Everything about Blacklisting totally explained
A
blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a
verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to
ostracize them from a certain social circle. Conversely, a
whitelist is a list or compilation or list identifying entities that are accepted, recognised, or privileged.
Political context
The term
blacklisting is generally used in a pejorative context, as it implies that someone has been prevented from having legitimate access to something due to the whims or judgments of another. For example, a person being served with a
restraining order for having threatened another person wouldn't be considered a case of blacklisting. However, somebody who is fired for exposing poor working conditions in a particular company, and is subsequently blocked from finding work in that industry, may be considered to have been blacklisted. Blacklisting can and has been accomplished informally and by consensus of authority figures, and doesn't necessarily require a physical list or overt written record.
Hollywood blacklist
In American history, one of the most famous examples of blacklisting stemmed from an investigation launched in 1947 by the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) into
Communist influence on the motion picture industry. The first in the industry to be blacklisted, as a result of their refusal to provide evidence to HUAC, were a group known as the
Hollywood Ten, most of them
screenwriters, who had at one time or another been members of the
American Communist Party. Today, the best known of the Hollywood Ten is writer
Dalton Trumbo, who was barred from openly working in
Hollywood for over a dozen years as a result of his defiance of HUAC. (He continued to work under
pseudonyms and "fronts" until the revelation in 1960 that he'd written the script for
Spartacus.) Actor
John Garfield was one of the more famous Hollywood performers to have been blacklisted by major American film studios as a direct result of HUAC investigations and hearings.
Blacklisting may sometimes result in a
domino effect, as in the case of radio actress
Madeline Lee. Both Lee and her husband, actor
Jack Gilford, were blacklisted during the
McCarthy era after it was revealed that Lee had given a party in her house to raise funds for a group later labeled as a
Communist front. Though there was no suspicion that she'd ever been involved in any putatively "subversive" political causes (and though her real name was spelled differently), Lee became the target of thousands of protest phone calls to her network. Another actress,
Camilla Ashland, who appeared on the television show
Danger, physically resembled Madeline Lee; though she'd no political past, her network too became the target of protest phone calls. Madeline Pierce, a 20-year veteran of radio, who again had no political past, was also ultimately blacklisted.
Blacklist Festival
The Blacklist Festival is a three-day tribute to Art & Film. The Festival is held each year in South Lake Tahoe, CA and was original started by a group of filmmakers and artists under the productions of 1134 Films. The objective of the festival is to present original and unapologetic art and films. The film screening and art display is held inside MontBlue Casino and the music, after party and awards are held at various local venues. The Blacklist festival is forever dedicated to the people and arts that keep this world in balance.
Computing
For uses in computing, see
blacklist (computing)
Medical context
Blacklisting is multiple providers denying care to a certain patient or patients with a connotation of volition or willfulness. It is done in various ways for various reasons and isn't new. In 1907 the Transvaal Medical Union in South Africa blacklisted patients if they couldn't pay cash in advance. That was a physical list kept by the community of physicians. A physical list isn't necessary to blacklist patients, but there have been other efforts to do that. For instance, in the United States the web site http://www.doctorsknow.us was set up to blacklist any patient who had filed a suit against a physician. That effort was extended off shore to a site at http://www.litipages.com, a site that encourages doctors to consider avoiding patients who are listed in their database
(External Link
). Those both are physical lists that blacklist patients who have complained or sued their healthcare providers.
There are less formal and less visible blacklists as well. For instance, an organization called "Sufferers of Iatrogenic Neglect
(External Link)" knows of 40 cases where patients claim they've suffered on two counts: one, from the original human medical error, and two, because they complained about it and as a result got blacklisted. In West London, Rafat Saeed had difficulty finding a GP and says, “… it's very easy for a doctor to blacklist a patient through the Family Health Services Authority”
(External Link). Angelique Omega wrote in her blog, "I was once told in a phone call by a Renown E.R. nurse, after she very quickly looked up my name in their computer, that I'd better not ever show my face there ever again. This was after I'd filed complaints …"
(External Link)
Data sharing also can cause patients to become blacklisted. Data sharing makes it easy to get labeled as a "problem patient" without anyone adding a name to a list. Repeat patients who are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, or patients with chronic conditions or mental illness, can get labeled as "problem patients" in computer systems such as HealthConnect or Epic that hold the records of patients and can make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to get appointments for care. Such systems have no borders making this a global problem
(External Link).
Even without data sharing, collegial loyalty, watching each other's backs, can be enough to result in the denial of care to certain patients. Consider the patient who has been injured by a healthcare provider. Patients with
iatrogenic illnesses often can't get a record made of their injuries and often can't get treatment. Trudy Newman in her article "Deadly Medical Practices"
(External Link) described the cause as being physicians having a stronger allegiance to each other than to their patients. They are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of iatrogenic injuries by diagnosing or treating them. A patient with iatrogenic injuries can go from doctor to doctor to doctor without getting diagnosed or treated and never know why. Without a list or any communication between physicians, collegial loyalty by itself results in patients with certain kinds of problems being blacklisted.
However, the term blacklist does connote volition or willfulness. A new and unrecognized disease resulting in patients being unable to find treatment might not be considered blacklisting unless inclination or personal belief or the equivalent had to do with why treatment either wasn't found or was unreasonably difficult to find.
An episode of
Seinfeld, "
The Package", shows Elaine as being listed as "difficult" on her chart, causing her to have trouble finding a doctor who will see her, eventually ending up in a rural doctor's office, only to be rejected once more.
In the
UK the term blacklisted also is used in the
NHS to denote
blacklisted medicines that are not allowed to be prescribed on NHS prescriptions.
Blacklisting is tactic used in economic warfare which can be used against neutral government and companies that operate therein. In order to compel a change in policies by neutral government and companies based there, one belligerent in a conflict may threaten to prohibit their operations after a conflict is over.
Further Information
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