Faculty Perspective with Professor Camisha Russell

Summary

Dr. Camisha Russell, an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, discusses the impact of racism on health disparities in the U.S. and its implications for bioethics. She argues that social and historical factors, rather than biology, drive health disparities among Black Americans. Through personal anecdotes, she reflects on how the Black Lives Matter movement has influenced her work, emphasizing the need for individual responsibility in addressing structural racism. Dr. Russell highlights the importance of action and reflection in creating meaningful change and encourages students to explore philosophy as a tool for understanding complex societal issues.

Takeaways

• 📚 Camisha Russell is an associate professor in Philosophy at UO and teaches Ethics and other courses.
• ⚖️ Black Lives Matter is relevant to bioethics because racism is a major barrier to health in the U.S., contributing to disparities in diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and stroke.
• 💡 The root causes of racial health disparities are social and historical, not biological, tied to discrimination in economic stability, education, and neighborhood resources.
• 🌍 Racism affects health outcomes through social determinants of health and chronic stress caused by systemic discrimination.
• 🧠 Russell argues that philosophy contributes by situating ideas historically, defining concepts like racism, and offering a moral framework to address disparities.
• 📖 She references W.E.B. Du Bois and Eddie Glaude Jr. to frame the Black Lives Matter movement as part of America’s third racial reckoning.
• 📝 Racism is defined as a structural issue that produces vulnerability to premature death, which is evident in both health disparities and systemic violence.
• ⚕️ Jonathan Metzl’s book *Dying of Whiteness* highlights how racial biases against healthcare access harm even those who oppose reforms like the Affordable Care Act.
• 🔄 Russell advocates for individual responsibility in addressing structural injustice by reflecting on one’s role in institutions and committing to continuous action and learning (praxis).
• 🏅 Russell won the Baruch A. Brody Lecture in Bioethics for her work, which emphasized the importance of addressing racial justice in bioethics, even when confronting imposter syndrome.

Q & A

Who is Camisha Russell, and what is her role at the University of Oregon (UO)?

Camisha Russell is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. She teaches courses like Ethics 102, which introduces students to Western-style ethics, and she specializes in medical ethics, philosophy of race, and social-political philosophy.

What does Camisha Russell identify as a major factor affecting health disparities in the U.S.?

Camisha Russell highlights racism as a major barrier to health in the United States, citing higher rates of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and stroke among Black Americans compared to White Americans. She argues that these disparities are due to social and historical factors, not biological differences.

How does Russell explain the impact of racism on health outcomes?

Russell explains that social determinants of health, such as economic stability, education, and neighborhood conditions, are influenced by racism. For example, employment discrimination, residential segregation, and unequal education funding all negatively impact the health of Black Americans.

What is Camisha Russell's philosophical approach to understanding health disparities?

Russell applies a philosophical approach by analyzing historical context and offering clear definitions of concepts like racism. She draws on both philosophical texts and social science research to explore how systemic racism contributes to health disparities and premature death.

What major historical periods does Russell reference in discussing America's racial reckonings?

Russell identifies three major racial reckonings in U.S. history: 1) Reconstruction (1863-1877), 2) The Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1960s), and 3) The current Black Lives Matter movement (2013-present), each addressing the systemic racial inequalities in different eras.

How does Russell address the concept of racism in bioethics?

Russell uses Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism as the 'state-sanctioned or extralegal production of, and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.' She emphasizes that racism is not just about individual beliefs but about structural inequalities that lead to embodied effects, such as health disparities.

What personal story does Russell share about the inspiration for her talk on racial justice?

Russell shares that she was inspired to give a talk on racial justice after being nominated for the Baruch A. Brody Lecture in Bioethics and learning about the acquittal of the police officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death. This event motivated her to address racial justice in bioethics.

What challenges did Russell face after receiving the Baruch A. Brody Lecture award, and how did she overcome them?

Russell faced imposter syndrome, questioning whether her work was 'real bioethics' and how it compared to the legacy of Baruch Brody. She overcame these doubts by focusing on what philosophy could contribute to bioethics, particularly its ability to analyze historical contexts and challenge structural racism.

