Vulnerability, trust, and confrontation

[This is the ninth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; Part 1, containing the video clip, was just posted.]

Here is Part 2 of the response to the question about vulnerability, trust, and confrontation. Sam talks about the variation in responses he has experienced from both bioethicists and doctors, and links some of these responses to a continuation of eugenics by other means. Colleen supports this, and brings us back to reactions from one’s own family. Transcript below the video.

Connecting with others and more from Colleen

[This is the eighth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. This series will bring forward the videos made of this event twice a week, roughly every Wednesday and Saturday. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

Here we move onto the “dialogue” part of the public dialogue, with the first of a series of questions raised by the stories we’ve heard from Sam, Wendy, and Colleen. We start with questions about connecting with others and what happens when doctors and others are confronted by vulnerable people whose trust has been violated by those in a position of authority. This one is in two parts, with discussion of child welfare, parental struggle, and connecting with others coming through in this part, adding an important part to Colleen’s story that was left out first time round coming out in Part 1 below. A transcript follows the video.

Have Mercy: Jennifer Eberhardt on Implicit Racial Bias @ PLMS

Over at the mostly awesome Project on Law and Mind Sciences (PLMS) blog, they have opened up PLMS Tube about a week ago. It’s a collection of about 80 videos so far, chiefly it seems from their first two annual conferences and visiting speakers. One of the videos, which they have running on their blog right now, is an amazing 30 minute talk from Jennifer Eberhardt’s talk from 2007, “Policing Racial Bias”. Eberhardt is a psychologist working on the implicit cognition of racial bias, and its relevance for policing, the justice system, and ordinary cognition. Some of the experimental results are truly scary. Check it out.

If you think that racial bias is a thing of the past, or something that those who profess only the most liberal and inclusive attitudes about race are free of, watch the video below; it’s Part 3 of the talk, running to around 8 minutes. The whole talk covers ways in which implicit bias operates on racial grounds, and some of the results are staggering. In Part 3, Eberhardt focuses on punishment and racial proxies for evil or wickedness, but works up to the study results that had her exclaim “Have Mercy!”, starting at around 3.45 or so of this clip with a reminder from W.E.B. DuBois. Links to the whole thing beneath the fold. Update: Kudos to the folks at PLMS for getting these videos captioned!