Racial inequity has influenced both personal and public health in the United States and has impacted enrollment in medical schools and training programs. The effects of racial inequity on training and how it is perceived can differ depending on who is being affected. Recommendations are offered for positive changes through mentoring of individuals, institutional leadership, and structural changes in organizations.

This article focuses on the experiences of 29 African American teachers in K–12 institutions in Southern California. The article reports on the major themes of the participating teachers’ shared narratives in light of the theory of racial micro-aggression; their responses include evidence that racial micro-aggression during interactions with nonminority organizational members have had a negative impact on their experience. These findings, which are consistent with the neophyte literature, reveal a unique opportunity for scholars to engage in cutting edge (...) research and also suggest the need to integrate training specific to racial micro-aggression in professional development and teacher education programs in order to improve the experience of African American teachers in the future. (shrink)

The Association of Research Ethics Committees is one of the leading providers of training and education for members of Research Ethics Committees. The introduction of the research governance strategy and the increasing complexity of ethical review place great demands on research ethics committee members that in turn creates challenges for training providers. This paper presents the outcome of an audit of REC members' views about training. Findings demonstrate that REC members are not a homogenous group. Several distinct (...) sub-groups, each with particular training needs emerged. All showed a preference for short, easily accessible events in which there were opportunities for discussion. (shrink)

This paper challenges the “characterological” theory of racial injustice. This theory, widely held in corporate efforts to address race, simultaneously endorses a “structural” account of racism while advocating deeply individualistic remedies: challenging systemic racism, on this view, requires directing our energies inward toward our most ingrained habits and self-conceptions. I begin by reconstructing the characterological theory and its appeal. I then argue that it rests on questionable, if not untenable, cognitive assumptions. Instead of seeing racism as carried forth by (...) agents’ deeply internal characters, I argue that a structural account of racial domination is better served by understanding cognitive processes as externalized and conducted through our environments. Drawing on theories of the “extended mind” and distributed cognition, I offer an account of both structural racism’s persistence and individual racist actions, which is anchored in the environmental (and not characterological) manifestations of racial hierarchy. I conclude with the normative potential of business ethicists adopting the distributed cognition framework. (shrink)

As this nation embarks on new efforts to reform the U.S. health system, we face a critical unfinished agenda from the mid- 1960s: persistent racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health and health care. Medicaid, Medicare, and Community Health Centers — public programs with very different legislative histories and financing mechanisms — were the first federally funded, nationwide efforts to improve health care access for low-income and elderly Americans. Members of racial and ethnic minority groups also greatly benefited (...) from these efforts because recipients of federal funds, such as Medicare, were required to comply with the newly passed Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred racial discrimination. Unquestionably, government played a major role in the gains in health care access that have occurred in the last half century. Yet today all Americans do not have the same opportunities for health, access to care, or quality of care when they receive it. (shrink)

To provide effective care physicians must attend, not just to medical issues, but also to the social determinants of health — racial factors, food insecurity, housing instability, transportation barriers and beyond. Social determinants also include a largely underrecognized dimension: legal vulnerabilities such as rental evictions and debt adjudications. Yet rarely do medical trainees have an opportunity to witness legal vulnerabilities, firsthand.

Surgeons have an ethical obligation to ensure all patients, regardless of their personal characteristics, receive the same quality of care. Established surgeons also have an obligation to ensure equal treatment for their peers and for those who would like to join the field. The commitment to ethical hiring and working standards entails making certain all individuals have the same opportunities free from discriminatory practices. The world of business has long realized the positive implications of having a diverse and inclusive (...) workforce. Studies have shown a positive correlation between increased racial and gender diversity and company performance. Diversity can lead to an increase in knowledge by sharing ideas with individuals who come from different life experiences and breakdown cultural barriers. We have already begun to see the impact of ignoring the importance of diversity within healthcare, including surgery. Healthcare disparities are defined by the NIH as “differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups.” Healthcare disparities persist despite decades acknowledging their existence, and they are pernicious and prevalent in surgery. One proposed method to help reduce or eliminate healthcare disparities is to increase the diversity of the workforce treating the patients, which would in turn reduce potential bias the patients face in the healthcare setting. Implicit bias can play a key role in interactions with patients and colleagues and needs to be explored on an individual basis. Cultural competence training can also provide surgeons the ability to effectively communicate with not only a diverse population of patients but also a diverse surgical workforce. All surgeons regardless of their role can have a positive impact on diversity as it relates to patient care and the surgical workforce. (shrink)