What does Russell suggest individuals should do to address structural racism?

Russell advocates for individuals to take responsibility for structural injustice by critically engaging with their institutions, focusing on personal transformation rather than guilt, and committing to praxis—an ongoing cycle of action, reflection, and learning.

What is the significance of the concept of 'praxis' in Russell’s philosophy?

In Russell’s view, 'praxis' involves combining action with reflection and theory. It encourages individuals to act against structural racism while continuously learning and reflecting on their actions, ensuring their efforts are both thoughtful and impactful.

Outlines

00:00

👩‍🏫 Introduction to Ethics and Health Disparities

Camisha Russell introduces herself as an associate professor of philosophy at UO and talks about the ethics course she teaches. She poses the question: 'What does Black Lives Matter mean for bioethics?' She highlights health disparities between Black and white Americans, noting higher rates of diseases like diabetes and hypertension among Black Americans. These disparities, she argues, are due to social and historical racism, not biological factors. She emphasizes that racism affects social determinants of health like economic stability, education, and neighborhood quality, leading to worse health outcomes for Black Americans.

05:01

📚 Philosophy’s Role in Society and Ethics

Russell discusses the role of philosophers, emphasizing that they do more than read difficult texts by dead white men—they engage with a variety of thinkers and ask fundamental questions about life, the world, and ethics. Philosophy is distinguished from social sciences because it doesn’t rely on data or experiments but rather historical ideas, coherence, and logical reasoning. Philosophers challenge conventional ideas and approach critical issues, like racial justice, from a philosophical standpoint.

10:03

⚖️ Racial Justice and the Role of Philosophy

Russell recalls the events of summer 2020 when racial justice protests erupted, and she was preparing for a prestigious bioethics lecture. She decided to focus her lecture on racial justice, inspired by the acquittal of officers in Breonna Taylor’s case. While dealing with imposter syndrome after winning the Baruch A. Brody Lecture award, she questioned how philosophy could contribute to bioethics and health disparities. She situates her argument using historical texts by W.E.B. Dubois and Eddie Glaude, Jr., connecting the Black Lives Matter movement to a broader racial reckoning in American history.

15:03

🔍 Historical Reckoning and Structural Racism

Russell explains America’s 'third racial reckoning,' which she connects to the Black Lives Matter movement. She outlines three historical periods: Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current era. Each period showed significant progress in addressing racial inequality, but each time, gains were rolled back. She stresses that the fight for racial justice continues, with Black Lives Matter addressing issues like police violence and systemic inequality. She defines racism not as personal bias but as structural oppression that leads to premature death for marginalized communities, including health disparities.

🤝 Individual Responsibility and Anti-Racist Action

Russell concludes by urging people to take personal responsibility for structural injustices, particularly within their own institutions. She advocates for self-reflection, centering transformation over guilt, and committing to 'praxis'—a cycle of action, reflection, and learning. By doing so, individuals can contribute to dismantling structural racism. She shared her personal experience delivering the Baruch Brody Lecture, noting her hope to use the $10,000 prize for family travel (though COVID-19 delayed that plan), and ends with an invitation for students to engage with philosophy at UO.

Keywords

💡Bioethics

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues emerging from advances in biology and medicine. In the video, Camisha Russell explores the intersection of bioethics and racial justice, particularly how systemic racism contributes to health disparities for Black Americans. She emphasizes the need to address structural issues in healthcare to promote racial equity.

💡Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a movement advocating against police brutality and systemic racism towards Black individuals. In the video, Russell uses BLM as a framework to discuss broader racial justice issues, particularly in the field of bioethics, emphasizing the need to address racial disparities in health and medicine.

💡Health Disparities

Health disparities refer to differences in health outcomes between different population groups. Russell discusses how Black Americans face higher rates of diseases such as diabetes and stroke compared to white Americans. She attributes these disparities not to biology but to social and historical factors like racism and discrimination.

💡Racism

Racism, as defined in the video, is not just individual bias but a systemic issue that impacts people's health by limiting access to social determinants like economic stability and quality healthcare. Russell explores how racism is a driving factor in health disparities, creating vulnerabilities that lead to premature death in Black communities.

