DOC The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan by Gisli Palsson in History

Description

Immigration history has largely focused on the restriction of immigrants by race and ethnicity; overlooking disability as a crucial factor in the crafting of the image of the “undesirable immigrant.” Defectives in the Land; Douglas C. Baynton’s groundbreaking new look at immigration and disability; aims to change this. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Baynton explains; immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities—known as “defectives”—out of the country. The list of those included is long: the deaf; blind; epileptic; and mobility impaired; people with curved spines; hernias; flat or club feet; missing limbs; and short limbs; those unusually short or tall; people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities; intersexuals; men of “poor physique” and men diagnosed with “feminism.” Not only were disabled individuals excluded; but particular races and nationalities were also identified as undesirable based on their supposed susceptibility to mental; moral; and physical defects. In this transformative book; Baynton argues that early immigration laws were a cohesive whole—a decades-long effort to find an effective method of excluding people considered to be defective. This effort was one aspect of a national culture that was increasingly fixated on competition and efficiency; anxious about physical appearance and difference; and haunted by a fear of hereditary defect and the degeneration of the American race.