611719

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CSCXXX10.1177/1532708615611719Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol"></span> Critical MethodologiesCloos

Part II Biopedagogies and Identifications

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies

The Racialization of U.S. Public Health:

2015, Vol. 15(5) 379386
2015 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1532708615611719
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Patrick Cloos1

Abstract
The use of the category race/ethnicity intensified in the field of U.S. Public Health following the Clinton administrations
announcement of a budget increase for research focusing on ethnic and racial disparities in health. This article discusses
the ways in which racialized difference is produced and represented as an object of knowledge and regulated by discursive
practices in public health documents from U.S. federal government offices and a major public health journal published
between 2001 and 2013. Races are approached, following Foucaults proposition, as the product of racism, a technology of
power of the modern State that consists of fragmenting humanity to permit colonizations. Thus, race has been established
within the discourse to mark difference. Racism has developed concomitantly with the affirmation of power over life aimed
at ruling out bodies and populations through public health practices, among others. The results suggest that the discourse
on race varies throughout time. They indicate the relative permanence of a racialized regime of representation that
consists of identifying, situating, and opposing subjects and groups based on standardized labels. This regime constitutes
an ensemble of representational practices, which, together with disciplinary techniques and the use of culture as an idea,
lead to the characterization and formation of racialized objects and stereotypes. These operations tend, together with
medicalization and culturalization, to naturalize difference and constitute racial identities.

Keywords
biopedagogy, biopower, racism, racialization, public health, discourse, surveillance, anthropology

Introduction White as opposed to the Other (Anderson, 2006).

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration decided to
finance public health research to eliminate the phenomenon
identified as racial and ethnic disparities in health in the
United States. In so doing, the administration proposed the
improvement of the health of minorities by funding public
health research and knowledge transfer activities, strength-
ening networks, and mobilizing the Surgeon Generals
Office to develop awareness, education, and preventive pro-
grams (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services,
1998). At first sight, this political decision seems to mark a
radical shift from earlier 20th century practices when, for
example, public health officials in Los Angeles participated
in producing Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants as
racialized Others (Molina, 2006). Through media, policies,
and guidelines, public health discourses contributed in shap-
ing stereotypes of these racialized categories: Some were
portrayed as unclean, dirty, unhygienic, or germ- 1
spreading. These stereotypes could then legitimize other
discourses and, as a result, many immigrants were excluded
from full social participation. Similarly, U.S. colonial public
health practices in the Philippines, in establishing rules of
behavior for American soldiers, shaped the image of the
Principles and practices of Tropical Hygiene would gradually
regulate the everyday life of American soldiers who were
encouraged to dress and behave in ways such that sickness
and madness would be avoided. Again, in the 1920s and
1930s, Fee (1993) reminds us that syphilis, which had origi-
nally been associated to vice and prostitution, was redefined
as a Black disease given the links to stereotypes of Black
individuals sexual promiscuousness.
In this article, I reflect on the racialization of contempo-
rary U.S. public health in light of the concept of biopeda-
gogy, which refers to institutional practices that offer
individuals ways to understand and change themselves and
others (Wright, 2009). My work is based on an ethnographic
study of a corpus of public health documents from federal
(U.S.) government offices (i.e., the websites of the Office of
University of Montreal, Qubec, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Patrick Cloos, School of social work, Faculty of arts and sciences,
University of Montreal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx (C-7071), 3150 Jean-
Brillant street, Montreal, Qubec H3T 1N8, Canada.
Email: Patrick.cloos@umontreal.ca
380 Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 15(5)
the Surgeon General and the Office of Minority Health
[OMH]) as well as the American Journal of Public Health
published between 2001 and 2013 (see Cloos, 2015).
Following Foucaults writings, postcolonial and cultural
studies, I suggest that contemporary public health practices
participate in reinforcing and reconfiguring racial differ-
ence. In addition, they propose and broadcast new racial
meanings through knowledge-making processes and knowl-
edge transfer (e.g., campaigns, education, prevention). In so
doing, public health discourses continue to feed the debate
about human races with scientific truths; a debate that
started with modern colonialisms about three centuries ago.
