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eBook editionsBody and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discriminationby Alondra Nelson
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism—its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination—was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent. The Black Panther Party’s understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy—and that struggle—continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care. Review:"Nelson, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, reports exhaustively on the Black Panther Party's role in the radical health movement of the 1970s, positioning the BPP as important players in the long tradition of civil rights health activism. She discusses the social function and day-to-day activities of the free health clinics each BPP chapter was obliged to maintain, as well as the party's campaign to fight sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disease primarily affecting African-Americans (and one that was largely ignored by the medical community). Nelson gives an in-depth explanation of how the BPP's anti — sickle cell fight became a means of highlighting racially biased medical neglect. The most exciting part of the book comes toward the end, where Nelson explains the BPP's (ultimately successful) challenge to the formation of the UCLA Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, a group whose research programs hypothesized that violence was 'the product of the inherent pathology of individuals (black men, in particular) and not a political or social phenomenon.' Chillingly, several of the center's researchers were advocates for psychosurgical manipulation of the brain as a means of curtailing violent behavior. Nelson's writing is dry and repetitive, but her work deserves commendation for its thoughtfulness and thoroughness. (Oct.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Book News Annotation:This is a history of the health politics of the Black Panther Party
(BPP) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which Nelson (sociology,
Columbia U.) sees as both reflective and an amplification of "the
distinctiveness of a tradition of black health advocacy in which
pragmatic matters of disease and healing (e.g., the founding of
health institutions) were coextensive with broader political matters
(e.g., challenges to racism)." She characterizes the BPP's approach
as a "social health" position that drew upon the World Health
Organization's framing of health as a human right, African American
traditions, and Marxist understandings of the "medical-industrial
complex" in order to fashion a multifaceted, but interconnected,
challenge to racial health disparities that involved the
establishment of free community medical clinics, ideological critique
of biomedical authority (particularly in relation to racial theories
of violence), coalition building with other radical groups and
radicalized medical professionals, and health education campaigns.
Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:The legacy of the Black Panther Party’s commitment to community health care, a central aspect of its fight for social justice About the AuthorAlondra Nelson is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is coeditor of Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life and Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History. Table of ContentsContents Preface: Politics by Other Means Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Serving the People Body and Soul 1. African American Responses to Medical Discrimination before 1966 2. Origins of Black Panther Party Health Activism 3. The People’s Free Medical Clinics 4. Spin Doctors: The Politics of Sickle Cell Anemia 5. As American as Cherry Pie: Contesting the Biologization of Violence Conclusion: Race and Health in the Post Civil Rights Era Notes Index What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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Health and Self-Help » Health and Medicine » Medical Specialties
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