Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - April 24, 2018

Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - April 24, 2018

Key Question:

1. How did different groups construct discourses about race and disease in Memphis in the early 20th century, and why were those narratives important? What political and social impact did they have?

Panthers’ activism for testing people for Sickle Cell Disease

1970s Sickle Cell Anemia became a political issue - failure of US Gov to pay attention to Sickle Cell (no money towards research) because Sickle Cell primarily African American disease

Biological Fact vs Cultural Construction

Biopower - divides people into those who may live and those who may die

Biological caesura - one group gets sent to prison more than others (disproportionate)

Pain-

• Subjectable
• Not communicable

Great Migration: African Americans from rural areas to urban areas

Era of Eugenics (Biopower, P29 (second paragraph))

Genetic Disease vs Environmental Disease

Controlled Image of Blacks as diseased

• Carriers of Sickle Cell

Memphis as a Healthcare center

Sickle Cell as a genetic disease comes later

Infant Mortality

• Played into narrative that minorities cannot properly take care of their children (Molina)

Limited Knowledge about Sickle Cell disease because the disease provided no risk for white people

If a disease is racialized, will it stop treatments?

How were people being treated for Sickle Cell disease?
     - Possibly treated for Malaria

• Treated for prominent disease within the area (P55)

Why weren’t people being treated?

• Limited Knowledge
• Sickle Cell symptoms are like the symptoms of other diseases

Black people working as domestic workers within white homes

• Whites worried that sickness could spread
• Again, Sickle Cell possessed symptoms of other diseases

Does the idea that there is a hereditary condition that African Americans have, that is unique to African American descent, does that trouble claims for rights, equality, and citizenship?

• Doesn’t help in the time of eugenics - biological evidence of inferiority (P79)

Miscegenation - mixing of races

White Anxiety: Whites and African Americans mixing could spread Sickle Cell Anemia

Semester Roadmap:

Thurs: ⅔ of book

Tues: rest of book

Later: Presentations for final projects

Projects and Wiki by May 12th

Final Blog Post