Medicalizing Blackness

Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4900878
AutoresSusan E Klepp (Emerita, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume105
Fascículo3
Páginas666-666
Data de publicação2018-12-01
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jay317
OpenAlexW2906138861
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas16

Rana A. Hogarth's Medicalizing Blackness transverses familiar territory by offering a fresh take on one facet of racist thought. Hogarth argues that Anglo-American physicians came to see blackness as an indicator of pathology, a visual sign of systemic physical inferiority, that predisposed individuals of African descent to unique medical problems requiring the intervention of well-read, well-connected medical men. The medicalization of black bodies, she argues, was not primarily adapted from popular prejudices based on differences in religion or culture, or on a defense of enslaved labor systems, or as a response to antislavery activists. Rather, the supposed reality of racial difference emerged out of the professional interests of physicians. Doctors sought recognition of their medical authority through the transatlantic exchange of ideas and practices. An insistence on the physiological distinctiveness of Africans would, they hoped, encourage owners to have ailing slaves treated by specialists—that is, themselves. The result, to put it more bluntly than Hogarth does, would be an expanded client base, larger fees, and increased social status

African descent · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Medicalization · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Political science · Psychiatry · Sign (mathematics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology

Ferramentas

Abrir DOISci-Hub