In Chapters 1-2 of fit to be citizens I think that Molina raises questions that are once again talked about in a traditional manor. Just like in Sick from Freedom, there was this romantic and grand idea that "Lincoln freed the slaves and everything was great". Spoiler! It was one of the worst biological and humanitarian crisis in American history. In this book, so far the biggest comparison is that racist ideas continued far past the civil war and even expanded far past a black and white issue. Monlina states "Portraying people of Chinese, Mexican, and Japanese ancestry, in Los Angeles as threats to public heath and civic well-being obscured the real cause of communicable disease and illness" (2). Although presented very early in the reading, the argument made stands to be the most alarming. The issue of health care being deserving to seemingly only white people is an idea that stands past the time of slavery and even past reconstruction.
I thought fit to be citizens gave another behind the scenes look at something we see today much like the emancipation that is great all around. LA today is the dream city in America, everyone wants to live there and be part of it. But when you look at its history, it is very suppressing and bias to the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican people. I found it interesting the amount of effort early city officials in LA put into suppressing the Chinese people. They called Chinatown "the rotten spot" (15) and it even took the city 30 years before getting around to having the sewer system even reach Chinatown (16). Pages 32-35 showed the amount of effort officials went into just to prevent Chinese farmers from selling fruit and vegetables. The suppressing of other races then continued with the Japenese who were seen as racial and economical threat (55). And just as smallpox created idea that African Americans were biologically different, the same idea occurred with the Mexican population and typhus. At least they could be "trained". What I noticed in the first two chapters and intro is this confusion that Americans had at this time with public health and race. People truly believed the two had to be connected but did not bother to ever look into the conditions in which these people were living in.
In Molina’s Fit to be Citizens, I found that the suppression of races in the 19th century extended to more than just African Americans. As it explains in the book, people with Chinese, Japanese, or Mexican heredity, also faced racial scrutiny and stereotypes. The first chapter regarded the residents of Chinatown, or the Chinese, and how they were depicted as unsanitary and viewed as “...peddlers of foul produce and launderers who spread germs(18).” LA officials even tried to push the Chinese out of the area by taxing them unfair amounts and by making health regulations that they only enforced on the Chinese community. The second chapter focused on Japanese and Mexican immigrants. The Japanese as well, were stereotyped for being unclean. They were regarded as “yellow peril” and a threat to the future of America. They had even gone so far as to compel women to have more white children, because the Japanese population was steadily increasing and they did not want them to have a larger heritage in America than the white community. Mexicans were scrutinized the most for being uncleanly, yet their living conditions were insufficient. They were looked at as a “class who habitually shunned water(69)," even though clean water was unavailable. They were also believed to be carriers of Typhus which led to health regulations and harassment by LA officials. Most of the time, when I think of racism in the 19th century, I think of slavery, because that is what I had been taught to recognize. However, this book informed me more of overlooked past scrutiny towards other races as well.
In the first two chapters of book Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 the author, Natalia Molina, discusses how “[d]isease itself was defined as much by sociocultural beliefs in the inherent uncleanliness of immigrants and nonwhites as by biological explanations” and how “[s]uch definitions effectively stigmatized entire populations of already-marginalized groups in the city” (2). Disease allowed racial stereotypes to take a much larger stance in society—one that instilled fear and proliferated hate. In chapter 1 Molina focuses on the Chinese immigrants and the stigmatized beliefs that Chinatown, and quite frankly Chinamen, were disease-ridden pests to the city of Los Angeles. People developed the ideas, largely through health officials, that “Chinese people would always be disease carriers. They were dirty by nature, they preferred to live in crowded, ramshackle housing, and they seemed incapable of either learning or practicing good hygiene (26). However, it was not the fault of Chinese inhabitants that their living quarters were filthy and disease infested. The Chinese population had no control on where they could live and little assistance in creating a suitable environment—not even from the landlords of the buildings that they occupied. In the book Sick from Freedom the author, Jim Downs, discusses how African-Americans were believed to be the sources of illness. Similarly, health officials in Los Angeles “[reinforced] the stereotype that only Chinese people carried disease” which only further isolated the population and fueled racial stereotypes (Molina 29). Eventually, as we see in chapter 2, “Exclusion Acts restricting Chinese immigration paved the way for later laws that would limit or exclude other groups,” particularly Japanese and Mexican laborers (Molina 43). Similar to the Chinese, the personal lives of Japanese and Mexican inhabitants were infiltrated and subject to testing for disease based of the perceptions of their uncleanliness. Japanese farmers started to be seen as a threat to the economy as it was perceived that they were “manifestly more fitted for agriculture,” and therefore agricultural employers found “Mexicans as dependent employees, not as independent competitors like the Japanese farmers” (Molina 58). Sadly, this employment was not in the best interest of Mexicans laborers for they, like slaves, were believed to “require constant supervision” and were perceived by their employers as “akin to training animals” (Molina 74). Sadly, the Mexican laborers were seen more as tools that could be exploited than as humans. Unfortunately, “in the course of less than fifty years, three entirely different populations were assigned the lowest position in L.A.’s racial hierarchy: a powerful example of how rapidly racism can be repackaged, re-energized, and relegitimized.” The health officials whose job is to keep people safe ultimately shaped and fueled racial stereotypes that lead these populations to distress.