I also suggest that public health transmits very ambiguous if
not paradoxical messages about the links between race
and health/disease, and about the nature of racial differ-
ence. I discuss some of the ways in which public health dis-
courses, through racialization, attempt to discipline bodies,
and provide schemes by which individuals and groups have
the possibility to represent themselves and others. As sug-
gested by Wright (2009), the body can be seen as a political
space, a space of application of biopedagogies. Moreover, I
suggest that the body is also a political site that permits the
production of difference that refers not only to the individu-
als but also to the group. I show how public health practices
put into operation a process of racialization to inform and
attempt to convince people how they should understand
their bodies and how they should behave to experience a
healthy life.
Public Health as Discourse: Between
Power and Knowledge
From the 18th century, public health gradually became a
field of knowledge, following the application of various
disciplines to the health domain and the transition from an
individual into a collective perspective (Fassin, 2005).
Public health, together with medicine, also expresses a bio-
power, a political right to make live and let die, which
was put in place by end of the 18th century to govern
humans (Foucault, 1976, 1997). Foucault suggests this new
political power is made up of two technologies: The first,
which emerged in the 17th century, looked at disciplining
individual bodies and, the second, which came to be added
to the first in the following century, aimed at controlling life
events (e.g., births, deaths, diseases). The mechanisms of
disciplinary technology are to scrutinize, inspect, train, and
use individual bodies for surveillance purposes and to
improve work performance. Foucault referred to biopoli-
tics as the other side of this power on life to control popu-
lation phenomena by the establishment of mechanisms such
as prediction, statistical estimations, and global measures to
intervene, modify, or lower morbidity and prolong life. This
biopolitic is carried out through institutions such as the medico-
hygienist apparatus whose function consists in regulating
public hygiene through the coordination of health care, cen-
tralization of information, normalization of knowledge,
education, and the medicalization of population (Foucault,
1997).
Public health is viewed in this context as a discourse
(Foucault, 1969), a notion that allows reflection and link-
ages between practices (i.e., representations, disciplinary
techniques, and biopedagogies), objects of knowledge, and
power. A discourse can be seen as an ensemble of heteroge-
neous devices (including institutions, norms, techniques,
types of classification, and modes of characterization) that
determines the way one names, analyzes, and explains an
object, thus ensuring its formation at a moment of history
(Foucault, 1969). The discourse shapes the object of knowl-
edge (about health and disease)), the way to talk and think
about it, and the way in which to behave in relation to it
(Hall, 2003). The public health discourse engages practices
that transform a situation into a priority or a problem
that is perceived as pathological and that deserves interven-
tion and change. The notion of healthicization allows the
understanding of the emergence of a public health prob-
lem such as obesity or diabetes through practices that lead
to both (scientific) knowledge and intervention. The opera-
tions associated with this process give a populational and
collective dimension to a medical issue as a result of public
health techniques and studies, media, and political fields.
The medical language is progressively transformed into
terms such as screening, frequency, risk, prevalence and
incidence, and preventive measuresterms that address
population and not individual cases. Healthicization allows
connections between a group and the body, and between
scientific knowledge and intervention.
As indicated on the U.S. Department of Health & Human
Services (HHS) website (www.hhs.gov), federal health
agencies are involved in the design and implementation of
initiatives and strategies that look at informing, educating,
and increasing awareness among the population on selected
diseases and health-related practices and behaviors.
Guidelines and information are provided to the public
through various national health institutions with regard to
physical activity and nutrition, healthy lifestyle, immuniza-
tion, and health screenings. Governmental institutions fund
projects and provide grants, collaborate with academic
institutions in the knowledge-making process, and create
regional partnerships. The Surgeon General, who is pre-
sented as the national reference for public health, is an offi-
cer of the U.S. army and is nominated by the President. In
2011, the Office of the Surgeon General released the National
Prevention Strategy, a plan that aims at improving the health
of citizens through various priorities such as tobacco control,
preventing drug abuse, healthy eating, and active living. This
plan is addressed to all segments of the nation therefore mak-
ing all responsible (i.e., state and local policy makers, busi-
ness people, health care providers, communities, families,
Cloos 381
and individuals) for improving the nations well-being. One
of the proposed strategic directions to improve public health
is to eliminate health disparities in focusing on communi-
ties at greatest risk such as racial/ethnic minority groups
(U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2011).
Biopedagogies can be seen as discursive practices that
are mobilized by such public health institutions and that
take part in the healthicization process. In the framework of
the obesity epidemic, Wright (2009) argues that both
individuals and population are affected by normalizing and
regulating practices that are disseminated through various
social institutions such as schools, media, and government.
