Abstract

Stigma, Race, and Disease in Twentieth Century America

Author: Professor Keith Wailoo, Ph.D.

This paper examines the historical evolution of stigma, or what Erving Goffman called in his 1963 study, “undesired differentness,” in relation to race and disease in America. The paper examines the ways in which diseases from hookworm to tuberculosis to cancer, polio, sickle cell anemia and AIDS have been employed as markers of biological and social difference, and also to construct broader notions of danger and inferiority. The paper provides an analysis of the historical processes by which stigma has emerged and become associated with these particular disorders; it also explores the process by which these associations have been loosened.

The papers focuses particularly on the dynamics of stigma in diseases associated with African-Africans, in order to explore the interrelationship among what Goffman called “the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion” (a kind of stigma transmitted through ‘blood’ and lineage), “the stigma of disease and physical deformity,” and changing race relations in America. The paper uses popular and professional writings and graphic images of disease, race, and health as one of the cornerstones of its analysis.

September 2001