Abstract

I take up the call for a more nuanced engagement with race in bioethics by using Creary’s analytic of bounded justice and argue that it helps illuminate processes of racialization, or racial formation, specifically Blackness, as a dialectical processes of both invisibility and hyper-visibility. This dialectical view of race provides a lens through which the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics field can reflect on fraught issues such as inclusion in genomic and biomedical research. Countering or interrupting racialization in precision medicine can involve asking how marginalized groups are made invisible or hyper-visible in various aspects of the research process. Incorporating these kinds of questions into biomedical research inclusion efforts could lead to potentially powerful engagements with marginalized groups and could provide the opportunity for stakeholders to engage with the ways that racialization can happen in real-time and might undermine good intentions.