CBH Talk | “Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease” with Aisha Beliso-De Jesús and Elizabeth Hinton
“Excited delirium syndrome” is a controversial medical diagnosis often used in cases of police encounters that end in sudden death, especially those involving Black and Brown people. It was famously used by Derek Chauvin’s legal defense team to justify his killing of George Floyd.
In her new book, Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, anthropologist Aisha Beliso-De Jesús delves into the fabrication of this largely discredited syndrome and draws direct connections between its use and the systemic racism ingrained in law enforcement and medical examiner practices. Beliso-De Jesús stumbled upon the topic while researching the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions, and ties these two subjects together in a book that sits at the intersection of anthropology, Afro-Caribbean religions, and memoir.
People diagnosed with excited delirium are said to have demonstrated “superhuman strength,” considered impervious to pain, and are said to become aggressive, excited, sweaty, and agitated. It is fatal heart failure that kills them, examiners say, not forceful police restraints. Join Beliso-De Jesús as she brings her scholarly and personal perspectives to the topic, uncovering the links between excited delirium syndrome and the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions.
The conversation is led by Yale professor Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.
Participants
Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is the Olden Street Professor of American Studies at Princeton University and the chair of the Effron Center for the Study of America. A cultural and social anthropologist, her research on race, religion, and law enforcement spans the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Afro-Latiné circulations, and includes research on police officers and how Black and Brown communities are affected by police violence in the United States.
She joined the faculty at Princeton University after eight years at Harvard Divinity School where she was Professor of African American Religions and member of the Cuba Policy Committee at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, a faculty member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and on the faculty board of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
Her latest book, Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, examines the fabricated medical diagnosis of “excited delirium syndrome” and the use of this diagnosis to justify and erase police violence against Black and Brown communities. Exposing excited delirium syndrome’s flawed diagnostic criteria, she outlines its inextricable ties to the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions.
Her first book, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion won the 2015 Albert J. Raboteau Award for Best book in Africana Religions. Her forthcoming co-edited volume, The Anthropology of White Supremacy: A Reader, brings together anthropologists from across the globe to interrogate and dismantle the colonial, political, and economic structures of white supremacy, analyzing it as a global phenomenon. She is completing a book, Zombie Patrol: Policing African Diaspora Religions which examines the criminalization and racialization of Black and Brown religions in the U.S.
Dr. Beliso-De Jesús is the co-founder of the Center for Transnational Policing (CTP) at Princeton University, and Editor-In-Chief of Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal for the Association of Black Anthropologists. For over twenty years, she has worked with numerous grassroots, public policy, substance abuse, and other nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area advocating social justice issues, teen-parent support, alternative healing approaches for Latiné communities, and empowerment strategies for youth of color.
Elizabeth Hinton is Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University and Yale Law School. She is the author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America and America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Both books received numerous awards and recognition, including being named New York Times notable books. In addition to top scholarly journals such as Science, Nature, and the American Historical Review, Hinton’s articles and op-eds can be found in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Nation, and TIME. Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation. A member of the American Philosophical Society, Hinton serves as Founding Co-Director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at Harvard University.
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“Excited delirium syndrome” is a controversial medical diagnosis often used in cases of police encounters that end in sudden death, especially those involving Black and Brown people. It was famously used by Derek Chauvin’s legal defense team to justify his killing of George Floyd.
In her new book, Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, anthropologist Aisha Beliso-De Jesús delves into the fabrication of this largely discredited syndrome and draws direct connections between its use and the systemic racism ingrained in law enforcement and medical examiner practices. Beliso-De Jesús stumbled upon the topic while researching the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions, and ties these two subjects together in a book that sits at the intersection of anthropology, Afro-Caribbean religions, and memoir.
People diagnosed with excited delirium are said to have demonstrated “superhuman strength,” considered impervious to pain, and are said to become aggressive, excited, sweaty, and agitated. It is fatal heart failure that kills them, examiners say, not forceful police restraints. Join Beliso-De Jesús as she brings her scholarly and personal perspectives to the topic, uncovering the links between excited delirium syndrome and the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions.
The conversation is led by Yale professor Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.
Participants
Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is the Olden Street Professor of American Studies at Princeton University and the chair of the Effron Center for the Study of America. A cultural and social anthropologist, her research on race, religion, and law enforcement spans the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Afro-Latiné circulations, and includes research on police officers and how Black and Brown communities are affected by police violence in the United States.
She joined the faculty at Princeton University after eight years at Harvard Divinity School where she was Professor of African American Religions and member of the Cuba Policy Committee at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, a faculty member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and on the faculty board of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
Her latest book, Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, examines the fabricated medical diagnosis of “excited delirium syndrome” and the use of this diagnosis to justify and erase police violence against Black and Brown communities. Exposing excited delirium syndrome’s flawed diagnostic criteria, she outlines its inextricable ties to the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions.
Her first book, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion won the 2015 Albert J. Raboteau Award for Best book in Africana Religions. Her forthcoming co-edited volume, The Anthropology of White Supremacy: A Reader, brings together anthropologists from across the globe to interrogate and dismantle the colonial, political, and economic structures of white supremacy, analyzing it as a global phenomenon. She is completing a book, Zombie Patrol: Policing African Diaspora Religions which examines the criminalization and racialization of Black and Brown religions in the U.S.
Dr. Beliso-De Jesús is the co-founder of the Center for Transnational Policing (CTP) at Princeton University, and Editor-In-Chief of Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal for the Association of Black Anthropologists. For over twenty years, she has worked with numerous grassroots, public policy, substance abuse, and other nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area advocating social justice issues, teen-parent support, alternative healing approaches for Latiné communities, and empowerment strategies for youth of color.
Elizabeth Hinton is Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University and Yale Law School. She is the author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America and America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Both books received numerous awards and recognition, including being named New York Times notable books. In addition to top scholarly journals such as Science, Nature, and the American Historical Review, Hinton’s articles and op-eds can be found in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Nation, and TIME. Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation. A member of the American Philosophical Society, Hinton serves as Founding Co-Director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at Harvard University.
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