💡Social Determinants of Health

Social determinants of health are conditions in the environments where people are born, live, and work that affect their overall well-being. Russell explains that factors like employment, neighborhood quality, and education are deeply influenced by race and racism, which in turn affect health outcomes for Black Americans.

💡Premature Death

Premature death refers to dying earlier than the average age due to preventable causes. Russell highlights how systemic racism, by influencing social determinants of health, leads to higher rates of premature death among Black Americans due to chronic stress and inadequate healthcare.

💡Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is the feeling of self-doubt or inadequacy despite evidence of success. Russell candidly shares her experience of imposter syndrome when she was nominated for the prestigious Baruch Brody lecture in bioethics. She questioned whether her contributions were worthy, illustrating the personal challenges of navigating academic and social expectations.

💡Racial Reckoning

A racial reckoning refers to a societal confrontation with systemic racism. Russell outlines three major racial reckonings in American history, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and connects these periods to ongoing struggles for racial justice, particularly in healthcare.

💡Structural Racism

Structural racism refers to systemic policies and practices that create disparities across racial groups. In the context of bioethics, Russell argues that structural racism in the U.S. healthcare system leads to unequal access to care and poor health outcomes for Black Americans, making it a central issue to address in discussions of racial justice.

💡Praxis

Praxis involves the cycle of action, reflection, and learning. Russell calls for individuals to engage in praxis to combat structural racism, suggesting that continuous learning and action are necessary to create meaningful change in systems like healthcare. She urges her audience to take responsibility for their roles within institutions and work towards anti-racist practices.

Highlights

Camisha Russell introduces herself as an associate professor at the University of Oregon, teaching Philosophy 102 (Ethics) and addressing how racism impacts bioethics.

She highlights that racism is a major barrier to health in the U.S., with higher rates of diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke among Black Americans compared to white Americans.

Russell explains that these health disparities are not biological but result from social and historical factors such as racism, discrimination, and socioeconomic conditions.

She outlines the various social determinants of health that racism affects, such as economic stability, education, and neighborhoods.

Russell discusses the physical toll of racism on the body, noting that toxic stress accumulates over time, contributing to health issues.

She provides a personal anecdote about deciding to write a lecture on racial justice after the acquittal of the police officers involved in Breonna Taylor's shooting.

Russell talks about winning the prestigious Baruch A. Brody Lecture in Bioethics award and the imposter syndrome she experienced, questioning what she could contribute to the field.

She defines racism in bioethics using Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept of 'group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death,' focusing on the structural impacts rather than individual biases.

Russell situates the Black Lives Matter movement within the context of America's 'third racial reckoning,' drawing on historical references from W.E.B. Dubois and Eddie Glaude Jr.

She emphasizes that philosophers bring historical perspective, clear definitions, and the ability to address moral reasoning in contexts like healthcare disparities.

Russell uses the book 'Dying of Whiteness' by Jonathan Metzl to highlight how racial attitudes can negatively impact health outcomes, even for white people.

She discusses how poor white individuals in the U.S. have historically been induced to prefer poverty over equality with Black people, updating this idea with modern healthcare examples.

Russell advocates for individual responsibility in addressing structural racism, asking people to focus on their transformation rather than guilt or innocence.

She encourages the practice of 'praxis,' where action, reflection, and theory are intertwined in the continuous effort to address racism and structural injustice.

Russell concludes by sharing that her bioethics lecture, 'Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter,' was delivered in February 2021, winning the $10,000 award.

Transcripts

Hi, I'm Camisha Russell.

I'm an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy here at UO,

and one of the great courses I teach is 102 ethics, an introductory class

introducing students to Western style ethics.

What does Black Lives Matter mean for bioethics?

So why would we ask this question?

Well, racism is a major barrier to health in the United States,

and here you can see that high blood pressure, diabetes and stroke.

The rates of those are all higher across all age groups

for black Americans or African-Americans than white Americans.

And these higher rates of disease also create

higher rates of early deaths, which you can also see here.

So, you know, why does this happen?

