Separate but Equal:The Black Racial Classification in the Canadian Blood System

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the African, Caribbean, and Black communities— as it pertains directly to the Black racial classification— and their place within the Canadian blood donation system. The aim is to explore the ways in which the legacy of risk, the Black racial classification, pathology, and associations with disease may be manifested in donation policies and procedures (current and retired). Precisely, my interest lies in the subtle and diffuse ways in which Negrophobia (and its variant racism) survive in blood donation in spite of putative efforts to neutralize it. I undertook this study with the aim to fill a noticeable gap in the literature, by providing knowledge on the ways in which racial stereotypes can be disseminated discursively through institutionalized health policies. As data sources, I used explicitly publicly accessible national (and international) document materials on blood donation. With a critical discourse analysis methodology, the evidence presented demonstrate that under the guise of value-freedom, blood donation guidelines have the ability to reinforce dangerous assumptions providing a rationale for Negrophobic beliefs, behaviours and policies within the blood system. Studying blood donation in this manner offers evidence for the ways in which health institutions continue to treat Black populations based on racial stereotypes. This exceptional attention to the Black racial classification in blood donation provides important insights into the understanding of the lasting and plagued relationship that Black peoples have had with the scientific community, illustrating that institutionalized Negrophobia may remain imbedded despite decades of sociopolitical and medical progress.