Entire generations of America's ruling class - unwitting guinea pigs in a vast eugenic experiment

[seemslikeadream]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D91131F936A25752C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all


THE GREAT IVY LEAGUE NUDE POSTURE PHOTO SCANDAL

By RON ROSENBAUM;
Published: January 15, 1995

....


Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs, thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side and rear poses. Disturbing, because on closer inspection the photos looked like the record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual: sticking out from the spine of each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins.

.....

Hersey went on to say that the pictures were actually made for anthropological research: "The reigning school of the time, presided over by E. A. Hooton of Harvard and W. H. Sheldon" -- who directed an institute for physique studies at Columbia University -- "held that a person's body, measured and analyzed, could tell much about intelligence, temperament, moral worth and probable future achievement. The inspiration came from the founder of social Darwinism, Francis Galton, who proposed such a photo archive for the British population."

And then Hersey evoked the specter of the Third Reich:



"The Nazis compiled similar archives analyzing the photos for racial as well as characterological content (as did Hooton). . . . The Nazis often used American high school yearbook photographs for this purpose. . . . The American investigators planned an archive that could correlate each freshman's bodily configuration ('somatotype') and physiognomy with later life history. That the photos had no value as pornography is a tribute to their resolutely scientific nature."

A truly breathtaking missive. What Hersey seemed to be saying was that entire generations of America's ruling class had been unwitting guinea pigs in a vast eugenic experiment run by scientists with a master-race hidden agenda. My classmate Steve Weisman, the Times editor who first called my attention to the letter, pointed out a fascinating corollary: The letter managed in a stroke to confer on some of the most overprivileged people in the world the one status distinction it seemed they'd forever be denied -- victim.

My first stop in what would turn out to be a prolonged and eventful quest for the truth about the posture photos was Professor Hersey's office in New Haven. A thoughtful, civilized scholar, Hersey did not seem prone to sensationalism. But he showed me a draft chapter from his forthcoming book on the esthetics of racism that went even further than the allegations in his letter to The Times. I was struck by one passage in particular:

"From the outset, the purpose of these 'posture photographs' was eugenic. The data accumulated, says Hooton, will eventually lead on to proposals to 'control and limit the production of inferior and useless organisms.' Some of the latter would be penalized for reproducing . . . or would be sterilized. But the real solution is to be enforced better breeding -- getting those Exeter and Harvard men together with their corresponding Wellesley, Vassar and Radcliffe girls."

In other words, a kind of eugenic dating service, "Studs" for the cultural elite. But my talk with Hersey left key questions unanswered. What was the precise relationship between theorists like Hooton and Sheldon (the man who actually took tens of thousands of those nude posture photos) and the Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools whose student bodies were photographed? Were the schools complicit or were they simply dupes? And finally: What became of the photographs?

[SoCalDem]

1. One reason why integration was so abhorrent to the upper crusties

the HORROR... Riff-raff of the "lower classes" now attend the "elite" schools..and with it the ever-present co-mingling of the young people who might never have even met in the "old world"..

That's why the word "exclusive" existed.:)

The upper crustie world of the elite ivy league schools was all about getting the cute young well-bred "girls" into college so they would be available for the next generation of rich young men.. It's how they kept the money all in one group of people..

Can't have any of that money being spent on "unworthy" offspring, now could they?

[The Backlash Cometh]

20. Hey, SoCal, maybe the last 40 years was an opportunity to correct

over-breeding in the upper echeleons of society, and now that they've strengthened the bloodlines, they're now closing ranks again?

I'm just sayin...

[SoCalDem]

23. EEK.. all that "hot blood" mixed with cold cash.. not a good thing

:rofl:

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. LOL!

[undergroundpanther]

29. Why don't we just get rid of the

upper crusties? Find every elitist rich predatory parasite that thinks they are better than everyone else and give them a dose of their own solution. They have no shame dishing it out on the weakest among us.They do it all the time as long as they got plausible deniability or someone to take the blame they will keep doing it.. They would want to wipe us out if they could get away with it .So why do we tolerate such thugs with such wealth and influence? Money and prestige they never earned or deserved to have all they have,and they abuse that wealth and power to destroy more people..Why do we continue to let them HAVE this power and hoard that wealth and spend it on bullshit and tax evade?

Time to get rid of the upper crusties before they kill us all with their mad science and twisted 'philosophies' and bad social engineering. Really fight the class war,and take down the ones and their families and business buddies who would want us dead or sterilized.
Why do we tolerate this shit?