Some people might think, oh, okay, this might be something biological about,

you know, black people as a race. Right.

That's a sort of biological explanation.

But actually, the explanations, studies show, are actually social and historical.

And they have to do not with race as a biological thing, but

as with racism and discrimination, as social and historical things.

So here you see that social and economic factors drive health outcomes, and we have

several of them listed here, like economic stability,

education, neighborhood.

And what is what we can see is that race and racism actually interferes

with all of these social determinants of health, such

that economic stability is affected by things like employment discrimination.

You know, neighborhood is affected by various forms

of residential segregation and the sort of under-resourcing of some neighborhoods.

Education is affected by,

you know, the way that schools are funded through tax bases

and the way that the quality of schools that many students of color attend.

So all these things that help people's health in terms of their life,

their social determinants of health are actually affected by race and racism.

Racism also impacts the body in terms of toxic forms of stress

that build up over time.

So for today's

faculty perspectives, I'm going to talk to you about who I am,

what philosophy is, what philosophers do, how I came to write about this topic,

and then the question of how can a philosopher shed light on

something like health disparities?

And then what should people do about these disparities?

So I'm Camisha Russell.

I have a Ph.D.

from Penn State in 2013.

I'm an associate professor here in the philosophy department.

I teach medical ethics, philosophy of race, ethics, social

political philosophy, other classes as called for.

And I'm also the author of a book called The Assisted Reproduction

of Race that came out in 2018.

And it talks about the way that ideas of race

play out in the context of assisted reproductive technologies.

And I also argue that we could think of race itself as a technology.

It may be too small for you to see, but the book was actually blurbed

by Angela Davis, and I do mean the Angela Davis.

So I'm also the co-director of Hypatia, the largest journal Feminist

philosophy, and I'm the mother of one aged seven.

There's Hypatia and hopefully you can see

my kiddo there looking like he's having a good time.

He loves soccer and video games.

All right.

So when you think of who is a philosopher, you might think of people like this.

We've got Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel on there.

And then after the invention of photography, we've got Nietzsche,

Derrida, Rawls, Foucauld, Sartre,

and yeah, they're all they all have one thing in common.

They're all dead white guys.

But these people here are also philosophers.

These are the people who you know, urged me on and celebrated me

during my dissertation defense back in 2013.

They're Desiree Valentine. Lindsay Stewart.

Wrong here.

Okay.

Show you the Mensa Excel career.

Aisha Abdullah and

Julia Shorter, all philosophers.

These are also some philosophers.

We have Angela Davis, Lumina, Ryan Grace Lee Boggs, Kyle Poise, white

Russians, um, Vrana and Anita Allen

and the late great Charles Mills and me.

We're all philosophers too.

So studying philosophy isn't just reading

a bunch of old bunch of difficult texts by a bunch of old dead white guys.

What is it?

Well, you know, we could look at the word itself and what it means.

Philo Sophia, which means love of wisdom.

But this isn't very practical.

If you're thinking about should I major in it?

So what do we actually do in philosophy?

Well, we do read a difficult text by a bunch of dead white guys.

That does happen.

We also read difficult texts by a lot of different people alive and dead.

We also ask questions about the world, life and meaning.

We answer those questions

without relying on data experiments or fieldwork.

That's what separates us in the social sciences.

And we answer, but we do answer in terms of things like the history

of ideas, in relation of ideas, the coherence of ideas.

So we manipulate ideas a lot to come up with some interesting

answers to some interesting questions about life.

Another way to look at it, as is as an academic language

or discipline that you learn to speak by learning the histories, concepts,

methodologies and conventions of that discipline.

So what do philosophers do?

Well, let's switch set up in the first place

and ask it this way What do philosophers do?

Let's go back to my question What does Black Lives Matter mean for bioethics?

What prompted this question for me?

Well, it was a convergence of events.

It was the summer of 2020.

We were all in various forms of lockdown.

Everyday life was looking very strange and there was a lot of people

taking to the streets to protest

racist violence and to argue for racial justice.

I had also that summer been nominated by some colleagues for a Baruch A.

