Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes

228 Pages·2021·1.474 MB·English

by  James Doucet-Battle

SWEETNESS
IN THE BLOOD
Race¸ Risk¸ and
Type 2 Diabetes
JAMES DOUCET-BATTLE
|| SWEETNESS IN THE BLOOD ||
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Sweetness in
the Blood
RACE, RISK, AND TYPE 2 DIABETES
James Doucet- Battle
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
This project was supported in part by funding from the University of California
Presidential Faculty Research Fellowships in the Humanities, MR-15-328710.
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support
provided for the publication of this book by the University of California Office of
the President Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiative Funding, and the
UC Humanities Research Institute.
Portions of chapter 1 were originally published as “Ennobling the Neanderthal:
Racialized Texts and Genomic Admixture,” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative
and Relational Ethnic Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 61– 67. Portions of chapters 1, 5,
and 6 were originally published as “Bioethical Matriarchy: Race, Gender, and
the Gift in Genomic Research,” in “Nothing/More: Black Studies and Feminist
Technoscience,” a special issue of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 2, no. 2
(2016): 1– 28. Portions of chapter 4 and 6 were originally published as “Sweet
Salvation: One Black Church, Diabetes Outreach, and Trust,” Transforming
Anthropology 24, no. 2 (2016): 125– 35.
Copyright 2021 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401– 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978-1-5179-0848-5 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-0849-2 (pb)
Library of Congress record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055823.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
UMP BmB 2021
To my mother, Clara Doucet, born in the Land of Sugar,
Bayou Têche, Louisiana;
My first cultural anthropology professor, a translational
bridge between an Afro- French Creole past and the
African American reality;
And to my father, James Battle, born on Tobacco Road,
Rocky Mount, North Carolina,
who should have preceded me in scholarship,
but Jim Crow had other demands.
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Contents
Abbreviations ix
I ntroduction. Sugar’s Racial Project: xi
From Slavery to Diabetes
1 The At- Risk Ethnographer of Sweetness 1
2 Sweet Blood: Inventing the Prediabetic 23
3 A lgorithms of Risk and Race: Recruiting 51
Black Risk and Marketing Black Bodies
4 A Dark Past in Present Light: The Black Church, 75
Medicine, and Trust
5 T he Ascension of the Black Matriarch: 101
The Search for Metabolic Africa
C onclusion. The Racialized Pancreas: 133
Toward Biosocial Justice
Acknowledgments 153
A Subversive Glossary 157
Notes 161
Index 201
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Abbreviations
AACE/ACE American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists/
American College of Endocrinology
ACC American College of Cardiology
ACCORD Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes
ACP American College of Physicians
ADA American Diabetes Association
ADCES Association of Diabetes Care and Education
Specialists, formerly American Association of
Diabetes Educators (AADE)
ADVANCE Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease— Preterax
and Diamicron Modified Release Controlled
Evaluation
AHA American Heart Association
AROC area under the receiver operating characteristic curve
BMI body mass index
CBE Center for BioEntrepreneurship (University of
California, San Francisco)
CC cultural competence (training)/cultural competency
CDC Centers for Disease Control
CDE certified diabetes educator
CEE collaborative event ethnography
CHW community health worker
CRC Clinical Research Center (a pseudonym)
CRO clinical research organization
CTSA Center for Translational Science Awards
(National Institutes of Health)
|| ix