| Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 Volume 20 Contributor(s): Molina, Natalia (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520246497 ISBN-13: 9780520246492 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $34.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2006 Annotation: ""Fit to Be Citizens is tightly organized, crisply and clearly argued, and beautifully written throughout. Molina paints a vivid portrait of an understudied dimension of southern California social history."--David G. Gutierrez, author of "Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - West (ak, Ca, Co, Hi, Id, Mt, Nv, Ut, Wy) - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - General - Medical | Public Health |
| Dewey: 362.109 |
| LCCN: 2005016385 |
| Series: American Crossroads |
| Physical Information: 0.75" H x 6.06" W x 8.96" (0.90 lbs) 293 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Cultural Region - West Coast - Cultural Region - Southern California - Geographic Orientation - California - Locality - Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. Molina's 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. |