Health Rights Are Civil Rights discusses discourses of health and well-being during the social movements in Los Angeles between 1963 and 1978. Loyd found that although medicine and medical technology was advancing, there was still a gap between the promise of better living and actual accessibility. During the heyday of this social movement, the provision of health care which was demeaning became a major point of contention. Loyd found that health is a social concern as opposed to just an individual or biological concern – encompassing race, gender, social class, violence and militarization.
One often wonders why there is a significant chasm between (the very small number of) disability studies books on African American experiences and the books which are often written from the perspective of those engaged in struggles by the black community – even if they are on similar issues. In this case, the issues are ill-health, medical access and injustice. Presumably, there is a minefield of overlaps between these areas, but perhaps one of the reasons for the dearth of books on ‘disability’ in the larger African American experience is that each field uses different discourses to describe similar things. In this case, these experiences are framed through the (historical, continuing and deeply resonant) conceptual lens of ‘civil rights’ – one that African American people have rallied behind for over 60 years. Nevertheless, there are definite lessons to be drawn for disability studies. For instance, if a disability studies scholar replaced some of her language around ‘health’ and ‘health inequalities’ with the more common term in this field, ‘disability,’ useful connections would be made.
One of the most interesting features of Loyd’s book is the connections she makes between health and militarization: ‘Militarization contributes to health inequalities that result from racism, class, gender, and sexual oppression’ (11). She also found that geopolitics impacts health by benefitting some people and harming others. The people most negatively affected by militarization of the United States are poor and minority communities. The era’s health activism must be understood in ‘political geographies of white supremacy and militarization’ (17).
Expanding on this theme, Loyd believes that biomedicine is actually central to militarization and the political struggles over it. Militarization within cities negatively affected communities, producing toxic spaces. Money was poured into the Department of Defense, while there was little increase in economic and social programs for the poor. Communities took to the streets to protest violence of war and racism, but in doing so they also highlighted the health and housing problems which are also effects of racism. Owing to the militarization of cities, the protests were met with more violence.
As a result, Loyd suggests that we should discuss the activism of women in these campaigns as ‘political mothering’ (111). For Loyd, the term political mothering describes the ways women work with each other and with the community. This concept helps the reader to better understand the difference between welfare and peace mothers and maternalist ideologies.
Body politics are racialized, gendered and sexualized. In such a context, Loyd emphasizes the effects of indirect structural violence on the health of minority communities. Transforming health care involves desegregating health and shifting health discourses from individual to social responsibility. This involves medicalization and racialization of space, but also ‘individual and collective bodily self-determination’ (15).
Black and Latino families were disproportionally victimized by welfare restrictions, and the reproductive rights of women of color were also under attack. These women also experienced forced sterilization if they had ‘illegitimate children.’ While Loyd does not stress this connection, the forced sterilization of disabled women has unnerving connections with this violent, racist practice.
This is not to suggest that Loyd does not take an intersectional perspective. Indeed, this is one of the strengths of the book. The effects of these battles are racialized, gendered and , but the fight for health rights, as a part of civil rights, is also connected to wider social struggles. For instance, she wanted to understand how social movements contended with the growing anti-poor and anti-social welfare sentiments (4).
Loyd places great emphasis on the social movements of this time period – anti-war, feminist, anti-poverty, black liberation and other social struggles which sought to change the social, economic and political landscape of the United States. The context of these battles included discriminatory hospitals, lack of health care facilities and residential segregation.
Loyd also explores the discourse around the 1965 Watts Uprising and found that peace and racial justice activists understood the impact of domestic militarization and developed strategies’ to obtain racial liberation. The Watts riot started after the shooting of a black man and then involved 31,000–35,000 active rioters in South Los Angeles which centered in the towns of Watts and Willowbrook. His death highlighted the lack of nearby accessible health care facilities in black neighborhoods and the lack of federal funding supporting black needs.
Loyd divides the book into three parts, with a total of eight chapters. She begins by discussing how segregation and redlining (informal segregation) impacted health care. Although civil rights activists were fighting for decent housing and civil rights, opponents used an anti-tax discourse to derail such projects. The effect was that the construction of health care facilities being in or near minority neighborhoods was stifled.
Utilizing an intersectionality approach, Loyd discusses the effects that social class and housing had on health care. Activists in Los Angeles fought to establish a ‘war on poverty’ and the challenges they faced in getting medical centers established. However, they face a system that links health with violence – unequal ‘geographies of health’ that leave people dependent on health care from the state, at the same time as they face state violence.
Loyd also explores ‘Cold War Body Politics,’ including reproductive health and overpopulation concerns, financing health care, and the political agenda for welfare and health cuts. This historical section, like the others in the book, is well written and well supported by details and facts. One gets the genuine sense of the flavor of the times – the struggles for equality which continue today, in terms of racism, sexism, state violence, income inequality and unequal access to health care.
Health Rights Are Civil Rights is a well-written and very interesting book. There are not enough books which explore the connections between health problems in minority communities with state violence, racism, residential segregation and social movements that seek to challenge such inequalities. However, literature on minority struggles for civil rights in health care tend to adopt the dominant language of medical sociology – talking about health problems, rather than disability, and not specifically identifying ‘disabling barriers’ in health care. This interdisciplinary divide needs to be broken down – both by disability scholars and scholars of race and health disparities. Hopefully, this very engaging book will encourage others to explore fields well beyond the usual focus of disability studies, including racism in health care, state violence, anti-racist health movements, and social activism more broadly.
University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA
[email protected]
© 2015, Mara Martinez
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2015.1045350