This symposium is based on a workshop hosted (virtually) at the Centre for Ethics on May 20, 2020 [➡︎ video of workshop]. Livestreamed on the Centre’s YouTube channel (YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics), the workshop brought together historical and philosophical perspectives to trace the mutations of health inequality over time and reflect on the context of the currently unfolding crisis. Among the many axes of racial inequality, disparities in health and medicine remain particularly stark. The pandemic has only exacerbated this longstanding reality, especially in the United States, where the lack of publicly funded universal health care means that poor and working-class people – among whom, as everywhere, there are disproportionate numbers of non-white racial and ethnic minorities – are at a particular disadvantage within the healthcare system(s). And, in the US, even controlling for class-based metrics, African Americans, in particular, are more likely to suffer from a panoply of health risks at significantly higher rates than their counterparts. Across the country, Black and Latino people have been vastly overrepresented among COVID victims.

Racial Inequality During a Pandemic

Elena Comay del Junco (Philosophy, University of Connecticut)

• Introduction to “Racial Inequality During a Pandemic: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives” [➡︎ paper]

Yolonda Wilson (Philosophy, Howard University)

• Race, COVID-19, and the Public “We” [➡︎ paper]

Elena Comay del Junco (Philosophy, University of Connecticut)

• Foreground and Background [➡︎ paper]

Korey Garibaldi (American Studies, Notre Dame)

• Early Pragmatic and Philosophical Challenges to the Science of Jim Crow [➡︎ paper]