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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1st edition ableism Angeles asserted behavior Boys California Department California State Archives CBJR Chávez-García Chicana classism clinicians color committed to Pacific consent forms Crafts and Doll crime criminal defect Department of Institutions described deviant diagnosis disability labels Disability Studies Earl Warren economic Edgerton escape eugenic sterilization eugenicists Feebleminded and Epileptic Feminist Files gender Girls History Hospital inferior institutional authorities institutionalization and sterilization intelligence tests IQ scores Journal of Delinquency June 30 juvenile court juvenile delinquency Juvenile Hall labeled feebleminded labor lives Los Angeles manage mental deficiency Mexican American Mexican-origin women Mexican-origin youth Mexican-White moron nation Ordahl Pacific Colony parents parole Patient percent Police Politics population poverty practices psychologists Race racial racism Report Reproductive Justice residents Sacramento social workers Sonoma Southern California staff Sterilization in California Sterilization Records sterilization requests Terman tion University Press Welfare white supremacy York young Mexican-origin young women