[Hydra]

2. Every so often you hear some more about this

And for the life of me, I can't see why people aren't outraged.

Some of the biggest "philanthopic" organizations have their dirty little fingers dragging through this muck, looking for an easy way to determine "inferior" and "exceptional" people, so that the inferiors could be sorted and "disposed of."

It's happening here...and no outrage. What, we were supposed to only hate this when the Nazis did it?

[peacetalksforall]

5. You have to go 'up' to consider it. These 'academics' sold superiors

on the theory, practicalities, and gain. They received permissions going up - Board of Regents, perhaps - or maybe authority rested with the 'President' of the institution. What did they seek to gain? Nearly all of the focus in this article is on Sheldon, but where should it be?

Then, consider, along the way - someone probably had to object - who - and how and by whom were they overruled?

Now, every one is going to say that they were objectors.

Go to college to get photgraphed and become part of 'science research' for a purpose.

Tell me again why certain people are always bragging about our superiority over other people on this planet.

In the last seven years, I've learned more than I want to know about secret societies and secret sciences.

Tuskegee U - same time period, roughly?

Did Native Americans get to bury the skull of Geronimo, yet? Oh wait, that wasn't science.

[undergroundpanther]

28. It's a product of ENVY

Eugenicists are control freaks rationalizing ENVY under the banner of"science".They envy what they cannot have or control,which is the souls strengths of others and their differences .So they rationalize killing it.

[Solly Mack]

3. Thanks for posting this!

Read it all

[glitch]

4. Surreal

and Yikes.

[hedgehog]

6. Every time I hear all the claims for the benefits of stem cell research,

I recall that at one time eugenics was the epitome of modern science.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Are you against stem cell research?

[hedgehog]

15. Put me in the agnostic column.

Maybe there's something there, but when stem cell research is offered as the cure for everything but toe fungus, my crap-o-meter goes off.

Again, I am unsure about the use of embryos as a source of stem cells. My association of stem cell research with eugenics is because eugenics also involved the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good. Is an embryo an individual? That, I don't know.

[girl gone mad]

10. There are numerous differences between...

science and pseudoscience.

You should take some time to learn them.

[yardwork]

11. Private corporations are pursuing stem cell research - and patenting their discoveries.

Bush's veto of public funding for stem cell research didn't make the research illegal. Bush knows that private corporations are conducting lots of stem cell research. His veto protects their eventual profits, after they've patented life-saving discoveries. Bush's veto kept it of the public domain.

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. I totally agree with you.

And we're never going to get accountability from Bush, because these cutthroat, territorial protections for private business are the norm all across this country. It's done quietly, and those that can expose their secrets, get bullied.

[yardwork]

31. Yes. There are lots of reasons to be concerned about genetic research.

That's why it needs to be done in the open, with public accountability, at public institutions that are required to follow laws regulating human subjects. Do the private corporations have Institutional Review Boards? Is anyone enforcing their participation?

It's terrible sad that millions of people are hoodwinked into believing that Bush is protecting "the sanctity of life" when all he's doing is protecting the corporate interests. The research is going forward in private labs all over the country. We'll never know what they discover until they put up selected outcomes for sale. Then the rich will get life-saving treatments and the poor will die.

[The Backlash Cometh]

32. With Bush at the helm, how can we trust anything that's come ouf of his

regulatory agencies? Everything that was determined in the last seven years is now suspect. For instance, I don't think that the agency (I think it was the FDA) that determined that saran wrap in the microwave was safe is credible. They claimed that they acknowledge that the plastic leeches, but they've determined that the residue, which they fully know is going into your body, is safe. It's on snopes.

[Desertrose]

41. Whatever bush says...I take the opposite

So stem cells are simply in the private domain....that would make sense in this administration.

More money for big patents etc etc.


Disgusting.


DR

[Hubert Flottz]

8. Race Hygiene: Three Bush Family Alliances

``The must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge.... Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unworthy must not perpetuate their suffering in the body of their children.... The prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over a period of only 600 years, would ... free humanity from an immeasurable misfortune.''

``The per capita income gap between the developed and the developing countries is increasing, in large part the result of higher birth rates in the poorer countries.... Famine in India, unwanted babies in the United States, poverty that seemed to form an unbreakable chain for millions of people--how should we tackle these problems?.... It is quite clear that one of the major challenges of the 1970s ... will be to curb the world's fertility.''