Educational web quest is an example of the introduction of the Internet in the learning process. Using the web quest as a pedagogical technology allows students to form and develop competencies in the use of information and communication technologies in the performance of educational tasks, research skills, skills of analysis and systematization of information received, teamwork skills and responsibility for the quality of their training. The article describes the didactic possibilities of an educational web quest in the educational process (...) of College students. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Memory and the Instituting Social ImaginaryNancy Nyquist Potter*, PhD (bio)Emily Walsh's Article on the way that colonialism is perpetuated in psychiatry through dominant collective memory is simultaneously exciting and challenging, and merits active engagement toward making changes (Walsh, 2022). This presents a challenge to clinicians to address entrenched, often subconscious, ways of being with and helping racialized people with historical memories and current experiences.Such changes are necessary in that (...) dominant collective memory is contributory to mental illness, as Walsh writes. It also contributes to what Walsh calls a traumatic loop, whichinvolves feeling unwell due to racist abuse or the effects racialization has on the psyche, then being unable to voice these concerns to the practitioners who desire to help you. Not having the opportunity to voice these concerns can make patients feel as though these memories are not important, thereby invalidating their own negative experiences of racialization.(Walsh, 2022, p. 232)For these reasons, it is crucial that psychiatrists fully understand the harm they can do by reproducing dominant collective memories and work to change this in themselves and in the institutional systems in which they see patients/service users.I focus on one question briefly and then turn to the heart of active engagement.The question concerns what the content of dominant collective memory is and how it might play out in a particular interaction in psychiatry. This is important for clinicians who want to learn what sorts of changes need to be made in order not to continue to enact colonialism and to avoid doing harm. Walsh does a fine job setting out forms of memory and how Fanon (and she) suggest that clinicians can assist patients toward liberation from dominant collective memory. Yet I am left with uncertainty about what sorts of dominant memory serve to deny the violence in the colonized. A bit of filling out on this idea would help the motivated to move toward change.A pressing question is how to facilitate such changes. Both the limitations and the possibilities of the social imaginary can help us understand why change is so difficult and yet how it nevertheless is possible and, in fact, necessary. The social imaginary, as Code explains it, "refers to implicit but effective systems" of values, meanings, interpretations of reality, norms for living, what counts as knowing and who can be knowers, that are found in a social-political order in ways that shape our sense of self, our ways of relating to others, our responsibilities, and a sense of place (Code, 2008, pp. 31–32). The instituted social imaginary, then, tells us what sorts of persons we should be and [End Page 241] how we should see and treat others. It shapes memories and limits which memories—and whose memories—get acknowledged and which ones and whose memories are erased or ignored. It is difficult to see for what it is because it is implicit and assumed to be fixed and natural. However, this is the instituted social imaginary, where the content of the imaginary is taken as given and is naturalized. It trades in stereotypes of Black and Indigenous and other people of color as well as stereotypes of queers, people living with disabilities, the homeless, and others. It is harmful in that it perpetuates those stereotypes, controls patients/ service users, negates their own personal and community identities, and erases episodic memory. It is difficult to change because it is entrenched and often not questioned. Nevertheless, the instituted social imaginary is not totalizing. There is hope, and energy, and excitement to be found in active engagement with an instituting social imaginary. Here, we find people and communities working to critique the given, the naturalized, and even ourselves: "Imaginatively initiated counterpossibilities interrogate the social structure to destabilize its pretensions to naturalness and wholeness, to initiate a new making" (Code, 2008, pp. 34–35). In the final section, I begin to fill out these moves in relation to Walsh's work on memory and psychiatry.Clinicians are trained to be good listeners, and many of them already practice good listening skills in interacting with their patients/service users. However, many patients' experiences... (shrink)

Farmers, especially those within historically underserved populations, utilize networks to access educational training, community support, and market opportunities. Through a case study of the Pennsylvania Women's Agriculture Network's three-year Women's Rural–Urban Network (WRUN) initiative, this research analyzes the process of developing solidarity across geographic and racial lines while building a statewide farmers' network. Applying White's (2018) Collective Agency Community Resilience (CACR) theoretical framework to this initiative offers a way to evaluate how socially marginalized groups in agriculture build (...) farmers’ networks to resist oppression within the white heteropatriarchal agricultural system. This research draws on interviews with 12 steering committee members and three years of participant observation to understand how participants assessed the initiative. Findings suggest that changes to existing programming were influential in creating a place for diverse women farmers and growers to meet, thus contributing to prefigurative politics; however, the inability to form commons as praxis and economic autonomy due to divergent needs, varying roles in the agrifood system, and different levels of engagement with racial justice deterred network-building efforts. This initiative examines food justice theory through praxis. Findings offer insights for predominately white non-profits, research institutions, and activists in future anti-racism and food justice efforts in the agrifood system. (shrink)

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), which (...) characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

