Abstract

Contemporary work in bioethics presupposes a monistic view of race and a structuralist or polysemous view of racism. We aim to show that these received views are mistaken if the aim is to solve the racial health disparities problem. We argue that the theories that best enable us to solve the racial health disparities problem are a pluralist race theory and a virtue-theoretic account of racism because these theories are the best in terms of providing relevant accuracy and scope, causal explanatory power, nonsuperfluous ontological complexity, and practical utility for the task at hand.