Downs, Jim. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Molina, Natalia. Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939. University of California Press, 2006.
I think Fit to be a Citizen? is another example on how bad early America treated others. Its funny to think how in America today we make this country seem so open to others and “home of the free.” Yet the beining of America was just nothing but racism and torture of people that were not the “idle” person, white. In the book, Molina describes how the conditions were for the Chinese population in LA. These conditions were solely because no one wanted to help them. They tried to get things fixed and get better, but because they were not part of the white culture and race they were not given the time of day. The white population were in charge it was hard to get new sanitation. Also with the “white population of LA did not need much convincing that the residents of Chinatown were carriers of dirt and disease and purveyors of vice.” Pg 17 it was difficult to get anyone to talk to the chinese population. I think this book is another example of the torture white America has done to people, but just in a different time and to yet another minority group.
One of the first issues mentioned in Fit to be Citizens? by Natalia Molina is the attempt of those in charge of public health to “...sustain the pristine image of Los Angeles by tracing the origin of all social problems to marginalized communities…” (Molina 15). The reputation of Los Angeles was given higher value than the health of the people who inhabited the city. Because of the unfair enforcement of legislation in Chinese Communities of Los Angeles, such as the Cubic Air Act, and diseases that were said to only affect the Chinese, “...the racial category ‘Chinese’ became a powerful organizing principle” that set standards of treatment for Japanese and Mexican citizens later on (23). Although the Chinese, Mexican and Japanese communities, discussed in the first two chapters, were quite forced to live in their unsanitary and unhealthy conditions, the public believed the presence of diseases such as smallpox, were due to the fact that these specific communities preferred to live in overcrowded or unsanitary conditions. Because Chinese, Mexican and Japanese people were judged by their “...health and hygiene standards, the new yardsticks of Americanization”, they were seen as inferior, despite the fact that their poor living conditions were not their choice (45). Molina describes the inequality experienced by Mexican men and women by stating that, based on assumptions about their race, they were “... robbed of their adult status” (74). Even though Chinese, Mexican and Japanese men and women were only impacted by disease due to their oppressive living situations, and not by fault of their own, health officials’ status gave other citizens reason to believe that these races were biologically inferior, and had to be monitored.
In Fit to be Citizens?, Chapter 2, Molina discusses how typhus was a major concern in Mexican people. People who worked on the railways, at the time, were mostly Mexican males. The males and their families lived in the camps and villages near the workstations. The main issue was the spreading of typhus, which “is an infectious disease caused by rickettsia and transmitted to humans through lice and tick bites.” (p. 61) However, it is not a contagious illness, unsanitary conditions are a great place for a quick spread of the disease. Because the camps and villages were packed full of Mexican people and had very unsanitary conditions, the spread of typhus was inevitable. For me, this is similar to the epidemic of small pox we looked at in Downs, Sick from Freedom. People of all races realized that a disease was spreading though “non-white” people. I put non-white in quotations because the majority of people who were affected by the disease were people of color, but white people were also involved. In Molina’s, Fit to be Citizens on page 61, twenty six people had aquired typhus and twenty two of them were Mexican. Overall, it is important to look at how people of color were treated when an epidemic was happening. And this was that they were treated like cattle. If one person had the disease, this person was mostly left to fend for herself or die. The white people looking after the Mexicans just wanted to make sure they had enough people to be working on the railways, and if not, the white supervisor would hired an emergency staff (p. 62).
