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5% Health outcomes : Black Americans, on average, have worse health than similarly situated White Americans. These differences translate to between 35,000 and 100,000 “excess” deaths per year… Criminal Justice: Black Americans are more likely to come to the attention of the criminal justice system than similarly situated White Americans, and at every stage of the criminal justice system, are likely to have worse outcomes. Job and Housing Searches: Applications with “Black” –sounding names are far less likely to receive call- backs than those with “White”- sounding names. 60% Education: K-12 education is roughly as segregated by race now as it was before Brown. Schools with more children of color tend to spend less money per pupil, and be underfunded in other key ways. Experiments in Engaged Ethics Jonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
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Experiments in Engaged EthicsJonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy,and Religion
“Race” in America:Why does it matter?
How do our social practices surrounding “race” interact with our biological practices?
Is “Race” Biological?
Experiments in Engaged EthicsJonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
Income (t-housands)
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2009 Median Income versus Net Worth
Black Americans
White Americans
5%
Health outcomes :Black Americans, on average, have worse health than similarly situated White Americans. These differences translate to between 35,000 and 100,000 “excess” deaths per year…
Criminal Justice:Black Americans are more likely to come to the attention of the criminal justice system than similarly situated White Americans, and at every stage of the criminal justice system, are likely to have worse outcomes.
Job and Housing Searches: Applications with “Black” –sounding names are far less likely to receive call-backs than those with “White”-sounding names.
60%
Education: K-12 education is roughly as segregated by race now as it was before Brown. Schools with more children of color tend to spend less money per pupil, and be underfunded in other key ways.
Experiments in Engaged EthicsJonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology:
What is “fitness”?
What kinds of things can be more or less fit? (Individual organisms? Traits? Genes?)
Is “Natural Selection” best thought of a force that impacts populations, or a description of expected outcomes?
What get “selected” by “natural selection” and how does that relate to what (sorts of) things can be more or less “fit”?
FrequencyIncreases
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Ratio of growth rates… k l m n o p q r s t …
Experiments in Engaged EthicsJonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
How do social issues get turned into individual problems?
Example: Genetic research on the correlates between particular behaviors and genetic variations often misdirects attention away from the social issues and towards the individual.
• If individuals are genetically predisposed to violence, we pay less attention to the social backgrounds.
• If individuals are genetically predisposed to addictive behaviors, we pay less attention to the differences in social organizations and policies.
• If individual educational attainment is correlated with genetic differences, we pay less attention to how the organization of our education system influences who succeeds (and who doesn’t!).
Experiments in Engaged EthicsJonathan Kaplan School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