Consequently, individuals are subjected to surveillance and
self-monitoring based on knowledge and instruction on
how to act to be healthy and protect themselves and oth-
ers from such risks. Biopedagogies are viewed as practices
that function as part of biopower, and, as such, can influ-
ence peoples beliefs and behaviors in relation to their bod-
ies (Harwood, 2009; Wright, 2009). Furthermore, as
Foucault (1997) has argued, with the emergence of bio-
power, another power came to be inscribed in the mecha-
nisms of the modern state: racism.
The Racialization of U.S Public Health
The U.S. health domain is intimately associated with the
idea of race (Afifi & Breslow, 1994; Meckel, 1997). The
OMH was created in 1986 with the mission of improving
and protecting the health of racial and ethnic minorities
through policies and programs. Since 2000, the reduction of
racial and ethnic disparities in health has been on the
agenda of Healthy People, a national program that is rede-
fined every 10 years. This initiative attempts to increase
general awareness of the problem, and creates networks
between governmental institutions, communities, and pri-
vate and public sectors for individuals to make informed
decisions based on scientific knowledge.
The Racialized Body: A Political Space Between
Life and Death
Race can be seen as a form of differentiation that is used
to produce differences and distinctions (Dorlin, 2009). Like
sexuality, racial difference refers to bodies and popula-
tions, and this reason partly explains why it is attractive to
the health domain (Foucault, 1997). Furthermore, as we
will see, it allows the application of disciplinary and regula-
tive practices. According to Foucault (1997), races emanate
from racism, a technology of the modern state that is a
power to death; a power that appeared with the emergence
of biopower in modern states. The first function of racism,
says Foucault, is the fragmentation of humanity into races
while its second function is to establish a biological rela-
tionship between ones own life and the death of an other. It
is therefore essential to understand that the body became
not only a disciplinary site for biopower but also a discur-
sive site to create difference and produce racialized
knowledge (Hall, 2003) as a form of knowledge that accom-
panied the concomitant development of nation states in
Europe and North America (Loomba, 2005). It had become
clear that the body had become a site that informs, estab-
lishes, and explains difference (Appiah, 1998).
Racialization can be understood as an operation that con-
structs in racial terms both the object of knowledge and the
intervention. This process is made of practices that trans-
form the population into groups according to color tags
(Appiah, 1998). This operation, which consists of identify-
ing and positioning subjects and groups in relation to each
other according to body features, deletes individual subjec-
tivities under the same label: In this sense, a person becomes
racialized and an object among other objects (Fanon,
1952/1971). Racialization allows the inscription of differ-
ence in the process of sanitary problematization and, conse-
quently, permits disease characterization (or behavior, life,
and mortality) in fragmenting the population while catalyz-
ing healthicization. An example of this is when it is sug-
gested that thirty-one percent of Hispanic children, 23% of
Black children, 16% of White children, and 14% of Asian
children [are] obese (Thorpe etal., 2004, p. 1497). This
process has a tendency to homogenize and fix groups and
exclude those who do not respond to institutionalized norms
nor to required statistical methods (Cloos, 2012). While
identifying problems and elaborating interventions, public
health practices and institutions produce an other. In so
doing, public health gives racialized bodies more than a
biological significance. Following Wrights (2009) sugges-
tions regarding biopedagogies, public health practices also
give a social meaning that relates to identity or subjectivity.
In this sense, biopedagogies are part of a discourse that
shapes diseases and behavior-related knowledge and repre-
sentations about the groups that are associated to it, and, by
extension, individuals who are identified to these groups.
The Production of Stereotypes and the Making
up of People
Do you think of yourself as (1) White; (2) Black or African
American; (3) Hispanic or Latino; (4) Asian American; (5)
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; or (6) American Indian or Native
American. (Neumark-Sztainer, Story, Hannan, & Croll, 2002,
p. 845)
Since 1790, the United States always collected information
with regard to the category of race in censuses although
some categories change regularly (Oppenheimer, 2001;
Richomme, 2007). At present, as indicated in the above
quote, the race/ethnicity classification refers to six cate-
gories based on the norms of the Office of Management and
382 Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 15(5)
Budget, a federal office. Therefore, this practice is agreed
on at the political level. By using race, public health puts
into operation a process of classification that aims not only
at identifying people based on physical and/or cultural cri-
teria but also at locating them in relation to each other.