In Chapters 1-2 of fit to be citizens I think that Molina raises questions that are once again talked about in a traditional manor. Just like in Sick from Freedom, there was this romantic and grand idea that "Lincoln freed the slaves and everything was great". Spoiler! It was one of the worst biological and humanitarian crisis in American history.
ReplyDeleteIn this book, so far the biggest comparison is that racist ideas continued far past the civil war and even expanded far past a black and white issue. Monlina states "Portraying people of Chinese, Mexican, and Japanese ancestry, in Los Angeles as threats to public heath and civic well-being obscured the real cause of communicable disease and illness" (2). Although presented very early in the reading, the argument made stands to be the most alarming. The issue of health care being deserving to seemingly only white people is an idea that stands past the time of slavery and even past reconstruction.
I thought fit to be citizens gave another behind the scenes look at something we see today much like the emancipation that is great all around. LA today is the dream city in America, everyone wants to live there and be part of it. But when you look at its history, it is very suppressing and bias to the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican people. I found it interesting the amount of effort early city officials in LA put into suppressing the Chinese people. They called Chinatown "the rotten spot" (15) and it even took the city 30 years before getting around to having the sewer system even reach Chinatown (16). Pages 32-35 showed the amount of effort officials went into just to prevent Chinese farmers from selling fruit and vegetables. The suppressing of other races then continued with the Japenese who were seen as racial and economical threat (55). And just as smallpox created idea that African Americans were biologically different, the same idea occurred with the Mexican population and typhus. At least they could be "trained". What I noticed in the first two chapters and intro is this confusion that Americans had at this time with public health and race. People truly believed the two had to be connected but did not bother to ever look into the conditions in which these people were living in.
ReplyDeleteIn Molina’s Fit to be Citizens, I found that the suppression of races in the 19th century extended to more than just African Americans. As it explains in the book, people with Chinese, Japanese, or Mexican heredity, also faced racial scrutiny and stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteThe first chapter regarded the residents of Chinatown, or the Chinese, and how they were depicted as unsanitary and viewed as “...peddlers of foul produce and launderers who spread germs(18).” LA officials even tried to push the Chinese out of the area by taxing them unfair amounts and by making health regulations that they only enforced on the Chinese community.
The second chapter focused on Japanese and Mexican immigrants. The Japanese as well, were stereotyped for being unclean. They were regarded as “yellow peril” and a threat to the future of America. They had even gone so far as to compel women to have more white children, because the Japanese population was steadily increasing and they did not want them to have a larger heritage in America than the white community.
Mexicans were scrutinized the most for being uncleanly, yet their living conditions were insufficient. They were looked at as a “class who habitually shunned water(69)," even though clean water was unavailable. They were also believed to be carriers of Typhus which led to health regulations and harassment by LA officials.
Most of the time, when I think of racism in the 19th century, I think of slavery, because that is what I had been taught to recognize. However, this book informed me more of overlooked past scrutiny towards other races as well.
In the first two chapters of book Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 the author, Natalia Molina, discusses how “[d]isease itself was defined as much by sociocultural beliefs in the inherent uncleanliness of immigrants and nonwhites as by biological explanations” and how “[s]uch definitions effectively stigmatized entire populations of already-marginalized groups in the city” (2). Disease allowed racial stereotypes to take a much larger stance in society—one that instilled fear and proliferated hate.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 1 Molina focuses on the Chinese immigrants and the stigmatized beliefs that Chinatown, and quite frankly Chinamen, were disease-ridden pests to the city of Los Angeles. People developed the ideas, largely through health officials, that “Chinese people would always be disease carriers. They were dirty by nature, they preferred to live in crowded, ramshackle housing, and they seemed incapable of either learning or practicing good hygiene (26). However, it was not the fault of Chinese inhabitants that their living quarters were filthy and disease infested. The Chinese population had no control on where they could live and little assistance in creating a suitable environment—not even from the landlords of the buildings that they occupied. In the book Sick from Freedom the author, Jim Downs, discusses how African-Americans were believed to be the sources of illness. Similarly, health officials in Los Angeles “[reinforced] the stereotype that only Chinese people carried disease” which only further isolated the population and fueled racial stereotypes (Molina 29).