Brody lecture in bioethics, you know,

fairly prestigious award that I was excited to be nominated for.

So one day I was out walking my dogs

and I just learned that day earlier that morning that I was a finalist

for this lecture in bioethics and that for the interview,

I was supposed to give an outline of a talk that I would give if I was chosen

as the recipient of the award.

So that was also the day that a grand jury acquitted the police officers

involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in her own home.

So, you know, I was thinking about that.

And I came home from the walk and I said to my partner, that's it.

The only talk I can possibly give is a talk about racial justice.

And if they don't like it, they can just give the award to someone else.

So I was pretty fired up.

So I did go ahead and write that outline to talk about racial justice.

Two weeks later, I gave that interview and then a little after that, on October

11th, we were ordering from Mucho Gusto, a place here in town

through DoorDash and waiting for our food to arrive.

We got the food, but when we got it, we didn't have our tortilla chips.

So I went on to the app and I was like, Hey, we didn't get our tortilla chips,

didn't hear anything.

So I broke a rule that I had at the time, which I have to say I haven't really

maintained probably should go back to of not checking my email on weekends.

And when I checked my email, it turned out that I had won this award.

So I became the 2020-2021 recipient

of the Baruch A. Brody Lecture in Bioethics, and it came with $10,000,

which is not a normal thing for humanities fellowships.

I will let you know, but I did never get those chips.

So now, as

I have won this award, what's my first obstacle?

Well, a little bit of imposter syndrome, to tell you the truth.

You know something?

I'm sitting there and thinking, everybody loved this Baruch Brody guy, right?

I'd read up on him now. Right.

How do I live up to that legacy?

I'm also thinking, what can I possibly say that's worth $10,000, right?

Like, what's a $10,000 talk?

I don't know.

Is this real bioethics? Right.

A lot of bioethics doesn't talk a lot about race.

And then what's going to, you know, make this audience

of medical professionals think, I know what I'm talking about, Right.

How am I going to compare

with this kind of scientific knowledge that medical professionals have?

And then finally, what does a philosopher with this

philosophy, even have to contribute to the issue?

Right.

So that was the first question, right

as I went about getting over my imposter syndrome or coping with it

and trying to write the talk, what can philosophy contribute?

So here

we go, the ability to situate ideas historically.

So I had read two books that summer, one

written in 1935 Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B.

Dubois, and one written in 2020.

That year by Eddie Glaude, Jr called Begin Again.

So I use those two books to make this slide for my talk.

To think about where we are right now with Black Lives

Matter in terms of America's third racial reckoning.

So on this account, the first racial reckoning was reconstruction,

which was 1863 to 1877, where.

And so that was right after the abolition of slavery in the Civil War.

And the task there was to establish

meaningful citizenship for black people.

So many people did many amazing things.

People black and white, politically did

incredible things during this period, built a lot of incredible

political structures, made some beautiful laws.

But in the end, it all came back to these black codes

that the Southern states established that were defended by the Supreme Court.

That created a sense of sort of a virtual return to slavery.

Those black codes later became Jim Crow laws.

So in the second racial reckoning, the civil rights

movement of the 1950s and 1960s,

those Jim Crow laws came to be challenged

through nonviolent resistance,

which highlighted for people in the U.S.

and around the world the violence and injustice of the Jim Crow South.

Again, really amazing things

were done by really amazing people black, white and otherwise.

But ultimately and slower this time

over the next decades, these these gains were kind of rolled back

in the guise of race neutral policies and laws.

And so here we are, 2013 to the present in what I would call this

third racial reckoning, this Black Lives Matter moment and Black Lives Matter,

You know, it's a movement, obviously, that's focused a lot on police violence,

but it's also a statement that names

its opposition to the idea

that they're that white lives are inherently of greater value

and therefore more deserving of preservation than black lives.

So that's that's where we are now, right?

So that's what I started to contribute, is sort of setting the stage historically.

Then you can also bring with philosophy clear definitions of your concepts.

So if you think about racism as a biological bioethical issue,

we can use this definition by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Racism specifically is the state sanctioned or extralegal production of

and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerability to premature death.

