David Herzberg, co-author and historian specializing in drug policy's intersection with race and class, dives deep into the impact of racial capitalism on the opioid crisis. He discusses how a dual drug policy creates disparities, with punitive measures for marginalized communities versus compassionate care for the privileged. The conversation highlights the evolution of the opioid landscape, examines systemic issues like ignorance and privilege, and underscores the need for equitable interventions. Herzberg also emphasizes the power of narrative in reshaping public perceptions and combating stigma around addiction.
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Racially Segmented Drug Policy
The U.S. drug policy created a racially segmented system.
This system criminalizes drug use in Black and Brown communities while medicalizing it in white ones.
insights INSIGHT
Racial Capitalism in Healthcare
Racial capitalism, rooted in exploitation, persists in new forms.
Healthcare consumption, like labor, is racially stratified.
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Three Episodes of the Opioid Crisis
The opioid crisis narrative has three episodes: oxycodone, opioid treatment, and heroin’s return.
Heroin’s brief return to a white market highlights cyclical patterns and policy failures.
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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 reveals how the very same drugs are treated differently depending on the race of the user, highlighting the systemic inequalities that perpetuate the opioid crisis. Ultimately, Whiteout offers a critical analysis of the racial dynamics shaping drug policy and proposes pathways towards a more just and equitable approach.
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.
New Books in Sociology