The radical transformations caused by the rapid development of information and communication technologies in the mid-1990s prompted the transition to the knowledge society which identified the key role of knowledge as the most important and valuable capital of organizations and had a decisive impact on the development of corporate training. In our study, we aimed to analyze the training methods used in American companies in the knowledge society, particularly, their feasibility, features, benefits and possible limitations. The results of (...) our study show that, at present, e-learning is considerably more widely used in American companies than instructor-led classroom training. Most organizations use blended learning which implies the combination of e-learning methods and instructor-led learning methods. A powerful stimulus for the wide implementation of e-learning methods was produced by the COVID-19 pandemic when the use of educational technologies made it possible for the companies not only to continue training and development of their employees but also to implement tactical and strategic practices which will have long-term implications for the future of the training industry. The most widely used e-learning methods in American companies are virtual classroom/webcast, online or computer-based methods, social learning, augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. In spite of certain limitations of e-learning methods, they have a number of important benefits which allow companies to expand access to training, save costs, increase adaptability and flexibility of learning programs, etc., and thus satisfy their needs in qualified employees. (shrink)

This article argues that because racial inequalities are embedded in American society, as well as in medicine, more evidence-based investigation of the effects and implications of affirmative action is needed. Residency training programs should also seek ways to recruit medical students from underrepresented groups and to create effective mentorship programs.

Contemporary trends in low fertility can in part be explained by increasing incentives to invest in offspring’s embodied capital over offspring quantity in environments where education is a salient source of social mobility. However, studies on this subject have often neglected to empirically examine heterogeneity, missing out on the opportunity to investigate how this relationship is impacted when individuals are excluded from meaningful participation in economic spheres. Using General Social Survey data from the United States, I examine changes in the (...) relationship between number of siblings and college attendance for White and Black respondents throughout the 1900s. Results show that in the early 1900s, White individuals from larger families had a lower chance of completing four years of college education than those from smaller families, whereas the likelihood for Black individuals was more uniform across family sizes. These racial differences mostly converged in the later part of the century. These results may help explain variations in the timing of demographic transitions within different racial groups in the United States and suggest that the benefits of decreasing family size on educational outcomes may be conditional on the specific economic opportunities afforded to a family. (shrink)

It is shown here that injustices due to racial discrimination are best identified in light of the deleterious effects they have upon their victims, rather than the beliefs and attitudes of their perpetrators. For among participants who cooperate clandestinely to bring about racial injustice there may be broad disagreement about what it is they are doing collectively, and why; or they may disagree in principle about whether what they are doing is morally right. I employ the notion of (...) ‘nomotropic’ behaviour to replace the oversimplified notion of ‘rule-following’ in order to explain how duplicity and hypocrisy fall shy of being regarded as irrational in social climates where implicit norms reinforce racial privileging while explicit norms denounce it. Further, examining the ‘collective utility’ of dogmatic beliefs and norms comprising part of the social architecture that covertly reinforces racial injustice may help to explain why it often seems to make so little diffe... (shrink)

In May 2011, the clinical ethics group of the Center for Ethics at Washington Hospital Center launched a 40-hour, three and one-half day Clinical Ethics Immersion Course. Created to address gaps in training in the practice of clinical ethics, the course is for those who now practice clinical ethics and for those who teach bioethics but who do not, or who rarely, have the opportunity to be in a clinical setting. “Immersion” refers to a high-intensity clinical ethics experience in (...) a busy, urban, acute care hospital. During the Immersion Course, participants join clinical ethicists on working rounds in intensive care units and trauma service. Participants engage in a videotaped role-play conversation with an actor. Each simulated session reflects a practical, realistic clinical ethics case consultation scenario. Participants also review patients’ charts, and have small group discussions on selected clinical ethics topics. As ethics consultation requests come into the center, Immersion Course participants accompany clinical ethicists on consultations. Specific to this pilot, because participants’ evaluations and course faculty impressions were positive, the Center for Ethics will conduct the course twice each year. We look forward to improving the pilot and establishing the Immersion Course as one step towards addressing the gap in training opportunities in clinical ethics. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is little information on how adverse experiences in early life are associated with the risk of having a child with health problems and whether the health of racial and gender minority groups would be particularly compromised if they have developmentally disabled children.ObjectiveBy integrating life-course perspectives and the intersectionality framework, we examine the extent to which parents’ early-life adversities are associated with having children with DD or other health issues and whether the association between having DD children and parental (...) health varies across race–gender groups after accounting for ELAs.MethodsUsing data from Black and White parents from the Midlife in the US Study, we employed multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the degree to which ELAs are associated with parenting types and multiple regression models with a three-way interaction term to investigate whether the gender–parenting type association differs by race.ResultsWith more adversities, the probability of having children with health issues increases for all race–gender groups, but most dramatically for Black women. Having DD children is associated with more chronic illnesses and functional limitations for women than men, with the largest burden for Black women, yet neither gender nor racial differences in depressive symptoms. Our results highlight that while raising children with DD takes a toll on the health of all parents, the strain might be larger for Black mothers.ConclusionThe adverse effects of parenting a child with DD is more pronounced for Black women than for other race–gender groups indicating opportunities to promote community-based programs for these parents. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how racial prejudice and selective, usually inarticulate, racial discrimination influenced attempts to conduct an objective examination of charges of cruelty in the training and exhibition of performing animals in Britain in the early twentieth century. As the debate intensified, and following the appointment of a parliamentary Select Committee, one explanation often given by both sides for shortcomings in the treatment of performing animals was the alleged cruelty particularly or exclusively attributable to the (...) “alien enemy,” “foreigners,” and distinct racial groups. The Committee faced the problem of assessing attributions of real cruelty as opposed to unproven charges that may have resulted from irrational, emotive, or strategic prejudice. This paper examines the context in which such charges were made, and the degree to which they might have been introduced or resorted to in order to serve the prejudices or interests of each side in the controversy. (shrink)