Eventually, as we see in chapter 2, “Exclusion Acts restricting Chinese immigration paved the way for later laws that would limit or exclude other groups,” particularly Japanese and Mexican laborers (Molina 43). Similar to the Chinese, the personal lives of Japanese and Mexican inhabitants were infiltrated and subject to testing for disease based of the perceptions of their uncleanliness. Japanese farmers started to be seen as a threat to the economy as it was perceived that they were “manifestly more fitted for agriculture,” and therefore agricultural employers found “Mexicans as dependent employees, not as independent competitors like the Japanese farmers” (Molina 58). Sadly, this employment was not in the best interest of Mexicans laborers for they, like slaves, were believed to “require constant supervision” and were perceived by their employers as “akin to training animals” (Molina 74). Sadly, the Mexican laborers were seen more as tools that could be exploited than as humans.
Unfortunately, “in the course of less than fifty years, three entirely different populations were assigned the lowest position in L.A.’s racial hierarchy: a powerful example of how rapidly racism can be repackaged, re-energized, and relegitimized.” The health officials whose job is to keep people safe ultimately shaped and fueled racial stereotypes that lead these populations to distress.
Downs, Jim. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Molina, Natalia. Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939. University of California Press, 2006.
I think Fit to be a Citizen? is another example on how bad early America treated others. Its funny to think how in America today we make this country seem so open to others and “home of the free.” Yet the beining of America was just nothing but racism and torture of people that were not the “idle” person, white. In the book, Molina describes how the conditions were for the Chinese population in LA. These conditions were solely because no one wanted to help them. They tried to get things fixed and get better, but because they were not part of the white culture and race they were not given the time of day. The white population were in charge it was hard to get new sanitation. Also with the “white population of LA did not need much convincing that the residents of Chinatown were carriers of dirt and disease and purveyors of vice.” Pg 17 it was difficult to get anyone to talk to the chinese population. I think this book is another example of the torture white America has done to people, but just in a different time and to yet another minority group.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first issues mentioned in Fit to be Citizens? by Natalia Molina is the attempt of those in charge of public health to “...sustain the pristine image of Los Angeles by tracing the origin of all social problems to marginalized communities…” (Molina 15). The reputation of Los Angeles was given higher value than the health of the people who inhabited the city. Because of the unfair enforcement of legislation in Chinese Communities of Los Angeles, such as the Cubic Air Act, and diseases that were said to only affect the Chinese, “...the racial category ‘Chinese’ became a powerful organizing principle” that set standards of treatment for Japanese and Mexican citizens later on (23).
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Chinese, Mexican and Japanese communities, discussed in the first two chapters, were quite forced to live in their unsanitary and unhealthy conditions, the public believed the presence of diseases such as smallpox, were due to the fact that these specific communities preferred to live in overcrowded or unsanitary conditions. Because Chinese, Mexican and Japanese people were judged by their “...health and hygiene standards, the new yardsticks of Americanization”, they were seen as inferior, despite the fact that their poor living conditions were not their choice (45).
Molina describes the inequality experienced by Mexican men and women by stating that, based on assumptions about their race, they were “... robbed of their adult status” (74). Even though Chinese, Mexican and Japanese men and women were only impacted by disease due to their oppressive living situations, and not by fault of their own, health officials’ status gave other citizens reason to believe that these races were biologically inferior, and had to be monitored.
In Fit to be Citizens?, Chapter 2, Molina discusses how typhus was a major concern in Mexican people. People who worked on the railways, at the time, were mostly Mexican males. The males and their families lived in the camps and villages near the workstations. The main issue was the spreading of typhus, which “is an infectious disease caused by rickettsia and transmitted to humans through lice and tick bites.” (p. 61) However, it is not a contagious illness, unsanitary conditions are a great place for a quick spread of the disease. Because the camps and villages were packed full of Mexican people and had very unsanitary conditions, the spread of typhus was inevitable. For me, this is similar to the epidemic of small pox we looked at in Downs, Sick from Freedom. People of all races realized that a disease was spreading though “non-white” people. I put non-white in quotations because the majority of people who were affected by the disease were people of color, but white people were also involved. In Molina’s, Fit to be Citizens on page 61, twenty six people had aquired typhus and twenty two of them were Mexican. Overall, it is important to look at how people of color were treated when an epidemic was happening. And this was that they were treated like cattle. If one person had the disease, this person was mostly left to fend for herself or die. The white people looking after the Mexicans just wanted to make sure they had enough people to be working on the railways, and if not, the white supervisor would hired an emergency staff (p. 62).
ReplyDelete