Connections Between Old and New Los Angeles
We have been talking a lot about diseases in Los Angeles and the stigmas that surround these. While discussing “Fit to be Citizens” we have really delved into the perception of minorities and their connection with these diseases. Keeping in mind the discussions we have had about the justifications that health officials had, it makes me wonder if there are any connection in Los Angeles today that were also present in the 20s. Are there any immigration reform laws or ideas surrounding immigration that you think resemble the ideas and laws created by health workers during the 20s?
Even though I was not so surprised, I found it disgusting that politics would rewrite the truths about public disease in order to progress their own social agendas. It was scary to read. Instead of building up communities to stand against disease in the midst of medical epidemics--such as the tuberculosis outbreak-- politicians took hold of the fear and the randomly observed patterns to create associations between race and disease. These efforts to parallel immigration to disease broke communities apart, pushing society's understandings and abilities to recover even more out of reach. I think targeting associations/ stigmas around disease are definitely found in modern day Los Angeles. I think mental illness is too commonly associated/ defined as a disease of the homeless. Many homeless individuals are forced to be homeless because of mental illness, but not all homeless people are mentally ill. However, the rhetoric surrounding the homeless community has isolated the individuals to be feared, hated, disgusted, ignored, rather than helped.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading fit to be citizens, I have found the public health department in the 20's to be disgraceful and unfit. They marginalized and separated people by race and through disease and stigmatization and shaped the way the general public viewed certain races and immigrants in general. The laws put on by the public health department were horrible, made no sense in a modern context, and were offensive. With that being said, however, I do not think that there are many laws today surrounding immigration that are in any way similar to the laws passed in the 1920's by the health department. I do believe that the city of Los Angeles in particular needs to focus more on persisting city issues (mainly homelessness) over a lot of things that are currently being prioritized.
ReplyDeleteThrough the history and narratives presented in Fit to Be Citizens it is clear that the way that health officials dealt with health in immigrants was directly associated with race. White Supremacy was in full flesh in Los Angeles and it took place in a city that was primarily white, but through the data we realized that many people of color whether that me immigrants from Asia or Latin American were labeled as white to cover certain problems were clearly too obvious. The book pointed out and left no doubt to how certain events progressed through the lens of white health officials gettig their way and subsequently eradicating and blaming certain groups for action they couldn't necessarily control. The associations and stereotypes that followed certain races and groups were not made by their actions and instead were only made and created by white people leading to major problems.
ReplyDeleteAs we have been reading fit to be citizens, in class I believe the PHD in the 20's has done what we see very often in politics and that is one group witnessing the rise of others and changing things around whether they be laws, taxes, or policies in an effort to keep those rising groups down. No different than when blacks were fighting during the civil rights era, these people fighting for equality were labeled as "unhuman" and I think its disgusting that one group has ruled America for so long that laws and many other things have been put in place to keep this group in power. As for comparing what the PHD did to what is currently going on, I do not think it is nearly as blatant and in some instances as harsh, but I do think activities along the same lines as what happened back then are happening today.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to distinguish that minorities only had connections to certain diseases because the public wrongly accused marginalized groups for being the cause and spreaders of disease, thus creating widely-known associations and stereotypes that began to stigmatize and isolate the minority. I also believe that the justifications health officials had back in the 20s were completely incorrect and unreasonable and only succeeded in painting a demonizing, exclusive picture of the government and officials in control. Considering how they were trying to eradicate the presence of an entire race to eliminate disease or remove competition, I do not think the public health department was in a place where they could boast about their diversity. While I am not as politically knowledgeable as I would like to be, I wonder whether our current president’s reasoning for wanting to limit certain minorities in America or exclude them from society pertain to the ideology of the early previous century. I will definitely be looking into this and hope to offer a better response later.
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ReplyDeleteIn “Fit to be Citizens” we are presented with this idea created by public health officials that deemed mexicans as biologically, socially, and intellectually inferior. These health officials created the racial hierarchy behind these very ideas stating that people of color were inferior and they justified their blatant racism with their ideas surrounding public health. When I read this question I immediately thought of Trump's remarks on mexican immigrants and how this mirrors the idea that mexicans are biologically inferior. When Donald Trump spoke and associated mexicans with drug dealers and rapist he mirrored the rhetoric of the public health officials from the 20s. Donald Trump is an extreme example, however I think when looking at something on a smaller level such as job opportunities we can see the same racial bias that reinforces the racial hierarchy in “Fit to be citizens”. I personally believe that the racial hierarchy presented in fit to be citizens is the same racial hierarchy of today, I just think the language/terms have changed.
I most definitely believe there are connections to todays Los Angeles and the Los Angeles of the 1920's. The government is still trying to oppress its citizens, but instead of it being by spreading stories and making laws to essentially blame a certain race for the emergence of a disease they do it by use of underfunded schools and mass incarceration. Both of them contribute immensely to the oppression of minorities while I'm not sure if CDC is really trying to discriminate against any races anymore.
