No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The Ethics of Reparations and Reconciliation." 1 This is a theme that urges all of us to reflect on examples of personal, professional, institutional, state, national, and global wrongdoing. It urges us to ask how we learn, and move forward, from acts and omissions that have humiliated, harmed, enslaved, and exploited fellow humans. In 1619, 400 years ago, the Transatlantic Middle Passage slave trade began, transporting millions of Africans to launch chattel slavery in North America. Many readers are aware of the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee (USPHS Syphilis Study). The study recruited 399 African American men and retained them in the study for 40 years so that researchers could track the natural progression of syphilis. 2 None of the men were told the truth about the study or their diagnosis. Instead, they were told that they had "bad blood." None of the men gave informed consent to participate in the study, and none of them were offered antibiotic treatment when it became available in the 1950s. Many of the men died on syphilis to partners and children. Some of the men died as a result of syphilis or of an associated co-morbidity. It was only in 1972 that the research misconduct, and human suffering as a result of it, was brought to public attention. An African American epidemiologist, Bill Jenkins, was employed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the time. He attempted to expose the flawed so-called research in the late 1960s and was ignored. Dr Jenkins recently died after a very successful career at the CDC, which is located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America (USA). Historian and author, Susan Reverby, said that Jenkins was "one of the first African American professionals at the CDC" to join the minority voices raised to bring to an end the notorious USPHS Syphilis Study. 3 Dr Jenkins was among many African Americans at the CDC and beyond, who was concerned about the unequable and inequitable treatment of African Americans in the USA. To raise concerns about racial and ethnic social and health injustices required the virtue of courage. The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were decades when awareness of prejudice, discrimination, and racism toward African Americans was increasing. Nevertheless, there were scientists and public health officials in the federal and state governments who maintained the study for almost four decades stating: "We have felt a moral obligation to continue the study" (p. 79). 3 Bill Jenkins' courageous action in speaking out was seen by the study's protagonists as unnecessary and intrusive (p. 83). 3 The unethical nature of the study was exposed in the midst of the Peace Movement, Black Power Movement, and students' unrest on college and university campuses across the USA. The

The common objection to Black Lives Matter (BLM), both as a mantra and as a movement, is a seemingly benign universal affirmation, 'All lives matter'. However, there's a prima facie sense in which normative moral relativism (suspiciously) drives defenders of 'All lives matter' to an incomprehensible false equivalence and a fundamental rejection of what care ethics entails. As Carol Gilligan explains, 'Care ethics is a feminist philosophical perspective that uses a relational and contextual-bound approach toward morality and decision making'. 1 There is nothing in the proposition 'Black Lives Matter' that is question begging. Quite frankly, this proposition is motivation for human agents to be other-regarding to those who have been systematically denied their right to be an 'other'. Had all lives been subject to kidnapping, chattel (and holocaust) slavery, a ferocious Middle Passage, premediated massacre and murders, genocide, ethnic cleansing, catatonic rape, existential invisibility, destroyed generations, dehumanization, disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, and so on, people of virtue would say (and must say), 'All lives matter'. But this is not the case-especially in 21st-century America. Proposing 'All' as a moral value is inconsistent with the context of the last 401 years-it's illegitimate, apathetic, insensitive, and a fundamental rejection of empathy and care ethics. On the other hand, proposing 'Black' is contextual, empathic, caring and fundamentally consistent with the historical narrative. Black people were a matter of commodity during the period of slavery: 1619 to 1865. Generation of white families became wealthy when Black lives mattered for their prosperity, but today Black lives don't matter for them, thus Black lives matter less. European explorers flocked to Africa to find riches by human trafficking African people. By the 17th century, more than 54,000 voyages were made to Africa and more than 12 million Africans were captured and brought to the Americas. 2 Very few people at that time considered the ethical ramifications of their actions. The explorers simply made themselves believe Black lives did not matter because Black people were not human beings. When Africans were kidnapped, they left behind everything. Not only were they stripped of material wealth as they knew it, they were also stripped of their dignity, name, religion and culture. That Africans were used as experiments for many things, without compassion for their humanity, is well documented. The BLM movement recognizes this and brings all people together for a common cause.