Reframing the ‘securitization of public health’: a critical race perspective on post-9/11 bioterrorism preparedness in the US

Abstract

This paper builds on the work of critical health scholars and practitioners who have examined the ‘securitization’ of public health in the US during the post-9/11 period. Adopting a critical race perspective, I delve more deeply into the racialized dimensions of this securitization, analyzing how the emergence of a bioterror-framed view of disease has mobilized a disease-terror imaginary comprised of longstanding suspicion towards bodies of color coupled with more recent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment. I demonstrate that the incorporation of the central figure of this imaginary – the bioterrorist – into US public health discourse has reconfigured ideas about disease carriers as potentially violent and malicious, in turn reconfiguring approaches to disease control that rely on suspicion and securitized health surveillance. US public health adoption of this orientation towards disease control has, I argue, the potential to exacerbate targeting, stigma, and exclusionary practices towards individuals and populations deemed suspicious vis-à-vis this imaginary. My work, in examining the racial discourses of bioterror that shape ‘securitization’, aims to expand the analytical tools that US public health administrators and practitioners draw on to remain vigilant in ensuring that it serves all of its publics in an equitable manner.

Keywords:

• Race
• disease
• terrorism
• bioterrorism
• biodefense

Acknowledgments

I am infinitely grateful to the wonderful feedback I received on drafts of this manuscript from Rachel Van, Matthew Eisler, Carole Browner, Emily Cheng, Stacy Macias, Cherisse Nadal, and Christy Spackman.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The blood ban originally pertained to Haitians who had emigrated after 1977, the presumed start of the epidemic in Haiti, but on 5 February 1990 was extended to ban all Haitians, regardless of citizenship status, from donating blood, before finally being officially lifted on 5 December 1990.

2. While the populations targeted through this ethnic–religious–nationality conglomerate are better seen as disaggregated or designated by more accurate groupings such as ‘Southwest Asian and North African’ (or ‘SWANA’), I use the terminology ‘Arab-Middle Eastern-Muslim’ (critically) to denote dominant constructions of these populations.

3. Other names include: ‘suicide disease carrier’, ‘suicide disease bomber’, and, in relation to smallpox, ‘smallpox martyr’.