Dying in the City of the Blues Part 3

            In the final part of Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health, Keith Wailoo further details sickle cell disease at its height in the early 1970s and how it was portrayed in both the government and the media. Wailoo notes that, “[a]s the malady became a national cultural symbol, many more groups with their own agendas entered the discussion about what it signified, reshaping the meaning of the disease both nationally and in cities like Memphis.”[1] With the disease being widely discussed in the media, the government, and groups such as the Black Panther Party, as well as the militancy surrounding black politics in the late 1960s into the early 1970s, “the malady seemed to illuminate ‘the race problem’ itself in 1970s America.”[2] With sickle cell disease being widely discussed in the 1970s, what factors led to its steep decline in national conversation in the late-20^th century into the new millennium? After finishing Wailoo’s book, it is seen that the evolving War on Drugs and its effects on the African American community can explain why sickle cell disease’s importance in national conversation steeply declined.

            As President Reagan intensified the War on Drugs in the 1980s, as well as his view of African American mothers on welfare to be “welfare queens driving Cadillacs,”[3] the prevailing narrative of drug-addicted African Americans looking for ways to obtain drugs through the hospital emerged at the end of the century. In this sense, then, the narrative surrounding sickle cell disease changed as well. While the media portrayed African Americans suffering from the disease as innocent victims in earlier decades, they became vilified in the 1980s; “[t]he new image of sickle cell disease- an expensive, inner city, chronic illness in which too-liberal pain management might actually produce drug addicts- reflected the changing political landscape.”[4] It is interesting to note, as well, that the visibility of sickle cell disease, after its perception of the 1980s, slowly fizzled out in the 1990s; “[b]y the end of the twentieth century,,, the attention paid to sickle cell disease receded noticeably. Over time, the plight of sickles had been dragged into a broad spectrum of clinical and social debates.”[5]

            Overall, then, it is seen that the portrayal of sickle cell disease in the United States changed each decade following its discovery. Originally seen as a devastating disease that affected innocent African Americans to an excuse for African Americans to demand more drugs from hospitals, Wailoo demonstrates that “[w]herever there was a racial controversy, sickle cell anemia might be evoked.”[6] As the narrative of sickle cell disease changed throughout the 20^th century, though, the overall remains about pain treatment for African Americans.

             

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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), 165.

[2] “Concern with Urban Problems Spurs Interest in Sickle Cell Anemia,” New York Times, July 25, 1971 in Keith Wailoo’s, 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), 166.

[3] Ibid, 202.

[4] Ibid, 204.

[5] Ibid, 231.

[6] Ibid, 231.