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hospitals in New York City.45 Two of these hospitals served primarily minorities, African Americans at Harlem Hospital and Puerto Ricans at Metropolitan Hospital. Excluding visits for trauma and childbirth, one out of every four visits at Harlem Hospital was for asthma-related problems while at Metropolitan Hospital one out of seven visits dealt with asthma. All of the causes of asthma are still not known, but in the 1960s many psychiatrists attributed it to deep-seated emotional insecurities. They also thought that self-hatred was a common trait of ‘‘the black personality.’’ Putting the two together, researchers explained the increase in asthma at the two hospitals as the effect of the psychic damage induced by centuries of racial discrimination. Moreover, they thought that the civil rights movement simply exacerbated the problem, creating conflicts between what John Osmudson of the New York Times called ‘‘hostile feelings and dependent needs.’’ Because asthma was a reaction to psychological stress, it was easy to see why it would ‘‘arise among members of racial minority groups on whom civil rights activists focus.’’46 Yet, suppose the researchers had not assumed that asthma patients should or could be identified by race as well as by illness? A separate study examined the sensitivity of a group of New Yorkers to the newly discovered cockroach allergen. The study found that many more African Americans and Puerto Ricans tested positive to the allergen than did members of other groups. Further, positive reactions to the allergen corresponded to the severity of cockroach infestations in housing. Some commentators promptly pointed to the sanitary habits of poor, ethnic minorities as an explanation of these infestations. Nevertheless, a study of cockroach allergies in the Dominican Republic found that they were far more prevalent in wealthy children. Poor children lived in drafty wood frame homes with outdoor toilets 45
46
The information in this paragraph and the next comes from Greg Mitman’s, Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape our Lives and Landscapes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). The author was kind enough to let me read the manuscript before the book was published. John Osmudson, ‘‘Asthma Linked to Emotions,’’ New York Times, August 1, 1965, p. 25, cited in Mitman, Breathing Space.