African Americans, compared to Whites, are starkly underrepresented in scientific and technological professions, are especially reluctant to participate as research subjects, and they express attitudes that are skeptical of science and scientific institutions. This article seeks to explain the racial gap in confidence in science (race being socially defined), putting to empirical test explanations suggested by research on human capital, inequality in educational opportunity, and culture. The results show that differential returns to schooling account for about a third of (...) the racial divide, with various cultural mechanisms explaining most of the balance. (shrink)

This paper is a critical review of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It by Jon Entine. It critically assesses the evidence that blacks do in fact dominate sports and attempts to show that this is an overgeneralization that perpetuates racist stereotypes. The tendency for both blacks and whites to accept such views creates expectations and beliefs that channel efforts in directions which reinforce historical stereotypes and limit opportunities for blacks to a (...) limited range of activities and careers. Commitment to equal opportunity requires that evidence for racial differences in intellectual and athletic activities be subjected to a level of special scrutiny that Entine has failed to meet. (shrink)

Ice Cube "What's a brother gotta do to get a message through to the Red, White, and Blue?" Ice-T Rap music has emerged as one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past decade. A significant part of hip hop culture, [1] rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions. In this cultural context, rap provides (...) a voice to the voiceless, a form of protest to the oppressed, and a mode of alternative cultural style and identity to the marginalized. Rap is thus not only music to dance and party to, but a potent form of cultural identity. It has become a powerful vehicle for cultural political expression, serving as the "CNN of black people", or upping the high-tech ante, as their "satellite communication system". It is an informational medium to tune into, one that describes the rage of African-Americans facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday life as a matter of sheer survival. In turn, it has become a cultural virus, circulating its images, sounds, and attitude throughout the culture and body politic. (shrink)

Laws, ordinances, regulations, and executive orders create the powers and duties of public health agencies and modify the complex community conditions that affect health. Appropriately trained legal counsel serving as legal advisors on the health officer's team facilitate clear understanding of the legal basis for public health interventions and access to legal tools for carrying them out.Legal counsel serve public health agencies via different organizational arrangements — e.g., internal staff counsel, external counsel from the state attorney general's office, state health (...) department, county or city, or private counsel under contract, or in combination. As of 2011, most state health departments employ their own counsel, and 56% use AG counsel, while 17% contract with independent attorneys; most local health departments work with attorneys and legal staff assigned by local government, by the state health agency, or contract with outside attorneys and legal staff. (shrink)

I reply to Mills's critique of my effort to show the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for thinking about and responding to racial injustices. Contrary to Mills's claims, my suggestion that the fair equality of opportunity principle can remedy socioeconomic disadvantages caused by the legacy of racial oppression is compatible with Rawls's framework, does not conflate distributive justice with corrective justice, and does not confuse racial injustice with economic injustice. I also raise doubts about Mills's project (...) to radically reconstruct contractarian political philosophy. He seeks to displace ideal theory with nonideal theory by foregrounding the realities of past racial domination. Against this approach, I argue that an ideal theory that abstracts away from these realities is not inherently ideological, useless for corrective justice, or too ideal to guide social reform. And I defend the view that ideal theory is indispensible for nonideal theorizing about racial justice. (shrink)

This critical examination of racial equality takes a new approach to breaking down racial barriers by proposing a system of equal opportunity through shared labor and contributive justice. Focuses on how race and class inevitably structure vastly unequal life prospects Shows how human society can be organized in a way that does not socialize children for lives of routine labour Looks towards contribution, not distribution, as a way to promote racial equality Argues that by sharing routine and (...) complex labor, social relationships would be transformed, eliminating competition for limited opportunities to develop and contribute abilities. (shrink)

For Charles Mills, the "Racial Contract" is a set of meta-agreements between whites to categorize nonwhites as subpersons of inferior moral and legal status relative to whites. This "contract" gives whites the right to exploit non-whites and deny them opportunities provided to whites. It portrays non-whites as designated to serve whites much as non-humans were designated by God to serve the benefit of humans. Mills argument helps make clear how, for most of the modern era, whites have had (...) as little obligation to recognize the rights of non-whites as they have had to recognize the rights of non-humans. (shrink)

