Health as Property shows how responses to racism can be predatory, harmful, and dangerous to poor people of color. Nic John Ramos examines a Black-led academic medical center known as King-Drew that was built in response to the 1965 Watts Uprising. Forged by the political willingness of white voters to experiment with anti-poverty programs in poor neighborhoods of color, the health system's multiple missions represented the freedom dreams of civil rights, Black Power, welfare rights, and consumer rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s. However, during Los Angeles's rise as a global city in the 1970s and 1980s, white voters' desire to realize these dreams was curtailed by renewed narratives of health rooted in racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic ideas about poor people of color. Instead of working to combat the forces of racial and sexual capitalism underlying health inequality, a diverse group of liberal progressive leaders inverted the healthcare aims of King-Drew. Health as Property demonstrates how healthcare policy in America is both labor and real estate policy, and as such preserves health as the property of a select few.
Nic John Ramos is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Brilliant in his analysis and arguments, Nic John Ramos makes important contributions to scholarship and civic life by casting new light on the civil rights movement, the war on poverty, Black electoral politics, urban economic development, and the racial politics of constructing global cities.”—George Lipsitz, author of The Danger Zone Is Everywhere: How Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth
“Health as Property shows what a queer lens can do for urban history, African American history, gender studies, and ethnic studies.”—Laura Briggs, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump
"Ramos creates a brilliant exposé of the tensions between providing health care and appeasing a white power structure building a multiracial global city in mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles. Tracing new scientific discourses on racial and sexual liberalism along with the struggle against poverty, Ramos's historical study is a startling narrative and an analytic tour de force."—Susan M. Reverby, author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
“I thought I knew Los Angeles until I read this brilliant book. A model of interdisciplinary scholarship, Health as Property places Black Angelenos’ quest for dignified health care at the center of a far-reaching account that touches every corner of the region. A must-read.”—Daniel Martinez HoSang, Professor of American Studies, Yale University
374 pp.6 x 9
9780520404137$29.95|£25.00Paper
Dec 2025