They justified slavery and, after its abolition,
second-class citizenship by insisting that blacks were incapa-ble of assuming any higher station in life. Too many differencesseparated the races. And here "different" unquestionablymeant "inferior." - P17
White physicians of the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies blamed the decline in black health on self-destructivebehavioral traits. In addition to discussions of weak constitu-tions and inherent susceptibility to disease, physicians ham-mered away at the black man‘s distaste for honest labor, fond-ness for alcohol, proclivity to crime and sexual vices, disregardfor personal hygiene, ignorance of the laws of good nutrition,
and total indifference to his own health. A standard feature ofthe vast majority of medical articles on the health of blackswas a sociomedical profile of a race whose members were rap-idly becoming diseased, debilitated, and debauched, and hadonly themselves to blame.‘ - P21