African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19
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Regina E. Brisgone
Abstract
The legacy of the medical system in the United States and its treatment of Black women on the margins of society is a fraught one, fostered by a history of medical neglect and misuse. This chapter examines findings for two groups of similarly situated African American poor urban women: 1) Adult drug users and sex workers in the age of HIV/AIDS, and 2) low-income older women who are substance users and sex workers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It takes into account the history of medical misuse and experimentation of African American peoples in the United States and interrogates a racialized approach that targeted African American groups for HIV/AIDS testing and treatment based on risky drug use and sexual practices. The two qualitative research studies, nineteen years apart, involve African American women whom the medical establishment considered high risk for diseases of great public concern. Researchers have reported that African Americans are at higher risk for COVID-19 relative to other groups due to higher rates of chronic illnesses. In both studies, women’s narratives uncovered fear of a highly publicized disease, a fatalistic approach to infection, and mistrust of a medical system attempting to target them for testing, prevention, and treatment.
Abstract
The legacy of the medical system in the United States and its treatment of Black women on the margins of society is a fraught one, fostered by a history of medical neglect and misuse. This chapter examines findings for two groups of similarly situated African American poor urban women: 1) Adult drug users and sex workers in the age of HIV/AIDS, and 2) low-income older women who are substance users and sex workers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It takes into account the history of medical misuse and experimentation of African American peoples in the United States and interrogates a racialized approach that targeted African American groups for HIV/AIDS testing and treatment based on risky drug use and sexual practices. The two qualitative research studies, nineteen years apart, involve African American women whom the medical establishment considered high risk for diseases of great public concern. Researchers have reported that African Americans are at higher risk for COVID-19 relative to other groups due to higher rates of chronic illnesses. In both studies, women’s narratives uncovered fear of a highly publicized disease, a fatalistic approach to infection, and mistrust of a medical system attempting to target them for testing, prevention, and treatment.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
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Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
-
Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
