In-class notes from 4/24 "Dying in the City of the Blues"

1. Discussion questions
1. Sickle cell
1. Panthers were very interested in sickle cell anemia and became involved with activism
2. Tested people for sickle cell anemia but not much came out of it besides testing
3. Became a political issue for African-American
1. Black genocide
1. Failure of us government to pay attention to sickle cell didn't put money into researching, created a further example of the medical disregard for African-American in the eyes of the government
2. How should we consider sickle cell anemia as a biological disease or condition, and also a cultural construction?
1. Observable condition-sickle cell anemia
1. Genetically inherited
1. Red blood cells that are normally round develop a sickle shape and starts to block up capillaries because they do not flow very easily then
2. Biologically real
1. Page 4- James Brian Herrick
1. African-American cultures were already aware of this, many discoveries in Africa on this but a different name.
3. Cultural construction
1. The way it was viewed in society
1. Culture
1. “Culture is the “set of stories” that americans tell one another in order to make sense of their lives”
2. “There is a contest of stories in the public atmosphere. Not all storie are equal. Stories that people tell have to compete with one another for public legitimacy.”
2. Biopolitics
1. Reference notes on Mbembe “Necropolitics”
2. Biopower appears to function through dividing power into those who must live and those who must die.
1. A rehab center for a specific drug
3. The subdivision of the population into subgroups, and the establishment of a biological caesura  between the ones and the others.
1. Incarceration
1. If more troops get sent to prison than others
4. In the economy of biopower, the function of racism is to regulate that distribution of death and to make possible the murderous functions of the state
1. Groups that you see as racially inferior are the ones that you are willing to let die
5. Butler, Precarious Life
1. “Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? And finally, what makes for a grievable life?... Each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social responsibility of our bodies.”
2. “Those whom we kill are not quite human, and not quite alive, which means that we do not feel the same horror and outrage over the loss of their lives as we do over the loss of those lives that bear.. Similarity to your own”
4. Key question
1. How did different groups construct discourses about race and disease in Memphis in the early 20th century, and why were those narrative important? What political and social impact did they have?
1. If this disease becomes so important in the 1970’s, why weren't people paying attention to it earlier?
1. 
   
2. If health is a commodity, why/what is it valuable and to whom?
1. 
   
3. Is memphis unique? What was going on in Memphis to allow for this impact of African-Americans?
1. Memphis was a hot spot for african-americans working in labor jobs or in the home
2. It became a small priority to those owners and such to make sure that their workers were healthy so they could continue to profit off of them
3. Page 26
1. Transportation gateway to the north and the west
4. Large population of African-americans page 27-28
1. Went from 50,000 in 1900 to over 40,000 in 1940
5. Shift in valuation of african-american patients
1. Page 37
6. Marginalization of midwives and nurses
1. Page 38-39
7. Political party system
1. Page 41 and on
8. Infant mortality rate in the region
1. Page 61-64
1. Memphis emphasized the dangers posed by blacks in the town
1. “Black people can't take of their children. A reason that they should remain away.”
2. Page 70
9. South was weary of stereotype
1. Page 66
2. What stories were being told about (or not told) about Sickle Cell anemia in memphis in the first third of the 20th century, and how were they important in shaping broader debates about race, health, and citizenship?
1. Certain diseases and disabilities were more visible if they were more convenient or popular in medical field
1. White-self interest
2. Sickle cell
1. Overarching narrative of the disease affecting black people
2. Prone to disease
3. Black people migrating to these cities
4. Black health being a commodity
1. If these people make me sick i could die
2. Good gene vs bad gene
3. Hereditary disease vs environmental diseases that were happening at the same time
4. Infant mortality rate
1. Explained away the statistics by saying that infant death rate was high due to african-americans
5. Notes on question 2 above
1. Great migration
2. Era of biological racism
3. Genetic diseases and environmental diseases
4. Pain and the communicably of pain
5. Page 56
1. Stereotypes of blacks harboring infectious disease creating anxieties
1. Helped to perpetuate the ideas about sickle cell anemia
1. People began to be afraid of contracting disease from them
2. Helped to solidify notion of african-americans being less suitable
6. Page 55
1. More inclined to treat them for those diseases than sickle cell
2. Sickle cell symptoms look a lot like other diseases most common in area
1. Reasons it wasn't treated
1. Limited knowledge of the condition