Daniel K-Cox’s Reviews > White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions > Status Update
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 55 of 256
"Nazila Bettache, an internist and assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Université de Montréal, and Samir Shaheen-Hussein, a Montreal pediatric emergency physician and assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, describe systemic medical racism as 'a culture in medicine that dehumanizes individuals and stigmatizes entire communities.'"
— Mar 01, 2025 06:13PM
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Daniel’s Previous Updates
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 247 of 256
Really took my time with this one, and finally nearing the end. More thoughts to come; I just loved this quote: "I [Alex Wilson] asked [Dr. Kalani Young], 'What does queering mean to you?' and she says that queering is transforming a poison into medicine."
— Dec 18, 2025 06:36AM
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 171 of 256
In context of broader discourse about how meritocracy serves to compel hard work while blaming oppressed people for their lack of access to privilege:
"... 'multiculturalism does not view racialized people as actors with agency.' Instead, white settler Canadians maintain power and continue to dictate the parameters of belonging, all the while appearing benevolent through offers of nominal cultural participation."
— Oct 24, 2025 01:25PM
"... 'multiculturalism does not view racialized people as actors with agency.' Instead, white settler Canadians maintain power and continue to dictate the parameters of belonging, all the while appearing benevolent through offers of nominal cultural participation."
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 108 of 256
"A system of genocide, residential schools were characterized by harsh punishment and rampant abuse, and they imposed infeasible rules against any displays of Indigenous identity."
I feel like school dress codes and policing Black students' expression, language, and tone are usually examined on their own, rather than recognizing them as the latest in a long line of efforts to control and 'civilize' people of color.
— Apr 16, 2025 09:51AM
I feel like school dress codes and policing Black students' expression, language, and tone are usually examined on their own, rather than recognizing them as the latest in a long line of efforts to control and 'civilize' people of color.
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 60 of 256
"This person [healthcare professional quoted in an ethnography of anti-Indigenous racism in healthcare] is explaining a dynamic where fear of conflict and the taboo of interrupting racism creates the conditions that allow Indigenous Peoples to die. The conditions created are a health care culture where a service provider would rather risk the patient's health than be seen as a traitor to the idealized profession."
— Mar 01, 2025 06:46PM
Daniel K-Cox
is on page 39 of 256
Written about Canadian settler colonialism, but could just as easily be written about American racism:
"The discourses of denial construct Canada as a benevolent state that embraces multiculturalism and tolerance. The histories and cultural practices associated with whiteness are so deeply normalized in everyday life in the settler colony that whiteness becomes an invisible backdrop that requires excavation."
— Feb 23, 2025 06:48PM
"The discourses of denial construct Canada as a benevolent state that embraces multiculturalism and tolerance. The histories and cultural practices associated with whiteness are so deeply normalized in everyday life in the settler colony that whiteness becomes an invisible backdrop that requires excavation."
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Mar 01, 2025 06:28PM
This is absolutely true, but the problem is even bigger. Foucault's Medical Gaze would position all healthcare workers in positions of authority that give them license to objectify, dehumanize, and stigmatize people of any background. When, in Susan Sontag's words, we become citizens of the "kingdom of the sick," we become members of a marginalized community, characterized by being a patient, being sick, and being disabled. On top of and intersecting with this ableist marginalization, the other identities we carry compound the stigmatization we experience in the kingdom of the sick. All this to say that healthcare workers habitually marginalize everyone in their care through the benevolent act of helping, and that, as Barry Lavallee and Laurie Harding point out in this section of the book, this makes it a small and all-too-easy jump for healthcare workers to then apply stereotypes to Indigenous (and other marginalized) people that reinforce their casting as inferior, deficient, and in need of the help of white members of the helping professions.
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