Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939
Author: Natalia Molina
ISBN: 9780520246492
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
Publisher: University of California Press
Publish Date: 2006
Subjects: History / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY), Medical / Public Health, Social Science / Anthropology / General, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General, Social Science / Sociology / Urban
This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Urban Studies & Class (URBN)), Raza Recource Centro (Location: Wall C, Shelf 5), Raza Recource Centro (Location: Wall C, Shelf 5)