The Racial epistemicide of bioethics

The killing of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, led to long-lasting protests and triggered a strong reaction and global social condemnation. However, racism can take several forms besides brutal violence and killing. Unveiling and fighting hidden racism is a major goal of the medical, healthcare, and bioethics fields. Bioethics in particular must take action and contribute to reversing the direction of our racist societies, promoting equality and respect, thus defending everyone’s right to exist. To achieve this purpose, as argued in this work, there is a need to intervene at the roots of racism in bioethics, i.e., the production of knowledge relevant to our discipline and related subject areas. It is indeed this epistemic ground that informs the emergence of policies, practices, views, and perspectives (both racist and anti-racist). In this chapter, I focus on “racial epistemicide” in bioethics and consequently underscore some of its practical implications. I begin by emphasizing the weight of epistemic racism in bioethics by referring to “whiteness” as a key concept of the current debate. I then introduce the notion of epistemicide developed by de Sousa Santos and indicate potential strategies for overcoming it. In particular, I adopt the approach of the “gatekeepers of bioethics” to analyze the factors through which the production of knowledge in bioethics is created, delimited and controlled. I conclude that the (re)action of bioethics to racism must first be epistemic, as racism is deeply rooted in our society and emanates from the formation of knowledge.