Gain Your Copy Fit To Be Citizens?: Public Health And Race In Los Angeles, 1879-1939 Constructed By Natalia Molina Distributed As Readable Copy

book examines the intersection of public health and racial formation in Los Angeles from thesGreat Depression.
It is an important book for anyone interested in science studies and fits well with Nayan Shahs Contagious Divides .
The book takes a comparative approach including discussions of Japanese, Chinese and Mexican Americans, I wish it had discussed Filipino experiences more, The book examines the ways in which Public Health institutions understood and racialized diseases how these understandings and applications changed over time the effect of these discourses and interventions on Latino and Asian communities and in the final chapter the way Mexican Americans in El Congresso appropriated this discourse to fight for better housing.
The conclusion discussed the relevance of the racialization of space for fights over housing and gentrification today, There is also a great section on birthing experiences and the use of midwifery in these communities, I recommend this book to medical doctors and soontomedical doctors Kohar, Zac Those interested in public housing fights will enjoy chapter.
I wish the work had discussed resistance more explicitly in the earlier chapters, instead of implying the majority of resistance emerged under the civil rights frame of citizenship in thes.
A thoughtful examination of public health and race in latenineteenthcentury earlytwentiethcentury Los Angeles, Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Fit to Be Citizens demonstrates how both science and public health shaped the meaning of race in the early twentieth century.
Through a careful examination of the experiences of Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, Natalia Molina illustrates the many ways local health officials used complexly constructed concerns about public health to demean, diminish, discipline, and ultimately define racial groups.
She shows how the racialization of Mexican Americans was not simply a matter of legal exclusion or labor exploitation, but rather that scientific discourses and public health practices played a key role in assigning negative racial characteristics to the group.
The book skillfully moves beyond the binary oppositions that usually structure works in ethnic studies by deploying comparative and relational approaches that reveal the racialization of Mexican Americans as intimately associated with the relative historical and social positions of Asian Americans, African Americans, and whites.
Its rich archival grounding provides a valuable history of public health in Los Angeles, living conditions among Mexican immigrants, and the ways in which regional racial categories influence national laws and practices.
Molinas compelling study advances our understanding of the complexity of racial politics, attesting that racism is not static and that different groups can occupy different places in the racial order at different times.
thoughtprovoking and

wellwritten. Natalie Molina did her research and we should all thank her for it, Natalia Molinas Fit to Be Citizens: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles,, traces the connection between the rise of public health policies in Los Angeles and their connection to the racialization of immigrant groups, including the Chinese and Japanese, but most especially Mexicans.
Molina argues that “the history of public health in Los Angeles demonstrates how race demarcates the boundaries of social membership.
By systematically associating dirt, disease, and disorder with immigrant status, latenineteenth and earlytwentiethcentury city and county public health officials redefined citizenship in racialized and medicalized terms.
” Specifically, Molina contends that “by examining public health as a site of racialization, we will see how public health workers at the local level contributed to the construction of racial categories.
” Molina shows how public health in Los Angeles came to affect national perceptions of, and responses to, nonwhite citizens and residents.


For a detailed look at Molinas argument, click the spoiler section,

Molina organizes her argument in largely chronological terms, in five chapters, showing in tandem the growth of the office of public health in Los Angeles and its impact on immigrant and minority populations, being first the Chinese and then the Japanese, and lastly Mexicans/Mexican Americans.
In the first chapter Molina argues that “as a fledgling institution, public health in Los Angeles had a dual mission: promoting and preserving the biological health of the citizens and promoting and preserving the economic and cultural health of the city.
” This latter mission, however, resulted in officials seeking to preserve the dominance of white citizens and casting policies aimed to deliver crushing blows to Chinese competitors, particularly launderers.
The shared vision for white officials of a rapidly growing Los Angeles “excluded ethnic populations,” and “city ordinances helped sustain segregation in the business community.
” Public health policies contributed to Chinese discrimination, labelling the Chinese as disease carriers who could never become Americanized.
Because the board of health members were doctors and health experts who had approval by the mayor, the public viewed their actions as motivated objectively by science, though fears of yellow peril explain their motivations more purely.
Chinese were smeared as unhygienic disease carriers, and Chinatowns filth was blamed on its residents, yet conditions were in actuality beyond Chinese control: the unfinished city sewage line ended and emptied there, the Chinese did not own the buildings it was absentee landlords who did not upkeep the properties, the Chinese had no legal recourse to address concerns and nowhere else to go in the city, and “structural improvements bypassed” them.
In a case of blaming the victim, the Chinese were held responsible for the unfortunate conditions which were the only options available to them.
In a blatant attempt to cripple Chinese launderers, city zoning laws targeted Chinese businesses, denying them extensions while granting them to whites, and laid precedence for future discriminatory legislation.