This article discusses the adequacy of Rawls’ theory of justice as a tool for racial justice. It is argued that critics like Charles W Mills fail to appreciate both the insights and limits of the Rawlsian framework. The article has two main parts spread out over several different sections. The first is concerned with whether the Rawlsian framework suffices to prevent racial injustice. It is argued that there are reasons to doubt whether it does. The second part is (...) concerned with whether a Rawlsian framework has the resources to rectify past racial injustice. It is argued that it has more resources to do this than Mills allows. This second part of the article centers on two Rawlsian ideas: ideal theory and the fair equality of opportunity principle. It is argued that ideal theory is essential for the kind of rectificatory work that Mills wants nonideal theory to do, and that where there is a socioeconomic legacy of past injustice, it is hard to see how FEO could be implemented if it did no rectificatory work, a result which means that there is less need to turn to nonideal theory at all. (shrink)

When applied in the health sector, AI-based applications raise not only ethical but legal and safety concerns, where algorithms trained on data from majority populations can generate less accurate or reliable results for minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

In recent times, previous studies have reported the manipulation of tools by rats and degus in controlled experimental settings. However, a previous study reported that only one out of eight experimentally naïve rats could manipulate a rake-shaped tool according to the position of a food reward without prior experience of obtaining the reward with the tool before the test. The present study aimed to improve the training of rats and investigate rodents’ ability to manipulate tools according to food position. (...) Stricter criteria were employed when training the rats to promote the rats’ monitoring of their own tool manipulation. Additional training was introduced to give them the opportunity to learn that the reward moved closer to them by pulling an object connected to the reward. The present study showed that only one of eight rats could manipulate a tool according to the position of the reward without prior experience of obtaining the reward with the tool or perceiving that part of the tool came in contact with the reward, as the previous study showed. The change in training did not enhance the rats’ tool-manipulation ability according to the food position. These procedures should be conducted in a wider variety of animals to investigate whether the training in motion control can promote the subjects’ effective tool-use behavior. (shrink)

Law is a critical determinant of health that public health practitioners encounter in everyday practice. Yet most do not receive any formal public health law training. This article discusses tangible opportunities for strengthening the capacity of current and future practitioners to leverage law to advance health equity priorities.

People with neurodevelopmental disorders are often considered unsuitable or incapable of working in open employment. When employment is available, tasks are often limited, and opportunities for career development are restricted. Policy and funding constraints leave people with disabilities without an opportunity to develop skills due to the additional time and costs for employers. To overcome these barriers, virtual environments have been proposed as a safe and reliable solution for training. An important prerequisite for a wider uptake of (...) class='Hi'>training in virtual environments are demonstrations that the training leads to improved performance in the real world. This is particularly true for people with neurodevelopmental disorders, as transferring learnings from one context to another can be challenging. A systematic review was conducted to assess whether training in virtual environments can be used to improve real-world vocational skills in people with neurodevelopmental disorders. After a systematic search in six databases, eight out of the initially identified 1,806 articles met the inclusion criteria. The findings from these eight studies demonstrate that people with neurodevelopmental disorders can transfer vocational skills from virtual environments to real-world settings. With substantial technological improvements, a surge in accessibility, and improved affordability, there is a need to build upon the promising results identified in this review. (shrink)

Abortion is among the most widely disagreed upon topics in bioethics and healthcare. Consider how abortion is taught to medical students: while some medical schools incorporate abortion into their standard curriculum, others omit it entirely. In this article, the author argues these discrepancies go against society's interest in producing physicians with comprehensive medical knowledge—especially for common procedures like abortions. The author thus argues all US medical schools have a moral obligation to provide abortion education and clinical training opportunities (...) to their students. For the sake of argumentation, the author attempts to justify this claim remaining morally neutral on abortion. (shrink)

Background: Undergraduate nursing students have been documented to experience ethical distress during their clinical training and felt poorly supported in discussing the ethical issues they encountered. Research aims: This study was aimed at exploring nursing students’ perceived opportunity to discuss ethical issues that emerged during their clinical learning experience and associated factors. Research design: An Italian national cross-sectional study design was performed in 2015–2016. Participants were invited to answer a questionnaire composed of four sections regarding: (1) socio-demographic data, (2) (...) previous clinical learning experiences, (3) current clinical learning experience quality and outcomes, and (4) the opportunity to discuss ethical issues with nurses in the last clinical learning experience (from 0 – ‘never’ to 3 – ‘very much’). Participants and research context: Participants were 9607 undergraduate nursing students who were attending 95 different three-year Italian baccalaureate nursing programmes, located at 27 universities in 15 Italian regions. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines after the research protocol was approved by an ethics committee. Findings: Overall, 4707 (49%) perceived to have discussed ethical issues ‘much’ or ‘very much’; among the remaining, 3683 (38.3%) and 1217 (12.7%) students reported the perception of having discussed, respectively, ‘enough’ or ‘never’ ethical issues emerged in the clinical practice. At the multivariate logistic regression analysis explaining 38.1% of the overall variance, the factors promoting ethical discussion were mainly set at the clinical learning environment levels (i.e. increased learning opportunities, self-directed learning, safety and nursing care quality, quality of the tutorial strategies, competences learned and supervision by a clinical nurse). In contrast, being male was associated with a perception of less opportunity to discuss ethical issues. Conclusion: Nursing faculties should assess the clinical environment prerequisites of the settings as a context of student experience before deciding on their accreditation. Moreover, the nursing faculty and nurse managers should also enhance competence with regard to discussing ethical issues with students among clinical nurses by identifying factors that hinder this learning opportunity in daily practice. (shrink)

