Health As Property: Hospitals, Policing, and the Real Estate of Health
Topics: Black Geographies
, Health and Medical
, Political Geography
Keywords: Health Districts, Policing, Hospitals, Public Health, Race
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 59
Authors:
Nic John Ramos, Drexel University
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Abstract
Nine months after the 1965 Watts Uprisings in Los Angeles, Leonard Deadwyler was murdered by LAPD Officer Leonard Deadwyler while speeding to reach Los Angeles County General Hospital with his pregnant wife who was undergoing labor pains. The police murder not only highlighted the links between healthcare, working poverty, and policing but also jeopardized the passage of a public referendum designed to build a Black-led academic medical center by temporarily re-igniting calls for violent urban protests in Black Los Angeles. Using DuBois’ concept of real estate to interpret historical documents related to public hospital referenda, rural hospital districting, and metropolitan hospital districting in California prior to 1965, this paper argues dependency on public hospital care and the high likelihood of police confrontation for Black citizens in Los Angeles indexed the fraught and opposing trajectories of hospital development and policing that caused Deadwyler to transgress racial boundaries in order to reach public hospital care in 1960s Los Angeles. By bringing together the uneven development of hospital construction and policing together, this paper helps account for how the spatially distributive forces of free market healthcare and the racially-determined forces of policing increased Deadwyler’s exposure to premature death while physically widening his chances of reaching lifesaving care.
Health As Property: Hospitals, Policing, and the Real Estate of Health
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
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