And what we see in this definition

is we're not talking about people's individual thoughts and feelings.

We're talking about these structural things

that have these real embodied impacts on people.

And when we think about this premature death, we can be thinking about,

you know, police violence or racist violence more generally in the country.

But we can also be thinking

about the health disparities that I mentioned at the beginning.

Those are also leading to a kind of premature death.

It's just happening slower and over a number of years.

Plus, we can also

draw attention to the social context of more reasoning.

And here I drew on a book.

I'd also read somewhat recently at the time,

which is Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl.

And in this book, Metzl, who is a physician,

talks to and interviews a number of people,

and he shares a quote from a 41 year old uninsured Tennessee cabdriver

who's dying of liver damage caused by hepatitis C, And the man says,

ain't no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it.

I would rather die.

We don't need any more government in our lives.

And in any case, no way.

I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.

And Metzl continues,

Many white men voiced a willingness to die literally, rather than enter

than embrace a law that gave minority or immigrant populations

access to health care, even if it helped them as well.

He's Metzl says We often found that no ivory tower

health policy explanation of the ACA's potential benefits

came close to challenging concerns about the ways that health insurance

came from the administration of an African-American president or placed

white Americans into networks with immigrants and minority populations.

So thinking back to Dubois in 1935,

he argues in that book that basically,

as long as poor white people could be induced to prefer poverty

over equality with black people, they could, you know,

they could be prevented

any kind of solidarity between black and white workers in the South.

And I think we can update that in Metzl’s case, where we say so long as people

can be convinced to be willing to die rather than enter into

networks of solidarity in health care with nonwhite people,

you know, so long, so long, can we prevent

any kind of significant health care reform in the U.S.?

So there we have a sort of social context

for some moral reasoning around health care and insurance.

And then philosophy can always argue for what people should do.

So in the beginning of the talk that I gave

for the Baruch Brody lecture,

I said that it was a sort of all hands on deck moment, right?

And so the way that I tried

to cash that out, as I got toward the end of the lecture

was to talk about people taking individual responsibility for structural injustice.

I said that meeting the moment requires this individual commitment

against structural racism and that that required

seeing yourself inside the system, centering your own transformation

rather than your guilt or innocence, and committing to practices.

So seeing yourself inside the system means that the education,

training and time that you spend at work

within a sort of institution assimilate you into that institution.

And so you start to reflect that institutions values,

even if they don't necessarily fully reflect your own.

So rather than say, I'm not my institution, I'm a part

for my institution, instead the ask is that people

try to intervene within the institutions that they are located.

They try to be critical of them and see what they can do with the position

and powers that they have in their particular institutional role

to try to promote an anti-racist practice in policies.

Next, the question of centering transformation

rather than guilt or innocence.

So the problem was spending time trying to convince yourself that you're innocent.

You know, of any contribution to structural racism

is that it's a waste of time If you really care

that there not be so much structural racism, don't feel guilty about it.

Start working on it. Right.

Don't claim your innocence.

Start working on it. Right.

So that was my my second point.

And then the last thing that I asked my listeners was to commit to praxis.

And what praxis is, is action and reflection

and theory kind of in a loop with each other, right?

So rather than just

theorize about something, but never act like

you'll never know the exact right thing to do, you commit to taking action,

but you don't take action without, you know, learning any of the theory.

You do them both at the same time.

You learn, you act, and then you reflect on that action and you continue to learn.

You speak to other people

and you work on understanding what you can do and how to do it better, right?

So the idea is not to wait for the perfect action,

but also not to just be spontaneous

and do whatever you can think of, even if it might also cause harm.

But instead to be really reflective about your practice, constantly act,

constantly learn and constantly reflect about what you're doing

with others and being willing then to change what you do.

So I wrote the talk.

I gave that talk over Zoom on February 2nd, 2021.

It was called meeting the moment Bioethics in the time of Black Lives

Matter, I got my $10,000.

I was hoping to take my family to New Zealand with it,

but we haven't managed it yet.

With the pandemic, but hopefully soon.

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen about me and my work today,

and I hope you take an interest in philosophy when you join us here at UO.