The promise of a free, high-quality public education is supposed to guarantee every child a shot at the American dream. But our widely segregated schools mean that many children of color do not have access to educational opportunities equal to those of their white peers. In Integrations, historian Zoë Burkholder and philosopher Lawrence Blum investigate what this country’s long history of school segregation means for achieving just and equitable educational opportunities in the United States. Integrations focuses on multiple (...) marginalized groups in American schooling: African Americans, Native Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans. The authors show that in order to grapple with integration in a meaningful way, we must think of integration in the plural, both in its multiple histories and in the many possible definitions of and courses of action for integration. Ultimately, the authors show, integration cannot guarantee educational equality and justice, but it is an essential component of civic education that prepares students for life in our multiracial democracy. (shrink)

A volume in Ethics in Practice Series Editors Robert A. Giacalone, Temple University and Carole L. Jurkiewicz, Louisiana State University Making sure that performance in business enterprise is achieved ethically is no small task. Leaders, managers, and employees at every level of the organization need to utilize systems and processes that support ethical strength, establishing a workplace where responsibility, accountability, and doing the right thing are genuinely valued and practiced. Management can help support ethical performance in workers' daily task actions (...) by underscoring the importance of rules and regulations, while also moving to ensure that employees understand and care about doing what's right. Given that most firms only emphasize compliance in ethics training, there is vast room for additional development. Training people to be less bad is not good enough. With the infusion of mandatory requirements for ethics training programs in some firms and self-imposed initiatives in others, we see a range of deliverables. To advance ethics in practice, a closer look at ethics training in the workplace is warranted. This volume attempts to better understand ethics in organizational settings by taking a focused look at the science of ethics training and best practices, areas for concern, specific techniques, application outcomes, how to cultivate an ethical work environment, and considering where opportunities for additional inquiry reside. Managers and practitioners reading this book will garner specific trends and useful techniques that can inform, guide, and improve their efforts to build ethical awareness and effective ethical decisionmaking within their organizations. Academic scholars will find this book useful, providing insight as to where additional research and empirical work is needed. (shrink)

An Artificial Intelligence algorithm trained on data that reflect racial biases may yield racially biased outputs, even if the algorithm on its own is unbiased. For example, algorithms used to schedule medical appointments in the USA predict that Black patients are at a higher risk of no-show than non-Black patients, though technically accurate given existing data that prediction results in Black patients being overwhelmingly scheduled in appointment slots that cause longer wait times than non-Black patients. This perpetuates racial (...) inequity, in this case lesser access to medical care. This gives rise to one type of Accuracy-Fairness trade-off: preserve the efficiency offered by using AI to schedule appointments or discard that efficiency in order to avoid perpetuating ethno-racial disparities. Similar trade-offs arise in a range of AI applications including others in medicine, as well as in education, judicial systems, and public security, among others. This article presents a framework for addressing such trade-offs where Machine Learning and Optimization components of the algorithm are decoupled. Applied to medical appointment scheduling, our framework articulates four approaches intervening in different ways on different components of the algorithm. Each yields specific results, in one case preserving accuracy comparable to the current state-of-the-art while eliminating the disparity. (shrink)

BackgroundHealth research funding agencies are placing a growing focus on knowledge translation (KT) plans, also known as dissemination and implementation (D&I) plans, in grant applications to decrease the gap between what we know from research and what we do in practice, policy, and further research. Historically, review panels have focused on the scientific excellence of applications to determine which should be funded; however, relevance to societal health priorities, the facilitation of evidence-informed practice and policy, or realizing commercialization opportunities all (...) require a different lens.DiscussionWhile experts in their respective fields, grant reviewers may lack the competencies to rigorously assess the KT components of applications. Funders of health research—including health charities, non-profit agencies, governments, and foundations—have an obligation to ensure that these components of funding applications are as rigorously evaluated as the scientific components. In this paper, we discuss the need for a more rigorous evaluation of knowledge translation potential by review panels and propose how this may be addressed.ConclusionWe propose that reviewer training supported in various ways including guidelines and KT expertise on review panels and modalities such as online and face-to-face training will result in the rigorous assessment of all components of funding applications, thus increasing the relevance and use of funded research evidence. An unintended but highly welcome consequence of such training could be higher quality D&I or KT plans in subsequent funding applications from trained reviewers. (shrink)

