De-Centering Whiteness in Theorizing Care: Culturally-Safe Care and Affective Technologies of Medical Racism

This paper examines the epistemic and ethical tensions that emerge in global movements to decolonize care, particularly through cultural safety and competency frameworks in healthcare. While these models aim to ensure dignified care for Black, Indigenous and racialized patients, they often remain limited by epistemic hierarchies rooted in whiteness. Drawing from feminist care ethics, and decolonial approaches to moral epistemology, I argue for an approach to comparative care that centers embodied presence, epistemic humility, and grounded relationality. Rather than treating difference in care as a static moral template, I propose a care-ethical notion of hearing difference, in caring, as a dynamic—shaped by situated ethical selves navigating intersecting and anti-colonial lineages of care. The paper critiques the tendency to abstract care into masterly knowledge and calls for a deeper commitment to ‘thinking-with’ others across difference. Ultimately, caring across divides demands we move beyond inclusion toward reciprocal, consent-based practices that honor the complex, evolving needs of those receiving care.