Race, Medicine, & Society Notes and Skype Session w/ Alondra Nelson - April 19, 2018

Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - April 19, 2018

In-Class Writing:

The Black Panther Party seeked to resist relying on white physicians for medical care and diagnoses. African Americans would have to find ways to travel many miles in order to just get to a hospital. Also, if they arrived and talked to a doctor, how were they to know they would receive any care at all? The Black Panther Party seeked to address this issue by practicing self-care. Hospitals and clinics were built to provide free healthcare for African Americans. This would also help protestors, because they would often get hurt in action and be in need of medical attention after surviving police brutality.

How successful the Black Panther Party was is still in the grey for me personally. Are their endeavors rarely talked about because they were ineffective, or because African American success is less talked about in our culture? At least on a small, community scale, it can be assured that the Black Panther Party was successful in resisting and addressing medical discrimination.  

• If Black Panthers could not change white institutions, then why not just create black institutions

• Patients given a voice

Medical Authority - education gap between physician and patient

• Panthers aimed to dismantle that with their own medical care
• Medical workers would have to be on the same level as the patient

- Empowerment / Self-determination

Biopolitics - medical knowledge exists and flows to medical students -> doctors

Black Panthers - medical knowledge can be democratized by spreading knowledge through medical workers

United Nations fundamental right to great medical care

Alondra Nelson:

Graduate school focuses:

• Scientific racism
• Medical atrocities in Nazi Germany

Nelson’s friend’s book where African Americans explained as having been dominated since colonial times through science and medicine

Alondra saw the Panthers about resistance against that domination

• A history in which people wanted to stay well, get healthcare, and become nurses & doctors
• View: Panthers Community Service vs Panthers w/ guns and leather jackets
• Panthers did both
• Carried arms legally