Whiteness and the co-option of difference: The hegemonic language of health disparities and #HealthCommSoWhite
COVID-19 pamphlet in Bangla targeting migrant workers in Qatar In a piece published in Communication Theory in 2007, titled " Communicating about culture and health: Theorizing culture-centered and cultural sensitivity approaches ," I had outlined the hegemonic forms of co-option of culture into health communication. The dominant approach to health communication, embedded in the individualizing logic of whiteness, turns to cultural essentialism to target diverse cultures with messages that are supposedly aligned with cultural values. In this essay, I argued that this form of incorporating cultural values props up and reproduces the hegemony of whiteness, keeping intact its individualizing logics. The dominant approach to health communication addressing health disparities falls within this cultural sensitivity framework. Cultural characteristics are extracted and then turned into the sites of targeting through communication messages that are designed to respond to the cultur