural competency
Camisha Russell: In medical ethics and this idea that sort of providers should you know things about some of the main cultures that are different than their own that you know that the populations that they're serving. Yeah. And then there's the company idea that maybe they should recognize that they have a culture of their own. Which is also very important. You know, it's biomedicine has its own sort of belief and what's important and how you know how to approach problems, you know, through sort of the physical and biological rather than, you know, cultural or you know, environmental or psychological, you know, all kinds of other approaches.
Via the structural competency piece, I think, is really asked to, you know, ask people to look not just at their what they sort of not the narrow confines of their practice or the things that they think that they're offering or the things that their patients are asking for those kinds of, you know, but but to really look at the broader context in which you know, which their patients appear before them and the, you know, and with what complaints and sort of how those things are related to structural issues. And so I do think that's the sort of larger view of healthcare inequalities and injustices this the structure around one could have a good positive effect on how on how doctors and researchers kind of go about their work and that it could, you know, that would not be simply just, oh, I'm going to treat this individual patient or research subject with more respect or more flexibility or something like that, but that it would also really allow the experiences of patients or research subjects or other people and their perspectives to actually, you know, reflect back on kind of the study or the, you know, course of treatment or whatever is being sort of thought about right. So, you know, if you think you know what a sort of good quality of life is, you might say, okay, well here's, you know, the proper medical path toward this this improve state of your health.
And instant. Yeah, but you might also take the time to understand that not everybody sort of prioritises things in the same way and or has the same vision of health or good life or quality of life. And so, to really allow you know the people that that the practitioners interacting with and their views to cause some real reflection on kind of what, what, what am I offering and do I just offer kind of one course of you know toward what I think is right or do I consider what my patient thinks that they want. And do I consider other ways that I might be able to respond to their needs. That's not just sort of simple autonomy, yes or no, I want this, or I'm going to say, I want this or that thing. But really about sort of values in general and you know kind of where they come from. So that's the, you know, insofar as I'm making various calls to action. I've been. I've been asked to make other calls of actions as many calls to action out there right now in various stages of revision and review and production, but I think it is just this this broader awareness of how our culture is shaped by equality in my particular interest racial inequality.
And what that what that could mean for anybody in any kind of practice or job, your medical or otherwise, what does it mean to kind of be aware of the structure in which you're operating. And are there ways that you're operating that are reinforcing that structure or, you know, even better ways that are challenging it
Courtney Hempton: Um, I guess this is the final question and you alluded to some of the other things that you have under review will forthcoming just wondering what you're working on. Now if that relates if it's an extension of some of the walk that much from your book or if you'll take a completely different trajectory
Camisha Russell: Yeah, you know, I often imagine that I would finish the book and they finally come out and then I would just work on other things, but I find that the book does not let you go so easily. It's like, you know, yes, I've been thinking about it forever. Other people only recently encountering it and people have been asking, you know, for things that engage the topics of the book. So it turns out that I'm just, you know, I'll just write this one and then, you know, there's another one that was right that. Yeah. And it goes on and on. So I'm still working on topics related to the book and sort of, I think, you know, trying to phrase things for different audiences. I'm also at some points, you know, interrupted by the pandemic working on a co-authored book about assisted reproductive technologies and reproductive justice so with a, with the law professor who works on similar things to what I do, but, you know, with an actual knowledge of the law and how it works. So, so we are working on co-writing that as well. So I think it'll be a while before I really get to go off in a whole new direction, but I am yeah I've been concerned about what we as academics can do in the US about Black Lives Matter and kind of the, the current energy around that so you know I'm working on Black Studies on our campus, which has been a long term project on the campus and I'm joining it now. The efforts to bring Black Studies to our campus. I'm just trying to think about pedagogically I guess what, what we can do to sort of support anti-racist movements and anti-racist thinking. So that's sort of my side project was still mostly writing about stuff to do with reproduction and race.
Christopher Mayes: Excellent, thanks a lot for taking the time to talk with us.
Camisha Russell: Thank you.
Christopher Mayes: We appreciate it.
Courtney Hempton: Um, yes. It's been fascinating. Thank you so much. And we'll put links to your book and the article that we discussed on the website somewhere show notes. So wherever you listen to Undisciplinary it's available on in most places. So, Apple, Spotify, other ones I have never heard off but I'm sure other people are aware, so you can subscribe, rate review all those things that we are supposed to ask people to do. We are on Twitter at undisciplinary underscore and our website is undisciplinary.org
Christopher Mayes: Thank you very much.
Courtney Hempton: Thank you.
