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Presentation
Our Inalienable Right to [Health] Care: Blacks, Ideological Whiteness, and the United States Health Care System
Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2007)
  • Vanessa Martinez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Abstract

Medical research has found that health disparities fall along racial lines, showing that blacks have a higher incidence of infectious and chronic disease when compared to white populations in the United States. This effectively shows that black health is suffering in disproportionately larger numbers. Historically, being considered property and not human beings, blacks were used by scientists for experiments without informed consent. This did not end with slavery as is noted by the most publicized unethical and racist Tuskegee experiment that took place on 399 black men with syphilis from Tuskegee, Alabama between 1932 and 1972. While Tuskegee remains one of the most widely known medical experiments done on blacks it is by no means the only case. Further evidence of scientific racism from the 19th and 20th centuries include the use of pseudoscientific methodologies like craniometry, eugenics sterilization programs, and intelligence testing [ie. the Bell Curve].

To this day, whiteness allows whites to deny the fact that blacks remain disadvantaged based on historical racism and white supremacist ideology, while they continue to actively fight to maintain dominance over people of color, mainly blacks. This dominance plays out in our various institutions, including the United States health care system of the 21st century. My research will explore this topic and provide concrete examples of historical and contemporary racism and ideological whiteness in how access to health care is allocated along racial lines to the detriment of blacks in the Diaspora.

Publication Date
2007
Citation Information
Vanessa Martinez. "Our Inalienable Right to [Health] Care: Blacks, Ideological Whiteness, and the United States Health Care System" Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2007)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/vanessa_martinez/1/