David Herzberg, co-author of the award-winning book "Whiteout," delves into the stark realities of racial capitalism's role in the opioid crisis. He discusses how U.S. drug policy perpetuates inequalities, with punitive measures targeting marginalized communities while privileging others. Herzberg reveals the historical roots of these disparities and critiques colorblind racism's impact. He advocates for a shift from punishment to compassion in drug policy, emphasizing the need to empower marginalized voices in the narrative surrounding addiction and recovery.
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insights INSIGHT
Racial Capitalism in Healthcare
Racial capitalism, rooted in exploitation, persists through racialized consumption.
Healthcare services, like drug access, remain segregated by similar mechanisms.
insights INSIGHT
Heroin's Racial History
Heroin's journey from a white Victorian-era drug to a prohibited substance highlights racialized drug policy.
Its brief resurgence as a white drug before fentanyl underscores cyclical patterns and policy failures.
insights INSIGHT
Risk of Policy Backlash
Current high overdose rates in Black and Brown communities create a dangerous moment for potential policy backlash.
Empathetic responses to white drug crises rarely extend to other communities, risking further marginalization.
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Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America
Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America
How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America
Jules Netherland
Helena Hansen
David Hertzberg
Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America, explores the deeply ingrained racial biases within the US drug policy. The authors meticulously trace how this system has created a stark disparity in treatment for opioid addiction, favoring white communities with compassion and care while harshly punishing Black and Brown communities. The book examines the historical roots of this disparity, connecting it to the legacy of slavery and racial capitalism. It analyzes specific cases, such as the opioid crisis and the rise of fentanyl, to illustrate how racial biases shape drug markets and healthcare access. Ultimately, Whiteout offers a critical analysis of the systemic issues that perpetuate this inequality and proposes potential solutions.
The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by racial hierarchy, and justified through white supremacist logics. Now, in the twenty-first century, the biotech industry is the new capitalist whose race-based exploitation engages not only labor but racialized consumption. This arrangement is upheld through US drug policy, which over the past century has created a split legal system—one punitive system that criminalizes drug use common among Black, Brown, and lower-income communities and another system characterized by compassion and care that medicalizes, and thus legalizes, drug use targeted to middle-class White people.
In the award-winning book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America(U California Press, 2023), a trio of authors—Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg—explain how this arrangement came to pass, what impacts it has, and what needs to be done. This remarkable book won the 2023 Rachel Carson Book Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science.
This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and graduate students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.
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