From the “top-down” and the “bottom-up”: Centering Foucault’s notion of biopower and individual accountability within systemic racism

In the wake of worldwide events coalescing in 2020, the presence of anti-Black racism in the United States was made visible to those abroad and its egregiousness made more explicit to some citizens previously unaware of it in the U.S. In addition to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic exposing deep-seated structural health disparities between white and non-white communities, a global mass uprising emerged in response to George Floyd’s death. In ways that could not have been anticipated even a few years earlier, segments of American society have had to reckon with the pervasive, powerful forces of white supremacy and the ways society and its structures have disadvantaged racially minoritized groups. In this wide-sweeping shift, medical education and medicine have also grappled with these issues, especially the ways in which medical education perpetuates institutional racism.