So then, if I am a “professional” software developer, and my employer asks me to put a secret back-door in some code to be shipped to consumers... I should say nothing, because I’m a “professional?”
Or what if I’m doing renovations, and someone asks me to make something I know to be unsafe. I point that out, but they insist... Again, do I just do what they ask because, “professional?”
I suspect you are conflating “professional” with “mercenary.” To me, being a professional means approaching my work with a sense of ethics.
In fact, I suggest to you that saying nothing in these cases is also injecting ethics into my work, only it is my personal investment in “The Status Quo.”
You can’t escape ethics, you can only support the existing structure by pretending you are above petty “ethics” and “politics.”
What you certainly don't do, if you're doing renovations, is sign off on something that you know to be unsafe because the people who built it are fighting systemic racism.
I believe it's important to note that public healthcare itself has disproportionately worse outcomes for black people. To indicate that being a black person is a health risk in the country and supporting movements to resolve this is, from what I understand, pretty in line with what a professional healthcare personnel would be advocating for.
I was responding to the question of “professionalism” being somehow devoid of ethics, and therefore medical professionals should not take ethics into account when making decisions.
I would interpret your remark as suggesting, “Professionalism involves ethics, but there is an interpretation of those ethics that suggests these particular people should have made a different choice in this stuation.”
I could agree or disagree with your conclusion, but I can certainly support the form of your argument as sound: Professionals should have ethics, so let’s talk about what those ethics should be, and how to apply them to this situation.
———
It’s the same conversation as, “Should professional work for a social media business that amplifies and spreads falsehoods, violent rhetoric, &c.”
If someone were to say, “A professional just writes code, the effect of that code on society is not their business,” I think that’s flat-out wrong. Not taking a stand on the matter is taking a stand, but lying to yourself about not taking a stand.
On the other hand, people can and do regularly have discussions about whether there is a “greater good” served by allowing people to communicate and decide for themselves whether George Soros is behind Black Lives Matter, or whether the Coronavirus was actually hatched by Bill Gates in an attempt to use a vaccine to inject people with microchips.
I have opinions about the ethics of that too, but I can appreciate that there are people who are also trying to apply ethics to such decisions, even if they are ethics I disagree with or flat-out abhor.