Reciprocally, people identify themselves to these labels in
the absence of any rigorous kind of criteria that would
define who has come to be considered as White or
Black or Asian. It seems that racial identity became a
convention in the United States despite its contextual
(Oppenheimer, 2001), arbitrary (Krieger, 2003), and blurred
(Appiah, 1998) aspects. Moreover, no consistent racial
groupings emerge when people are sorted by physical and
biological characteristics (U.S. Department of Health &
Human Services, 2001, p. 7). It also has to be acknowledged
that boundaries between race, ethnicity, and culture population is described according to demographics (popu-
appear to be porous in public health studies and even inter-
changeable (Cloos, 2011, 2012, 2015).
Fassin (2005) indicates that public health puts into oper-
ation a process of culturalization through the production of
statements about the culture of the subjects to which the
intervention is directed. This process attempts to transform
peoples representations, beliefs, and practices so they can
be healthier or live longer. One consequence of such process
is the characterization of both the disease and group
(Hacking, 1992). Consider, as an example, the following
excerpt from Guarnaccia etal. (1993) cited in the 2001
Report of the Office of the Surgeon General: some Latino
patients, especially women from the Caribbean, display
ataque de nervios, a condition that includes screaming
uncontrollably, attacks of crying, trembling, and verbal or
physical aggression (p. 11)). I agree with Hall (2003) that
the creation of stereotypes plays a major role in the represen-
tation and the production of racial difference. This opera-
tion helps to reduce some groups to a few characteristic and
simplistic images, which confirm the symbolic order.
Public health knowledge and recommendations that inform
intervention are produced by practices that identify and target
specific groups, their problems, and their needs. Racial cate-
gories are used to allow the identification of a public health
problem and to design an intervention. Reciprocally, racial
categories become part of the problem because of associations
with specific diseases or certain behaviors or, alternatively,
because of hypothesized biological differences, as in, bio-
logically, racial differences in insulin action have been docu-
mented (Thorpe etal., 2004, p. 1499).
Racialized knowledge is often produced in an oppositional
manner, reproducing binaries such as White/non-White or
Whites/minorities. For example, Needle etal. (2003) sug-
gest that there is a disproportionate ongoing HIV/AIDS cri-
sis in racial/ethnic minority populations (p. 970). As a result,
millions of people are potentially associated with a crisis.
Despite the fact that, among them, the vast majority is not
and will never be affected by HIV, such discursive practice
brings together, in the same bag, millions of very different
people in terms of language, socio-economic status, prac-
tice, and occupation. Another example from the National
Prevention Strategy (National Prevention Council, 2011)
illustrates these practices of opposition and difference: As
compared with non-Hispanic Whites, African Americans
show high rates of homicide and sexually transmitted infec-
tions (STIs), while American Indians have a particular
problem of alcohol-related death, and Hispanics, of STIs
and childbearing. The U.S. public health carries out a pro-
cess of racialization: It produces racialized groups that are
characterized in terms of behaviors and diseases, and recip-
rocally, it gives racial meanings and a social dimension to
disease. These practices are well illustrated in the OMH and
the 2001 Report of the Surgeon General. Each minority
lation number, age, sex), history, geography, socio-
economic characteristics (education, income, mean family
size), behaviors (alcohol, tobacco, obesity), causes of mor-
tality, and risk factors for some diseases (cancer, diabetes,
cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, etc.). The characteriza-
tion of American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) is
made through statistics for selected indicators and diseases,
and comparison is made with the non-Hispanic Whites
who are the reference:
American Indians and Alaska Natives have an infant death rate
60 percent higher than the rate for Caucasians. AI/ANs are twice
as likely to have diabetes as Caucasians. AI/ANs also have
disproportionately high death rates from unintentional injuries
and suicide. In 2010, the tuberculosis rate for AI/NAs was 5.8, as
compared to 2.0 for the White population. (OMH, n.p.)
