Race, Medicine, and Society Notes - February 27, 2018

Race, Medicine, and Society Notes  - February 27, 2018

Discussion Questions:

• How do populations become defined as “unhealthy?” What is the relationship between the labeling of these populations as diseased and processes of racialization?
• Why were the medical narratives that surrounded Japanese Americans and Mexican Americans different, and how were they related to the anxieties about immigration and the changing demographics of the United States?
• How were notions of motherhood significant to the racialization of Mexican-Americans?
• What controlling images dominated depression-era discourses of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans? How were they constructed & why are the changes significant?

*Paper in two weeks

Race and Racialization

“Race has shaped the meaning and profile of citizenship and labor. In relation to corporeality, race has rendered the body into a text upon which histories of racial differentiation, exclusion and violence are inscribed.” Fergusson, 191-192

“Racialization names a process that produces race within particular social and political conjectures.” - HoSang and laBennett, 212.

Discursive formation - a set of cultural locations in which similar ideas are simultaneously produced.

“Scientific and public health practices played key roles in adding new ideas and theories to an existing arsenal of racial knowledge. They also helped set the stage for new ways of gauging and understanding race.” - Molina, 179.

- Non-whites were viewed as dangerous and diseased. These ideas fed off each other

- Long-standing narratives

Note about the word “labor”:

When talking about labor, I will be referencing the childbirth definition. This form of the word holds significance because of its importance in the reading. Non-white mothers were often limited with options pertaining to childbirth. They could either go to a County Clinic Program, County Hospital Service (Charity services), or rely on Midwifery Practices. It is also mentioned that many mothers that did show up at the hospital had already delivered their baby; hinting that transportation was insufficient. (p100)

Change over time

1907- Brick Factory paid $5 to Mexicans that had kids

1937 (Depression Era) - Mexicans are seen as diseased and undesirable

1. Increasing Mexican-American population
2. In the labor market
3. Mexicans were taking low paying jobs; these jobs would become more valuable as the Depression started

Mexicans in 1907 - a desired labor force (low paying workers) that worked undesirable jobs

If Mexican-American population increases, then there will need to be an increase in available healthcare

Infant Mortality Rates (IMR) p94

-living in dirty areas that would contribute to a higher Infant Mortality Rate which led
Americans to believe that these people (racial group) were lazy and/or dirty.

-Don’t speak English so can’t learn how to be a good mother

- Improper feeding techniques (breastfeeding instead of bottles) + Using midwives for
childbirth hospital care. Participating in practices that contribute to higher IMR

- Teachings about preventive medicine

Motherhood and Childbirth - possibly seen as contributing to society

P97 Republican Motherhood

Is motherhood racialized? - “proper measures” that mothers should take when caring for children

• Maternal Responsibility
• Maternal Duty after child is born

Mexican mothers take the blame for the lack of healthcare available

Overlooking of structural issues such as economic stability

• Couldn’t read the texts given to them by the hospital (medical places wouldn’t translate to Spanish) led to Mexicans being seen as lazy and immoral for not knowing English

Why did Las Angeles care if Mexican children lived or died?

• Health officials showing off that they can solve a problem
• Fallacies to hide idea there were poor/dirty places in LA

1920s- Mexicans seen as a population that could be assimilated through teaching of how to be a good mother

• They were necessary workers in the booming economy
• Doing low wage jobs that nobody else wanted

Depression comes and Americans need the low wage jobs back

• Narratives about Mexicans change
• Mexican women then seen as too fertile (in contrast to the encouragement to procreate in 1907)

Idea of Eugenics

Too many mexican babies threaten whites

P83

Question: Consider the notion of race as a social construct and the definition of Racialization as “a process that produces race within particular social and political conjectures.”

Taken together, how do Downs, Sick From Freedom and Molina, Fit to be Citizens show how discourses of health and illness were central to racializing particular populations between 1865 and 1940?