North Carolina's reparation for the dark past of American eugenics

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

North Carolina's reparation for the dark past of American eugenics
North Carolina's compensation to victims of forced sterilisation is a chance to illuminate a gruesome US tradition of racial 'science'
Edwin Black guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 June 2011 21.30 BST

Twenty-seven American states joined a decades-long pseudo-scientific crusade to create a white, blond, blue-eyed, biologically superior "master race". Their misguided utopian quest was called eugenics. But only one state, North Carolina, is now readying a massive plan of financial reparations to its surviving victims. Just how much North Carolina should pay is now the subject of a historically wrenching debate.

Eugenics was a fraudulent social theory that a better society could be created by eliminating "undesirable" human blood lines and promoting the desirable types. Race science sprang to life in the socioeconomically convulsive first decade of the 20th century, during which Asians, Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, Native Americans, blacks and other ethnic groups and racial mixtures flowed into US cities, creating overcrowding and class conflict. The intellectual, academic, scientific and financial elite believed better men and women could be cultivated using the same techniques a farmer would employ to create a better herd of cattle or field of wheat – eliminate the bad stock and proliferate the good. They planned to eliminate all those who did not resemble themselves, 10% at a time – that is, as many as 14 million people, at a slice. Their eventual goal was to eliminate as much as 90% of the population from the reproductive future of the United States.

The preferred method was gas chambers and other forms of euthanasia. The first public euthanasia laws were introduced into the Ohio legislature in 1908. That measure was unsuccessful, as were other death panel bills. The next best thing was forced surgical sterilisation under specific state authority that was validated as the law of the land in the US supreme court by one of America's most stellar jurists, Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1927, Holmes ruled on an obviously collusive lawsuit seeking to justify the forced sterilisation of three generations of Carrie Buck's family. Holmes infamously noted:

"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind … Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/28/north-carolina-forced-sterilization

[bbinacan]

1. A sad part of our history.

And it was supported by a broad range of political ideologies.

[marasinghe]

2. the more palatable euphemism du-jour is: 'free-market capitalism'.

sadly, many of the victims have bought into the ideology predicating their own destruction.

[jwirr]

3. Oliver Wendell Holmes - is he known for anything good? This is

why we do not trust the corporations and wealthy to do what is right with our social programs. That group are the descendants of the eugenics generation. They give us no value. We are expendable.

[JI7]

7. are you serious ? Holmes was mostly a liberal that's why his support for this stands out

[jwirr]

8. Actually I was not serious. I was just wondering why I had always

thought he was great. Anyone know why this old statement could have possibly come out of his mouth? I know that intellectuals and socialites and scientists where in favor of this and that also astounds me. As a person of German descent and a family that was a victim of eugenics I am over set with the stupidity of this idea.

[murielm99]

9. Margaret Sanger was also in favor of eugenics at one time.

She did so much good for other women that it is a shame she held these beliefs.

She founded Planned Parenthood, and was not afraid to go to jail to make sure women understood their own bodies.

It is amazing to me that it was against the law to teach women about birth control. Spreading facts made one a a criminal.

If we are not careful, that could happen again.

[boppers]

10. Sanger was in favor of eugenics..... always.

That's what birth control is, a form of private eugenics. It's only since the 50's when eugenics became demonized that people stopped connecting controlling procreation with, well, controlling procreation.

[JI7]

11. no, eugenics and birth control as we know it today is not the same thing

birth control today is a personal choice and usually based on someone just not wanting any kids at all.

eugenics looks to control the type of babies born usually based on prejudice and usually not up to the woman herself .

[No Elephants]

14. +1 And not only as we know it today. Women of all races aborted long before eugenics.

Or tried their best so to do. And practiced birth control, starting I would imagine, with abstention.

And for many of the same reasons as they do so today, reasons having absolutely nothing to do with limiting their offspring to blue-eyed, blond white babies. See the wiki entitled history of abortion.


Hell, women probably practised birth control and aborted before any human had seen a blue eyed, blond white baby (if you believe Wells and the conclusions of the DNA project).


Every now and again, I come across a post that makes my jaw drop. Reply #10 did that twice, once after reading that birth control was always a private form of eugenics and again after reading that eugenicss had been "demonized" (as opposed to, say, "discredited").

