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Oregon's Racial Purity Regime: The Influence Of International Scientific Racism On Law Enforcement, Legislation, Public Health, And Incarceration In Portland, Oregon During The Victorian And Progressive Eras (1851-1917), Katherine N. Bush
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In 1983, the Oregon State legislature repealed the eugenic sterilization law that had been in use for 60 years. Initially passed during the Progressive era, this law epitomized the State's legacy of surveilling, policing, caging, and inflicting brutality on marginalized and racialized communities who were deemed dangerous, threatening, or contagious. Public health leaders, political officials, law enforcement authorities, and private charities worked together as a multivalent system to maintain racial purity in the State. This racial purity regime drew upon a legacy of international pseudo-scientific racism to justify and bolster policies, legislation, and practices that targeted impoverished communities, people of …