Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - April 17, 2018

Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - April 17, 2018

Discussion Questions:

• In what ways did the Panthers frame healthcare as a civil right issue? How was it related to their larger vision?
• What were the theoretical underpinnings of the Black Panthers Party health program?

Black Panther Party founded October 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale because they believed the Civil Rights Movement was not radical enough

US Gov not legitimate

Black communities of US as internal colonies in which police were an occupying army

Embrace of African culture

Panthers saw Civil Rights Movement of 1950s and 1960s as trying to work within the system to change the system

They wanted to destroy the system and start over

African Americans should be able to determine the future of their own communities

Black Panthers aimed to offer self-defence from police (brutality)

Survival Programs - community programs , free food, health, clothes, transportation, pest control, plumbing, senior escort - because white power structure had not provided support like that

Government should be providing for the people

African Americans having to support themselves

African Americans had historically fought against medical racism:

Institution Building:

• building own places (schools, hospitals, etc.)

Integration:

• Ending of segregation

• Simkins vs Moses H. Cave Memorial Hospital 1989
• Hospitals cannot resist integration
• NAACP filing suits

Politics of knowledge:

• Biopolitics
• The political consequences of how we think about things / view things
• Fight narratives that black students don’t do as well, are lazy, get more illnesses, etc.

People after marches would need medical care

Recruitment of doctors and nurses, building of hospitals

LBJ’s Great Society

• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Society Security Amendments of 1965

• Medicare
• Medicaid

Documents handed out at the end of class