The Hunger Games and Racism

There has been a good deal of discussion of racist reactions by fans of the Hunger Games when they saw the film and for the first time realized that the characters they loved were Black all along. Here is an example: I think this commentary is quite interesting and on point, but I want to [...]

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Shielding the Privileged to Protect Ignorance

I just watched this news report on a terrible case in which Ikenna Njoku, a man from Auburn WA, tried to cash a cheque at Chase bank and ended up in jail (a full transcript is available here). I thought the news report might offer an interesting example of shielding the white viewing public from [...]

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People as Things, or Nuremberg for Nothing

Today I have been reading this report, Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program,  about medical experimentations that occurred during the “enhanced” interrogation of detainees during the Bush administration. Of course, there are rules, laws, and codes against doing research on persons without consent, as this New York Times Article [...]

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“What Counts as a Benefit?” Personal Choices in Political Contexts: Labiaplasty and FGC

About ten years ago I was at a meeting and we were discussing what the policy on female genital cutting (FGC, female genital mutilation (FGM), or female circumcision) should be in the hospitals of the Canadian city where I was living at the time. The woman who was giving the presentation about the facts of [...]

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