The use of Big Data—however the term is defined—involves a wide array of issues and stakeholders, thereby increasing numbers of complex decisions around issues including data acquisition, use, and sharing. Big Data is becoming a significant component of practice in an ever-increasing range of disciplines; however, since it is not a coherent “discipline” itself, specific codes of conduct for Big Data users and researchers do not exist. While many institutions have created, or will create, training opportunities to prepare (...) people to work in and around Big Data, insufficient time, space, and thought have been dedicated to training these people to engage with the ethical, legal, and social issues in this new domain. Since Big Data practitioners come from, and work in, diverse contexts, neither a relevant professional code of conduct nor specific formal ethics training are likely to be readily available. This normative paper describes an approach to conceptualizing ethical reasoning and integrating it into training for Big Data use and research. Our approach is based on a published framework that emphasizes ethical reasoning rather than topical knowledge. We describe the formation of professional community norms from two key disciplines that contribute to the emergent field of Big Data: computer science and statistics. Historical analogies from these professions suggest strategies for introducing trainees and orienting practitioners both to ethical reasoning and to a code of professional conduct itself. We include two semester course syllabi to strengthen our thesis that codes of conduct can be harnessed to support the development of ethical reasoning in, and a sense of professional identity among, Big Data practitioners. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Faeze Rezazade, Esmaeil Zohdi Racial prejudice, injustice, and discrimination against people of colored skin, especially African Americans, has become a global issue since the twenty century. Blacks are deprived of their rights regardless of their human natures and are disenfranchised from White’s societies due to their skin color which has put them as inferior and clownish creatures in White’s point of view. Although many anti-racist effort and speeches has done to solve racist (...) issues and eliminate racism and its circumstances, still racism is alive and Blacks are suffering from it. Although, many White individuals accept themselves as anti-racist characters that color of skin does not matter to them, they still show prejudice and discrimination towards Blacks and cannot consider them as equal as themselves. A reason to such Whites’ thought and behavior is that they have faced this issue since their childhood and therefore they cannot change it because this attitude is entangled with their personality and is deeply ingrained in them. Thus, a way to stop and eliminate discrimination, prejudice, and injustice is to train children, the next generation, as anti-racist and color-blind characters. In this regard, it has been tried to investigate the role of children training in the elimination of social and racial discrimination in Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, which is sequel novel to her masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Moreover, Jean Piaget’s theory of Children’s Cognitive Development has been used for a better understanding of this investigation. (shrink)

This is a descriptive qualitative study using phenomenological approach involving 46 nurses working in hospitals that cater to COVID-19 patients. This was conducted in April 2020. Results show that the challenges of nurses during the tour of duty in COVID-19 wards includes physical, procedural, psychological and protection. Likewise, nurses uncovered some difficulty with regard to the following experiences: struggle to be in complete PPE and with lack of PPE, not always being able to provide timely care, increased workload, nursing care (...) limitations, their risk to safety and having anxiety. This most often leads to some opportunities that bridges the gap towards achievement of their personal development and professional growth, as such, nurses became more compassionate, confident, resilient and resourceful, altruistic, and develop a stronger faith in God. Their leadership skills were also enhanced as they learned new knowledge and developed skills through education, trainings and experience. All the challenges and difficulties became avenue for the nurses to be able to unleash their potentials and further develop them into a God fearing and humane health care providers. Furthermore, the nurses being in the forefront of health care should be given assurance of safety and protection. Likewise, the nurse should closely adhere to standard protocol designed for COVID-19 infection control. It is thus recommended that there should be effective communication system to address issues and resolve conflicts. Lastly, emotional support and positive feedback should be given to nurses during the critical situations in the ward and collaborative working environment should be established all the time. (shrink)

This essay argues that we ought to think differently about unequal opportunity. Instead of focusing only on overall prospects in life, we ought to train our attention on the particular moments of decision and the particular developmental processes that shape, in different respects, the trajectories of people’s lives. A new wave of research in the social sciences makes possible this shift in focus, which will have profound implications for our understanding of both the concept of equal opportunity itself and its (...) applications in public policy and law. (shrink)

