In the Blood: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race

Although it strikes individuals from a variety of backgrounds, sickle cell anemia has always been known as a black disease in America. In the Blood argues that ever since the discovery in 1910 and subsequent scientific analysis of the disease, sickle cell anemia has been manipulated to serve social ends-as a tool for securing white identity and a way to establish a hierarchy based on European heritage. Tapper shows how sickle cell anemia was used to promote the superiority of racial purity, to characterize the black body as contaminated, and even to support the notion that modern humans evolved from multiple origins.

Author: Melbourne Tapper
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 02/04/1999
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.60w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780812234718

About the Author
Melbourne Tapper teaches anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.