ReplyDeleteIn reading "Fit to be Citizens", I have learned a lot about something I knew nothing about before. I had no idea the Public Health Department played such a huge role in the racial/social hierarchy and the marginalization of minority groups. I never considered the outbreak of certain illnesses like TB to be such a determining and defining factor for social status. Seeing how public health officials painted a false images of specific minority groups like the Chinese or the Mexicans, I do not find it hard to believe that the Public Health Department still holds biases and prejudices against these groups today. Like Jack mentioned above, I don't hear much about blatant racism in regards to blaming minority groups for the outbreak of certain illnesses due to their "racial and biological inferiority". But, the obvious discrepancies within underfunded schools and mass incarceration make it clear that negative attitudes towards minority groups still exist. As far as immigration, I definitely believe that their are similar viewpoints now as were popular back then. Just look at our current administration (ahh). Immigration reform is such a topical issue now and negative attitudes toward immigrants in this country resemble ideas of the past. They pushed for immigration reform back then in an attempt to restrict the amount of Mexican immigrants, whom they deemed "dirty and inferior", believing them to be the carriers and transmitters of TB. While immigration issues now may not pertain to public health issues, the stance is the same. They are still pushing to restrict and demean minority groups of their rights.
ReplyDelete"Fit to be Citizens" has revealed a lot about the history of immigration and the Public Health Department in Los Angeles. Having read part of the book, I can see now the large ties between immigration status and health. In the 20's, one of the largest determining factors seemed to be the health of the immigrants and which diseases they were and weren't carrying. However, by the time they immigrated to Los Angeles, they were still unwelcome due to their "foreign ways", "unclean lifestyles", and "biological inferiority". Many of these racist ideas are still present today when it comes to immigration laws and policy. Even Los Angeles, an incredibly racially integrated city, can be unwelcoming to people from other countries. Certain demographics are still widely and unfairly associated with certain diseases. However, this isn't the largest issue with immigration today. In the 20's the focus was on public health, but now, the focus has migrated to usefulness in society and how they will contribute to the American economy. Now, there are so many immigration loop holes if you are immigrating specifically for a job. Thousands of people get their work visa but then never leave when it's expired. Immigrants are now resented over their economical contributions rather than their "detriment" to the city's public health.
ReplyDeleteWhile not necessarily tied to public health, the inter workings of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with local police reflect some of Molina's points about the view towards immigrants (especially from Mexico/Central America). One of Molina's main points is that public health officials played a role in criminalizing Mexican immigrants (she describes also how health officials posted up at the border). Nowadays, criminalization is a method for deportation.
ReplyDeleteThe Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, for example, facilitates the deportation of lawful immigrants by running fingerprints from local jails through ICE's immigration database. "Because it targets people at the time of arrest, not conviction, S-Comm captures people who will never be charged with a state crime—including crime victims (including domestic violence victims), witnesses, and individuals who were wrongly arrested" (ACLU). Also targeted are people just trying to make a living-- food vendors and "Day Laborers like Jose Ucelo, arrested on false charges from employers unwilling to pay wages owed" (ICEoutofCA.com). This program makes it easier for local enforcement to racially profile people. It causes mistrust and leads to fear in reporting of crimes (which is especially an issue when it comes to reporting domestic violence).
The California TRUST Act (2013) tries to counter S-Comm by ensuring "that people with most low-level, non-violent offenses are not wastefully held for deportation purposes" (ICEoutofCA.com). The CA Values Act supplements the TRUST Act by reinforcing the separation between ICE and local law enforcement and by providing safe spaces in schools, libraries, health facilities, etc. However, these acts alone do not solve the problem: the community has to hold officers and officials accountable.
Well I do believe that there are immigration reform laws that resemble the laws in the 1920's. Along with the latest president that has been elected, almost all the bigoted "laws" or ideas rather, have been brought up again. What's problematic is that back in the day in the 20's what the health officials thought about minorities were purely wrong, so those beliefs coming up is...not good.
ReplyDeleteAkin to the process of purging oneself of a disease, public health officials in the 1920s seeked to cure themselves of the disease of all the newcomers from brownpeople land. There was a subconscious notion of white purity within their minds which convinced them to pass legislations and policies harming colored communities under the pretense of a Clara Barton esque intervention into communities to help them. I personally believe that these actions were not as much caused by direct racism as it was caused by a feeling of repulsion and disgust. For example, many studies of Hitlers personality pointed to the fact that he bathed 4 times a day, and that his writings in Mein Kamp often referred to jewish people as a filth and as a disease. It wasn't so much that public health officials hated brown people because they were brown, but rather that they disliked them because they thought that they were dirty.
ReplyDeleteSuch conceptions of hygiene would eventually be rendered incoherent, and I don't think any such racist policies exist anymore in the Los Angeles health department, otherwise I'm sure I would have read a buzzfeed article on it by now.