American Red Cross Blood program

During the course of the reading for this section, I was continuously amazed at the levels of segregation that had occurred. Previous to this reading, I had not realized black and non-black blood were separated. It is interesting to see that an organization as profound and loved as the American Red Cross Association is today, they too took part in segregation during the Jim Crow era. The labelling of this blood was truly demeaning and caused problems for both African-Americans and white patients. The specific labeling of “Negro blood” and “non-Negro blood” casts a stark separation between African-Americans and the rest of society 1. Other minorities were given non-Negro blood, but African-Americans must use their ‘own’ blood for transfusions.  This controversy created more problems for the community, as it explains the troubles with transfusions on the war and home front. Soldiers and civilians alike were subjected to the possibility of death if there was not an adequate supply of “Negro blood” or “non-Negro blood” given that the doctors would not intermingle their supplies for their patients. This idea of biological inferiority plays a part into bio politics. Here, the doctors and physicians are exercising bio power of their patients by not allowing proper transfusions to occur if they were not of a specific race that they had in blood stock. I decided to do a bit of research to learn more about the American Red Cross Association and their decision to make this labelling occur. During my search, it took me to the tenth result to find something of use on the labelling process. All of the results above were about the American Red Cross celebrating black history month, or asking African-Americans to donate blood. Given my extremely particular search, I am intrigued by these results. Here is the link to a very detailed article on the Red Cross policy.

1 Wailoo, Keith. Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health. Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001.