Syphilis only earned ‘innocent victim’ framing once it spread among whites.

Evidence

In the postwar years, the medical profession linked race to moralistic interpretations of veneral disease. The health establishment did not speak in the dispassionate tone of germ theory, nor did it make any effort to correlate the incidence of venereal disease with socioeconomic conditions. Fee observes that it was not until syphilis had reached epidemic proportions in the white community that Baltimore’s health officials began to redefine it as a disease that struck “innocent” victims, namely “the educated, respectable white population.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 824

Categorization

• XREF: This innocent-victim reframing pattern parallels how respectability discourse marks which bodies are deemed deserving of sympathy. — connects to: The West claims anti-imperialist language only when victims are white. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1179
• CANDY: A sharp, tweetable point: disease only became ‘innocent’ when it struck the white middle class.

Broader Connections

• The West claims anti-imperialist language only when victims are white. #exemplifies (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1179