Sonoma Home: Case Study
Image: Sonoma State Home
Gaye Lebron, ‘Remembering the Sonoma Develoapmental Centre,’ The Press Democrat, Nov 18, 2018.
Image description: Black and white photograph of the home: an imposing, cuboid building viewed at the end of a pedestrian avenue lined by palm trees and with cars circulating on either side of the pedestrian avenue. Mountains and clouds are visible in the background.
Case Study: The Sonoma State Home
At the beginning of the twentieth century eugenic ideas began to spread across America. Eugenicists believed in ‘bettering the human race’ and were influential in instituting several public health measures to prevent people they termed as ‘unfit’ from reproducing. In California, a 1917 law legalised the compulsory sterilization of people in state institutions, including the Sonoma State Home. Patients in this particular institution included those with epilepsy and also people they termed ‘feeble-minded.’ These patients were diagnosed after crude assessments of their IQ and were subjected to forced sterilization to prevent them from having children. This institution alone sterilized 5,400 people. In this context, disability became centred upon mental capacity; an IQ test was enough to diagnose and then to justify the denial of reproductive autonomy. Sonoma was seen as an exemplar institution by the American Eugenic movement and Nazi Germany modelled their own sterilization laws on the ones in California. The medical diagnoses such as ‘Moron’ and ‘Imbecile’ are no longer used and should be viewed as extremely discriminatory. The case shows how definitions of disability could be shaped by political agendas, and these attitudes could be transported internationally.
(Alice Fairclough)