The purpose of this investigation is to indicate the current status of Economic and Business Ethics (BE) in Latin America (LA) as part of a broader global study. The investigation done shows that, in general terms, LA is not much developed in the BE field. Analysing the most important findings it is possible to conclude that more topics are being studied and that activities are growing in the field of BE in LA. However, it is also clear that the field (...) of BE remains clearly underdeveloped in the region. BE is addressed by only a few business schools in each country and a small number of NGOs in LA. In addition, until now little rigorous research has been conducted and publications in prestigious academic journals have been scarce. Studies in BE are still relatively rare and very locally focussed. From another perspective, there is a great difference in the level of activity across countries in the LA region. When looking at the future, corruption appears as the major concern, almost certainly due to the political, social, and ethical context that many of the nations in the region are experiencing. There is a strong need for more business schools and NGOs to join the task of researching, teaching and training in the broad spectrum of areas that fall within the scope of the field of business and economic ethics. In this respect, the need is glaring and the opportunities are enormous. (shrink)

This report provides an overview of training individuals in public health law. This report is designed to broadly outline the issues in order to facilitate discussion at the November 2007 PHLA meeting in Washington, D.C. I found that attorneys and public health practitioners have different approaches to training and practice. Materials and programs that seek to train individuals must be designed to fit within the professional culture of the targeted group. The differences between the two professional cultures can (...) be a barrier to training if not acknowledged in the design of training programs and materials.In a selected overview of materials and programs available, I found that there is an unmet need for responsive materials and programs. I also found that networking and conference opportunities can play an important role in training that should be explored. I also discuss joint degree programs. The report concludes with a series of future recommendations to facilitate discussion. (shrink)

State borders allocate access to basic goods, opportunities, rights, and protections along lines of nationality, race, and gender. However, the discriminatory effects of state borders rarely appear as an issue in the self-understanding of liberal-democratic societies and their political theorizing. In this paper, I explore how the category of nationality has been and continues to be used to exclude people who have been negatively racialized by European colonialism. I draw on a number of studies that reconstruct the colonial history (...) of states' claims to authority over people's movements and over the composition of their populations. The idea of territorial nationalities allowed nation-states, in particular those emerging from the settler colonies and metropoles of European empires, to continue practices of racial ordering without using explicit racial categories. With the help of these studies, I criticize liberal nationalists such as David Miller for appealing to the value of national identities to support a right of states to exclude would-be immigrants. I suggest that using genealogical and phenomenological methods allows us to undermine the default authority that is often accorded to the category of nationality. (shrink)

Racial injustice in employment demands the attention of business organizations because it profoundly shapes our life prospects. While comparing the ideal of perfectly equal opportunity with its invariably imperfect alternatives can impede reform, the true challenge lies in addressing persistent inequities as we strive for equality. This article introduces “shared inequity” as a frame of reference for assessing workplace racial disparities and emphasizing a collective responsibility to remedy systemic issues. In critiquing an exaggerated notion of meritocracy, I emphasize (...) that structural racism, rather than just individual acts, facilitates collective advantages, especially for White males. Hence, it is morally fitting to frame racial justice in employment, not only in terms of perfect equality, but also in terms of justly sharing an imbalance that cannot be corrected without counterbalance. The “shared inequity” lens offers a more realistic and just approach to pursuing racial justice in the workplace. (shrink)

Poverty in many societies is racialized, with poverty concentrated among particular racial groups. This article aims (a) to provide a philosophical account of how racialized poverty can represent an unjust form of inequality, and (b) to suggest the general direction that policies aiming to reduce racialized poverty ought to take in light of this account. (a) As a species of inequality, racialized poverty (whether absolute or relative) is not intrinsically morally objectionable. However, it can be extrinsically objectionable because it (...) is caused by past or current racial injustice, undermines the value of specific goods to the impoverished, or contributes to objectionable deficiencies in impoverished groups’ political efficacy. (b) Racialized poverty is strongly intergenerational, tending to replicate itself between generations within racial groups. This suggests that approaches to its alleviation that offer income security to all members of those groups, rather than targeted opportunity to subsets of such groups, are both more just and more effective. In particular, societies with racialized poverty should strongly consider policies such as income guarantees, which act to counteract the income volatility that contribute to intergenerational racial poverty. (shrink)

Research ethics remains a cornerstone of the scientific enterprise as it defines the boundaries of responsible conduct of research. Our aim was to systematically identify, review and test online training courses in research ethics which could be considered most appropriate for future training at the University of Botswana. We used an evaluative tool that included both descriptive and evaluative criteria for assessing the strengths, weaknesses and appropriateness of 10 online research ethics courses which are publicly accessible. We then (...) assembled Focus Group Discussions to engage the UB community to select the best 2–3 online courses that are considered most suited for use in future training of research ethics at UB. Twenty respondents participated in three FGDs. Our findings show that there is limited research ethics training capacity in low resourced academic institutions like UB. Online training opportunities could be used to address this challenge. Our analysis reveal that out of the 10 online courses reviewed, CITI program, Family Health International, and Training and Resource in Research Ethics Evaluation have characteristics that would make them suitable for utilization in Botswana. We believe the findings from this case study will be of value to other similarly situated research institutions. (shrink)