Actually, a third time, too, because I'm pretty sure eugenics had begun to fall into disfavor during the 1930's or early 1940's, because of Hitler, although I can't say that for sure without researching. However, a woman I know once interviewed the widower of a gynecologist who had, in the 1930's, been doing artificial insemination of women with sterile husbands and try to test the "nature v. nurture" theory via the semen donors.

The widower explained to the interviewer that his wife's work in the nature v. nurture area had stopped as a result of public outcry from two sources: (1) the Catholic Church had objected to giving children to families that God hadn't seen fit to bless with children and (2) the resemblance of her work to Hitler's theories. (This must have been especially poignant for the late gynecologist as she was Jewish.)

[boppers]

23. "blue eyed, blond white baby" was not desired in all cultures.

Intelligence, health, disease, sex, etc. were all different things people were targeting, and are *still* targeting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

You know what it is when people decide to abort a child based on early genetic screening? Eugenics.

[boppers]

21. Google "private eugenics".

Your definition of Eugenics seems a bit narrow.

[LeftishBrit]

22. Exactly!

[boppers]

28. A quote:

"more children from the fit, less from the unfit—that is the chief issue of birth control." --Margaret Sanger.

[No Elephants]

13. "demonized" or exposed?

[boppers]

24. I chose demonize because a whole branch of science was attacked.

A lot of early genetic science was crap, but that's true across many kinds of science... Turns out that you can, indeed, predict much about health, disease, intelligence, height, weight, (etc.) with genetics. That's the science. The *social policy* that derived from the science is where things went awry, because people were loading different value systems into their decision making.

[jwirr]

18. Birth control does not target the weak - it is not a form of discrimination.

Eugenics does both of these things - there is a difference.

[boppers]

25. That's a very limited definition of Eugenics.

So, here's what positive Eugenics is (which is what Sanger was into):
1. Encourage healthier families by stopping unwanted pregnancies, and the poverty that comes from having too many children to support.
2. Encourage healthy people to have sex and pro-create, and give "unhealthy" people the means to control their procreation.

[chrisa]

31. That's not eugenics.

And birth control's effect is the exact opposite - richer, better off families usually have more access to it.

[boppers]

32. See #28.

Richer families already had access, Sanger's mission was to improve access to birth control for the "unfit".

[roberto IS beto]

4. Best book on the topic:

"War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race", by Edwin Black (Four Walls Eight Windows Publishing Company 2003). The campaign is against the poor, the Eastern Europeans, and the people with brown skin.

[BlueIris]

6. Thanks. nt

[BlueIris]

5. Disturbing. And disgustingly, eugenics is no less popular an idea today than it was 'back then.'

I see the promotion and validation of eugenics on this board at least once a month, and yes, I even see it promoted among "educated" people.

[No Elephants]

15. My father was one of the smartest people I've ever met. He had virtually no education, unless you

count what he taught himself. I believe the same was true of Abe Lincoln, but I am not sure.

[jwirr]

19. As a member of DU and a member of a family who was victim of

eugenics I have not seen any promotions of eugenics on DU. Links please?

[Lance_Boyle]

12. I do not wish to pay for the misdeeds of prior residents of my State.

I never sterilized anyone against their will. Why am I supposed to pay for this? As a State we're completely broke and now we're supposed to cough up reparations for the sins of our fathers? I don't think so.

[No Elephants]

16. Guess you'll have to find a way to deal with it, or move to another state.

[Red Mountain]

26. I get where you're coming from....

But we elected the officials who made the decisions. You may not have voted for them but plenty of living and still voting people did.

The State has a responsibility to our citizens for its actions. By extension, so do we.

[Posteritatis]

30. Meh, suck it up. (nt)

[No Elephants]

17. I wonder what other states participated, besides the two named in the article.

Somehow, I have a feeling I'd rather not know.

[jwirr]

20. I think almost all states participated in one way or another. Many states have records of

this in the archives of University Hospitals and Institutions. I know that Iowa participated.

[boppers]

27. Almost all states did, and some still do in some ways.

Blood work before marriage (disease testing) and refusing marriage licenses to the mentally disabled continues to this day in many states, as does (now voluntary, usually via a guardian) sterilization of the disabled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

[Posteritatis]

29. Most of them. The last state eugenics boards closed in the early eighties. (nt)