The second and third chapters deal with the growth of the Los Angeles County Health Department and its dealings towards Japanese, who like the Chinese were seen as unfit for citizenship, and Mexicans, who were seen as inferior but potentially Americanized, with the proper education.
Los Angeles didnt offer the traditional racial binary of whiteblack that was common in the East and Midwest, so health officials began to construct new racial categories to accommodate their conceptions of a racial hierarchy.
Additionally, health officials began associating public health with morality, using health as an “essential bulwark against social chaos and spiraling economic costs.
” Like Asians, Mexicans were viewed as disease carriers who threatened white society, and like the Chinese before them, their poor living conditions and health were viewed as a result of their primitive moral character rather than as a consequence of the poverty in which they were forced to live.
An outbreak of typhus inamong Mexican laborers solidified representations of Mexicans as disease carriers, resulting in increased calls for changes in national immigration policy.
Furthermore, “officials constructed the disease as uniquely Mexican using race as the organizing principle for understanding a serious disease” and “gave wide circulation to constructed categories of Mexicans as unclean, ignorant of basic hygiene practices, and unwitting hosts for communicable diseases.
” Nevertheless, the city focused its efforts, not on providing adequate care for Mexicans, but on educating Mexicans in how to become more Americanized and, therefore, in the eyes of whites, more hygienic.
Molina contends that “over time, the county health departments racialized policies institutionalized segregation, ”

Chapterdeals with the effects of the Great Depression on Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Whereas before Mexicans were viewed as having the potential to be Americanized, such notions began to change as the economy suffered.
Molina writes that “the marginal acceptance that stemmed from being a source of cheap labor disappeared as rapidly as the jobs Mexican laborers had been hired to fill.
” While thes saw discussions of Mexicans cultural inferiority, “the Depression brought a return to biological determinism, often linked to eugenicist arguments.
” Services once extended to Mexicans were suspended, Of course, things which were seen as inherently inferior in Mexicans were actually the result of “systemic inequalities such as segregation and dual labor market segmentation.
” Ironically, as Japanese and Chinese residents became less of a “visible threat” due to racist immigration bans they were looked at more favorably, giving Mexicans a “new position at the bottom of the racial hierarchy,” for “brown peril came into stark relief, coexisting with yellow peril.
” Disease was now used “not just to marginalize Mexicans but also to criminalize them,” leading to mass deportations even seeking modest charity could lead to deportation.
However, as chaptershows, Mexicans began to unite and demand better treatment, services, and housing, As they “came to see decent housing and good health as basic civil rights that should be extended equally to all members of society, they grew more overtly political and activist.
” New Deal programs encouraged Mexicans to seek federal funding and assistance, and organizations such as the National Congress of Spanish Speaking Peoples El Congreso filed claims on behalf of the Mexican American population.
Such acts revealed that Mexicans and Mexican Americans were not a transient, temporary presence in Los Angeles or elsewhere in the nation, but permanent fixtures with a voice and an investment in Americas future.


Molina advances existing scholarship by revealing how the scientific discourse of public health helped to shape categories of race and assisted in the oppression and disenfranchisement of nonwhite groups.
Relative to this, deportations of Depressionera Mexicans had previously been looked at by historians who rested their analyses on depictions of Mexicans as charity seekers, yet Molina shows “that the image of the sick and diseased Mexican also provided strong justification for deporting Mexicans and for constructing them as outside U.
S. social membership. ”

Fit to Be Citizens convincingly shows the connection between the discourse of public health, the racist misconceptions which misguided it, and the creation and characterization of racial categories for Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans.
At times, the narrative is so singularly focused on racial interpretations that the reader may get the sense of an incomplete picture, wondering if other factors, such as nativism or class prejudice, played just as large a part in public health policies.
Nevertheless, Molina draws clear lines connecting the racist rhetoric of eugenicists, the unequal treatment of nonwhites, and the government actions which assisted in creating the racial stereotypes which still rear their heads to this day.
When Donald Trump first announced his candidacy in June of, he said in his speech, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us, They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. ” The insinuation of Mexican immigrants as being morally inferior and a threat to American society seems like an echo from early twentiethcentury Los Angeles.
Apparently, Mexicans pose so great a threat that an equally great wall is needed to protect Americas security and culture.
Its easy enough to read between the lines and see shades of the brown peril that once motivated Angelenos to stem immigration and execute mass deportations and sterilizations.
Its easy to see, unfortunately, because we havent come that far, .