Health is a complicated
word: it encompasses the mental, social, and physical wellbeing of an
individual. When one has agency, or the ability to control their mental, social
and physical health, they are much more likely to function at a higher level.
With less stressors, comes better health; there is an intrinsic link between
the elevated levels of cortisol that a person with little agency has in
comparison to the influxes of cortisol that are released for a person with more
agency. Why is this important? How does it pertain to African American
history? The combination of a Health Equity Internship, Urban Community Health,
Organic Chemistry, and African American history has provided me with the opportunity to
delve into higher-level thinking—to look more closely at the social
determinates of health during slavery. The social determinates of health continually
transform and change. What did they look like during slavery? What benefits or
disadvantages did they pose to both slave and master? What larger implications
do they have?
According to the
World Health Organization, social determinates of health are defined as “the
conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These
circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at
global, national and local levels”. The social
determinates of health during slavery are extremely multifaceted because slave masters
were the agents of the appalling system and slaves had little opportunity to
escape the oppressive system. The context in which the social determinates of
health is often discussed is poverty: How does being born into a rural area
with lack of access to nutritious food, parks, education, or job opportunities
affect an individual? The negative effects that such stressors have on an
individual are disturbing: higher rates of infant mortality, obesity, abuse,
violence, disease and sickness, and psychological imbalances such as
depression. Yet imagine! During slavery, slaves were completely stripped of
their humanity—stripped access to nutritious food, clothing, education, and
much more. It seems like almost a miracle that any lived. How was sickness,
depression or other side effects of the negative impacts that the social determinates
of health had on their life handled? Were there ways in which slaves attempted
to attain agency of their health? Clearly acts of rebellion, such as running
away could have been an attempt to have the opportunity to be responsible for
their own clothes, health, and happiness. Yet so often, this is not the
narrative that is told. Instead, slaves are normally portrayed as escaping with
a desire to attain freedom—to have access to education and the given human
rights. The question then becomes: is there not an intrinsic link? Is having a
desire to be the agent of one’s own health not rooted in a desire to be free
from repression?
The benefits of controlling the social determinate's of a slaves health were dramatic for white slave owners. By having the ability to control their health, they also had the ability to control their minds, happiness, and functionality. In stark contrast, there were many disadvantages for the slaves: they often died at young ages due to the deterioration of their health (which was a result of their lack of agency). Slave owners desire to keep their slaves healthy with the hope of having a higher yield of crop, and thus money is perplexing. Yet like many things in life, someone or something must give.
Works Cited
Alderman,
Larry, prod. In Sickness and in Wealth. N.d. Unnatural Causes.
California News Reel with Vital Pictures Inc. Web. 28 Aug. 2013.
"Progress
on the Implementation of the Rio Political Declaration." WHO, 2013. Web.
28 Sept. 2013. http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/
I think a simple summary of the relationship between health and slavery, or slave's health, is that the institution of slavery was not healthy. Of course slavery is not a healthy state--mentally, physically, or otherwise. I also find it hard to believe that even slaveowners were mentally healthy. Something about sadism seems unhealthy to me, at least.
ReplyDeleteEven asking these questions (about slave's health), which I know come from a place of empathy and quest to understand (I ask these questions myself), I've consistently also felt like I am missing the big picture, or the heaviness of cruelty that slavery operated on. The question of a slave's health during slavery, or on behalf of slaveowners, was only a question of how well a human commodity could work--the slave's body was a machine, mental health would not be considered. And so it seems odd to interrogate a question that was totally irrelevant in this institution--I wonder how the slaves feel? How are they doing?
It almost seems that health and slavery have nothing to do with each other, because at the end of the day, caring for one's health requires compassion and respect for humanity, all of which was absent in this "peculiar institution." All that I can think about in slavery is the huge lack of health. It was an unhealthy institution, as society today seems unhealthy in its violent racism.
I agree with the comment above that the institution of slavery was not at all healthy. Obviously, it negatively affected the mental, social, and physical wellbeing of the enslaved African Americans. However, it probably wasn't viewed as "unhealthy" because African Americans were not viewed as human beings. Their wellbeing mattered to their white owners only when it physically impacted their ability to work. It is absolutely crazy to imagine what kind of productivity may have come out of the South during that time period if the slaves had been given proper working conditions, such as shorter hours and compensation for their work (in other words, if they weren’t considered slaves at all). As you pointed out, when one has the ability to control their own health, they are much more likely to function at a higher level. This means that African Americans performing tasks under the institution of slavery were never fully functioning. Unfortunately, because the slaves were viewed more as livestock than humans, their owners knew that they were expendable; if one died, they could simply be replaced with another.
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