Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950sPacific Colony, a Southern California institution established to care for the “feebleminded,” justified the incarceration, sterilization, and forced mutilation of some of the most vulnerable members of society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Institutional records document the convergence of ableism and racism in Pacific Colony. Analyzing a vast archive, Natalie Lira reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the treatment and reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. Laboratory of Deficiency documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought out creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been called upon to justify the confinement and reproductive constraint of certain individuals in the name of public health and progress. |
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acts addition Angeles Archives asserted became behavior Black bodies Boys buildings capacity Center century clinicians color committed confinement consent construction crime criminal cultural defect delinquency Department of Institutions described deviant disability early economic edition efforts escape established Eugenics experiences feebleminded Files forms gender Girls groups Health History Hospital immigrants individuals inferior institutional authorities institutionalization intelligence Journal June juvenile court juvenile delinquency labeled labor largely lives manage mental deficiency Mexican American Mexican-origin Mexican-origin youth mother officials Pacific Colony parents Patient percent Police Politics population practices Press problem produced Race racial Records reformers Report reproductive Reproductive Justice residents result role School scores sexual social social workers Southern California staff sterilization sterilization requests Terman Theory tion United University Press Welfare women working-class wrote York young women youth