Dying in the City of The Blues Part 1

In the first part of his book, Dying in the City of  The Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health, Keith Wailoo questions the ideas of scientific and social visibility and how they relate to the conversation surrounding sickle cell anemia. Wailoo situates his book in Memphis, Tennessee because “[t]he story of sickle cell anemia in the Mid-South is not, therefore, merely an isolated narrative of race and health in one region. It is fundamentally a story of the changing meaning of health and disease in America.”[1] From the introduction, Wailoo begins to answer the various questions raised within the first two chapters; Wailoo situates the reader in 20^th century Memphis to better understand why sickle cell anemia would remain an invisible disease and how the city’s inhabitants thought about healthcare as the city “separate[ed] itself gradually from plantation culture.”[2] A question to be asked, then, is how did the racialization and stereotyping of African Americans in 20^th century Memphis affect how their health care was handled? From the readings, it is evident that the ways in which African Americans were viewed in Memphis, as well as Jim Crow segregation, affected their healthcare; this racialization of African Americans in Memphis draws connections to the ways in which Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants were treated in Los Angeles during the early 20^th century, as well.

To better explain how African Americans were regarded by others in Memphis, Wailoo explores the ways in which African Americans were “commodified” in Memphis throughout the early 20^th century and how this commodification adapted to the larger events in the United States, such as the Roaring Twenties and the Depression. Wailoo notes that “in Memphis… [African Americans] were becoming valuable in the city’s health care economy. Not only were they recognized as useful ‘clinical material’ by the expanding university; from the city’s perspective, African Americans also defined a demographic group whose presence could attract dollars to rebuild civic infrastructure.”[3] If the city was interested in capitalizing on the health care of African Americans, why, then, were the signs of sickle cell anemia and high infant mortality rates not taken more seriously in the early 20^th century in Memphis? As Wailoo states, “[e]arly in the century, black infant mortality was wildly perceived as all-too-common, expected, and unsurprising regional experience. In the thinking of many whites, ‘negro ignorance’ itself explained many of these deaths.”[4] This idea that African Americans could not take care of their children, causing their deaths, as well as the stereotype the they were diseased explains why, what can be assumed, sickle cell anemia was obscured.

Overall, from what has been read thus far, it is seen that the racialization of African Americans follows the common perception of the time that all minorities in the United States were susceptible to carrying diseases and were intent on spreading them throughout white communities. In addition, African Americans were also blamed for the high rate of infant mortality, likely a cause from sickle cell anemia, because of the idea that they were incapable of raising their own children.

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[1] Keith Wailoo, Dying in the City of  The Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 19.

[2] Ibid, 21.

[3] Ibid, 53.

[4] Ibid, 56.