Bleeding Identities: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Blood Drive Activism

Abstract

Hannabach analyzes how race and sexuality were mobilized in twentieth-century blood drive activism, revealing conflicting interests between donors, recipients, and regulators. The chapter traces the history of blood transfusion and the rise of blood banking Hannabach also offers several case studies of moments in which blood banking and a ``national blood supply{''} rose to public concern: post -World War I blood banking associations influenced by eugenics, the racial segregation of the blood supply during World War II, 198os hemophilia and Haitian activism around AIDS, and a twenty-first century queer blood drive in New York that drew on these histories. The chapter argues that blood drive activism reveals the ways US national identity has been defined through racial and sexual ideologies.