"How Cancer Crossed the Color Line: The Biological and Cultural Landscape of Race and Disease in America"

Keith Wailoo, Rutgers University

Cancer began the twentieth century as a 'disease of civilization,'

statistically and clinically more prevalent and deadly in "white" Americans

than "colored" people. Particularly high rates of mortality were associated

with white women, while lower rates were associated with men of all races,

African-Americans, so-called 'uncivilized' and 'primitive' peoples. By the

end of the twentieth century, cancer appeared to have crossed the color line

and sex line in America - becoming ever more prevalent and deadly in men and

African-Americans, for example. This paper (based on a forthcoming book)

examines this curious history, exploring what the apparent transformation

reveals about the American landscape of race, ethnicity, risk, and disease.

It examines how changing ideas about gender and vulnerability, about racial

risks, about ethnic diets, customs, behaviors, and identities, underpinned

discussions about this transformation. The paper explores how Americans

have used the problem of cancer to explore deeper questions about the risk

and group identity, social change, political upheavals, and cultural and

biological transformation.