‘Scientific’ racism is creeping back

[struggle4progress]

By W. Carson Byrd and Matthew W. Hughey
September 28 at 8:30 AM

.... Jennifer Cramblett lost her “wrongful birth” lawsuit, which centered on a troubling ideology that has been creeping into mainstream discussions in ways not seen in decades. Cramblett claimed that the sperm used to inseminate her came from the wrong donor, leading to a biracial child, which she had not wanted. Her lawsuit claimed that this mix-up in the lab caused her and her family personal injuries of various kinds.

This lawsuit was shadowed by a troubling logic: the idea that race is a biological reality with particular traits and behaviors that can be avoided through proper breeding practices. In doing so, Cramblett’s claims echoed arguments made in a darker era of global history of “scientific” racism ...

White supremacist groups use news from increased research on genetics and racial differences to explain not only athletic results, but larger racial inequalities in the world ... These ugly racial stereotypes of group capabilities that have varied throughout U.S. history, even as these stereotypes supported white supremacy: whether through the late 1800s contention that African Americans are biologically predisposed to go extinct or through the “black brawn vs. white brains” contention that African Americans are cognitively inferior but physically superior to whites and should be kept in professions that emphasize physical rather than mental prowess. People of varying social and political views employ these explanations in order to legitimate the claim that racial inequalities occur naturally ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/28/born-that-way-scientific-racism-is-creeping-back-into-our-thinking-heres-what-to-watch-out-for/

[gollygee]

1. Did it ever leave? n/t

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Is that the right anecdote for the story?

Was Jennifer Cramblett upset because she thought 'blacks were inferior' or because she was already fighting societal prejudice where she lived, given her being a lesbian, I thought it was?

The lawsuit said Jennifer Cramblett feared her daughter would be discriminated against in their predominantly white community.

She already had a life in a community that, I will admit, doesn't sound like a place I'd want to live, but it was her community and her life, and she probably wasn't thrilled at the notion of feeling she needed to uproot and move somewhere more accepting of biracial kids. That doesn't really sound like 'scientific racism' or eugenics. It sounds like she recognized the fact that her biracial daughter was likely to face discrimination a paler child would not. Ie, that she recognized white privilege and the racism of society.

[LWolf]

3. I thought about this several years back.

I live where I live, in an overwhelmingly white rural/agricultural area, because I was too far away from my mom when she began to age and needed me more.

I love it here...not the white republican culture, but it's a physically beautiful place with clean air and space, and I can take care of my elderly mom.

When my oldest and best friend in the world, the sister of my heart, was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, I knew that I would move from this place if she didn't make it, and take my mom with me. Her daughters, you see, are bi-racial by birth, and simply black in appearance. Responsibility for raising them would have passed to me, and I wouldn't have done it here. I would have moved across the mountains to the big city where everybody isn't white. I prepared for this possibility.

I'm really thankful that it didn't happen; that my friend survived. But I was ready to do that for her, and for her daughters, whom I love as if they were mine. I can't imagine not being prepared to do so for my own child, but I don't know all the nuances of a situation just from reading about it online, and I'll defer to the mother's right to choose.

[erpowers]

4. Nothing To Do With Jennifer Cramblett

This article had nothing to do with Jennifer Cramblett, or her child. After mentioning Ms. Cramblett, the article does go on to discuss the idea that some people think blacks and other minorities are born with lower IQs and have less impulse control, which lead to bad behavior. The paragraphs mentioning Ms. Cramblett could have been and should have been deleted from this article. The article does not even try to establish a link between Ms. Cramblett's case and the subject discussed in the article. It would be reasonable to ask why Ms. Cramblett's case was even mentioned.

It seems the authors of the article needed an opening for their article and chose to use Ms. Cramblett's case because she complained about a sperm bank mistakenly giving her sperm that caused her to have a biracial child. The authors do not at any point in the article provide a quote from Ms. Cramblett in which she states that she was angry about the sperm mix-up because she believed her child would have a low IQ, or would be burdened with geneticly based bad behavior. The article does mentions Dylan Roof and his acceptance of those ideas. It would have been better to leave Ms. Cramblett out of the article and open the article with the Dylan Roof quote. The Dylan Roof quote give more support to the author's thesis that scientific racism is making a comeback. The fact that a woman, who believes she lives in a racist and anti-homosexual community, is upset that a sperm bank's mistake caused her to have a biracial child, that she had not planned on having, and now feel both she and the child will be the subject of racist and anti-homosexual treatment is not a sign that scientific racism is making a comeback. It is a sign of a woman not getting what she asked for from a company. As a result of not getting what she wanted she now has to deal with negative consequences.