A Failure to Care: Colonial Power and Healthcare in Africa, 1850-1939

Abstract

Racism has been a particular focus of the history of Western medicine in colonial South Africa. Much of the research to date has paradoxically interpreted Western medicine as both a handmaiden of colonialism and as a racist gatekeeper to the benefits of Western medical science. This essay suggests that while these conclusions have some validity, the framework in which they have been devised is problematic. Not only is that framework contradictory in nature, it underplays differences within Western medicine, privileges the history of explicit and intentional racial discrimination in medicine, and encourages a separate analysis of racism in law, in the medical profession, and in medical theory and practice. Using the example of the Cape Colony in South Africa, this paper shows how legislation, class, institutional setting, and popular stereotypes could influence the form, timing, and degree of racism in the medical professional, and in medical theory and practice. It also argues for an analytical distinction between 'racist medicine' and 'medical racism.'