Based on the profile presented by the OMH, we come to
know racialized groups through very schematic pictures
made of both spatialization and statistics. This form of
knowledge is about practices made by comparison, inclu-
sionexclusion, generalization, diagrams, rates, norms, dis-
eases, behaviors, average, life, mortality, and prediction. In
this way, we come to know Black and White people
through obesity rates. Black people are represented in a
way that suggests that they are generally fatter than
Whites. Similarly, we come to know White people
somehow by default and in comparison with the Other, as
in this excerpt, in comparison with White women in this
sample, African American women were somewhat less edu-
cated, younger, much less likely to be married, more likely
to be obese, and more likely to be living in poverty (Dole
etal., 2004, p. 1359) or this other one, [the] African
American race was found to be the stronger risk factor for
HIV infection (Clements-Nolle etal., 2001, p. 917). The
racialization of public health practices allows for the cre-
ation of knowledge and the production of stereotypes that
serve the purpose of the intervention into specific segments
of the population.
Cloos 383
The Racialization of Biopedagogies
Federal agencies broadcast information, messages, and rec-
ommendations about health issues through radio networks,
private and public sectors, community-based organizations,
nutrition and recreational programs, press releases, and,
more recently, health information technologies (websites,
tweets, Facebook, SMS messages). Wright (2009) suggests
that the meanings associated with the body are constituted
in various pedagogical sites and that such sites have the
power to influence learners and how they come to see and
act on themselves and others. As such a site, the OMH sup-
ports several initiatives that are tailored to each minority
group and that promote what is referred to as healthy
behaviors. For example, the OMH promoted 9 A Day, a
national campaign to encourage African American men to
eat 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. African
American men are among the most seriously affected by
diet-related chronic diseases, and have the lowest overall
consumption of fruits and vegetables (HHS, 2003). In
collaboration with other federal health agencies, the
OMH(http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.
aspx?lvl=4&lvlID=50) also aimed at
preventing, treating and controlling Hepatitis B viral infections
in Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.
More specifically, this plan will aim at educating the community
about risk factors and encourage testing through community
based organizations, culturally based interventions, educational
materials, and the training of health care providers.
The notion of culture can be located at the intersection
of knowledge and intervention. Like the idea of race, cul-
ture can be seen not only as the explanation for but also the
solution to the problem. Earp etal. (2002) reported on a
culturally appropriate intervention to promote mammog-
raphy among African American women living in rural set-
tings. This meant that the intervention had to be sensitive to
the culture of the targeted (racialized) population. In other
words, some kind of cultural knowledge about the group
had to be acquired with regard to, for example, language,
histories, beliefs, values, and cultural identity (U.S.
Department of Health & Human Services, 2001); coping
response styles (Whaley, 2004); social norms regarding
body shape, eating, and physical activity patterns (Neumark-
Sztainer etal., 2002); and cultural factors that could explain
disparities and could therefore be relevant for the design of
an intervention dedicated to eliminate disparities. In short,
while shaping the intervention, cultural and behavioral fac-
tors both describe and produce the group.
The Native Diabetes Wellness Program is another exam-
ple that illustrates the racialization of public health prac-
tices and the mobilization of the notion of culture within
recommendations to be healthy. In this context, the meaning
given to healthy bodies and communities encompasses
racial and cultural identification. To think about ones self
as healthy requires to think about ones self as racialized
and culturalized subject, to identify as part of a racial and
cultural group. This program is part of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (http://www.cdc.
gov/diabetes/projects/ndwp/about_ndwp.htm) and aims at
promoting health among AI/AN communities through the
re-appropriation of traditional knowledge, practices, and
food while reclaiming cultures and identity. Based on this
program, high prevalence of diabetes among AI/ANs stems
from historical and social changes in relationships with the
land, which affect ways of living. Therefore, the solution
for better health resides in the return to cultural traditions
such as harvesting traditional food, dancing, playing games,
and listening to elders. For that purpose, the CDC offers
grants for Traditional food projects that look at restoring
traditional ways of living. According to this perspective,
tradition is the way for AI/ANs to think about themselves as
healthy and their body, as free of diabetes. Culture as
tradition becomes the solution to rediscover health and
identity among AI/ANs, and the notion of sovereignty is
reduced to traditional food recipes, as suggested by the
CDC (2013). A return to a mythical past, food tradition, and
group cohesion seems to be the solution, keeping in mind
that health is the responsibility of AI/ANs.
Everhealthier Women is a third concrete example that
illustrates the operationalization and the racialization of
biopedagogies. This project is a mobile web app that aims
at helping minority women take control of their health in
managing health tasks (e.g., screening and prevention
behaviors) for themselves and others through new technolo-
gies (mobile web and SMS text messaging). This project
won first prize in the Reducing Cancer Among Women of
Color Challenge from the OMH, in partnership with a
Health Information Technology national agency (http://
www.hhs.gov/news/press/2013pres/05/20130515b.html).
The message used by this technology is racialized in pro-
viding the following information: African American
women are more likely to die from cancers; Latina women
are more likely to get cervical cancer; Asian women are less
likely to access regular cancer screenings. The technology
recommends some actions to individual users, according to
age and gender (e.g., protect your skin, breastfeed your
baby, eat healthy, get active, manage stress, use
condoms, get tested for HIV, get important shots, talk
with your doctor about depression). The user can have
more information about each action and can be reminded
of an action to be taken by providing a date, a telephone
number, or email address, and the person can share informa-
tion with her network.
The racialization of biopedagogies allows the reaching
of specific targets, (racialized) bodies and groups, accord-
ing to identified problems and priorities although basic
health instructions remain universal. This means that if
384 Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 15(5)
biopedagogies, through the ideas of race and culture, tend to
oppose and reproduce difference, health as an ideal (often
represented by the image of the healthy White) and
related behaviors remain the same for all. However, it seems
that some barriers impede this quest. Racism (and not only
racialization) continues to affect health care practices in the
sense that some would benefit from some services while
others not (van Ryn & Fu, 2003). In brief, in the United
States, the governmental public healths cultural approach
to disease tends to ignore the political and social contexts
from which diseases emerge.
Conclusion
In this article, my attempt was to show that in U.S. public
health, the process of racialization comes to be added to
healthicization to shape knowledge and intervention. In other
words, public health practices, including biopedagogies, are
racialized. This means that people are instructed on how to
live and behave with reference to physical (and/or cultural)
attributes. In so doing, public health still participates in the
reproduction of difference and otherness. Furthermore, in
contemporary U.S. public health studies, some authors still
see race as a risk factor that is only partly modifiable.
Today, cultural, behavioral, and biological factors are part of
the explanations of racial disparities in health although some
authors point to racism and socio-economic factors as the
main reasons for such inequalities (Dressler, Oths, & Gravlee,
2005). Health practices therefore participate in reinforcing
the biological and/or cultural dimension of the idea of race.
According to Appiah (1996), racial labels can have negative
consequences because they are associated with historical and
social attributes that mark people and groups. The public
health discourses produce social identities in constructing the
other while shaping the self. Public health practices are
part of a discourse that both produces and gives meaning to
racial difference: The White is globally presented as the
reference and the norm, the one who has the better health, the
wealthier. In so doing, public health and other health institu-
tions participate in shaping identities based on an idea of dif-
ference that was invented centuries ago within the framework
of modern colonization.
Much remains to be said about the way public health and
biopedagogies are or are not effective in the determination
of identities and peoples health-related practices, espe-
cially in a context of power relationships still shaped by
colonialism and racism. Azzarito (2007) refers to The
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo to discuss the tensions
and paradoxes created by health education messages (i.e.,
within the framework of the fitness movement in the 1950s-
70s United States) and expressed by Acosta, a Mexican
immigrant. According to Azzarito, Acosta associated fitness
with Whiteness, American identity, social success, and
citizenshipan image that created a feeling of identity loss
that lead to practices of resistance to assimilation. In the
end, we must agree with Hacking (1992) that types of per-
sons are created with the labels and corresponding descrip-
tions created by the experts. In limiting the number of
categories, it seems that public health limits the possibilities
of being. The imaginary world (Appadurai, 1996) of U.S.
public health is often presented as static, binary, and in
which the norm is racialized. De Boeck and Plissart (2005)
reminds us that, while looking for homogenization, the state
has continually produced difference allowing for exclusion
and stigmatization.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The
author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada for its PhD scholarship leading to his reflection
on the racialization of U.S. Public Health.
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Author Biography
Patrick Cloos (medical doctor, Universit Libre de Bruxelles,
Belgium; PhD at Universit de Montral) is an assistant professor
in the School of Social Work at the University de Montral. His
perspective is interdisciplinary, and he favors critical and postco-
lonial approaches. His research interests include the socio-anthro-
pology of (public) health, racism, immigration, (post)colonial-
isms, and the Caribbean. Currently, one of his research projects is
funded by the Fonds de recherche du Qubec Socit et Culture
and focuses on the difficulties and barriers encountered by new
Haitian immigrants in Quebec and the ways in which racialization
and ethnicization penetrate both the elaboration of their experi-
ences and governmental institutions.