These two quotations are alike in their mock show of concern for human suffering, and in their cynical remedy for it: Big Brother must prevent the `` unworthy '' or `` unwanted '' people from living.

Let us now further inquire into the family background of our President, so as to help illustrate how the second quoted author, George Bush came to share the outlook of the first, Adolf Hitler. MORE

http://www.tarpley.net/bush3.htm

[seemslikeadream]

9. It began on Long Island

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/



How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."


In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics.

[iverglas]

36. a little nuance and a little less vilification are called for

Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Oliver Wendell Holmes you can have.

http://www.law.du.edu/russell/lh/alh/docs/buckvbell.html

Carrie Buck is a feeble minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of her case in the Circuit Court, in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924 recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, &c.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, &c. The statute then enacts that whenever the superintendent of certain institutions including the above named State Colony shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients and of society than an inmate under his care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity, imbecility, &c., on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse.

... The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck "is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization," and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the legislature and the specific findings of the Court, obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. 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. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

But even he was to a notable extent the product of the ignorance of his times. Undoubtedly similar things will be said about us in future for some of the things we do. Obviously, his contempt for people who suffered from things whose causes he didn't understand, and the appropriate treatment of / assistance for which he didn't care to think about, is not excusable, even if ignorance is.

But please, let's not perpetuate this vilification of Margaret Sanger. While also a product of the ignorance of her time, she did not follow others down the path of contempt. She was concerned for the victims, the people who inherited conditions that made their own lives miserable. No one knew how to treat epilepsy at the time, for instance. Anyone with any compassion would have wanted to spare others the misery that accompanied such conditions. Sanger was not a saint, but she really was not a devil.

http://www.cbmh.ca/archive/00000740/01/cbmhbchm_v23n1revie.pdf

Sanger was not in favour of sterilization even though she did declare her support for negative eugenics, or the weeding out of the physically and mentally unfit population. It should be noted that in her definition, the unfit did not include foreigners or the underclasses, and she disdained the idea of promoting positive eugenics.

"Positive eugenics" is what the "researchers" in the case at hand were up to.

http://www.esrnexus.com/displayArticle.aspx?codedArticleID=6245820

Margaret Sanger, as a young public health nurse, witnessed the sickness, disease and poverty caused by unwanted pregnancies. She spent the rest of her life trying to alleviate these conditions by bringing birth control to America. During the early 20th century, the idea of making contraceptives generally available was revolutionary. Contraceptive usage was considered a distinguishing feature of the 'haves.'

In recent years, some revisionist biographers have portrayed Sanger as a eugenicist and a racist. This view has been widely publicized by critics of reproductive rights who have attempted to discredit Sanger's work by discrediting her personally. The basic concept of the eugenics movement in the 1920s and 1930s was that a better breed of humans would be created if the 'fit' had more children and the 'unfit' had fewer. This concept influenced a broad spectrum of thought, but there was little consensus on the definitions of fit and unfit. In theory, the movement was not racist--its message intended to cross race barriers for the overall advancement of mankind. Most eugenicists agreed that birth control would be a detriment to the human race and were opposed to it.

Charges that Sanger's motives for promoting birth control were eugenic are not supported. In part of her most important work, "Pivot of Civilization," Sanger's dissent from eugenics was made clear. By examining extracts from her books, the author refutes the notion that Sanger was a eugenicist. Another unsupported argument raised by the anti-Sanger group was that Sanger, in her position as editor of "Birth Contol Review," published eugenicists' views. It would be more accurate to say that the review covered a wide range of opinions and research; the eugenicists views were included because they conferred respectability. <In actual fact, Sanger had left the Review at the time the truly offensive material was being published.>

David Kennedy, author of "Birth Control in America," does Sanger a grave injustice by falsely attributing to her the quotation: 'More children from the fit, less from the unfit--that is the chief issue of birth control.' This quotation should be attributed to the editors of "American Medicine." The only area Sanger is in agreement with the eugenicists is in her belief that severely retarded people should not bear children. Several authors, including Linda Gordon, argued that Sanger's interest in providing contraceptives to black Americans was motivated by racism. This notion is entirely misconstrued by distortions of language quoted by Sanger. Rather than wanting to exterminate the Negro population, Sanger wanted to cope with the fear of some blacks that birth control was the white man's way of reducing the black population.

bad grammar fixed

[aquart]

14. Bush family members are prone to addiction.

Lotta good breeding going on.

[hunter]

12. And they got for their breeding miscreants like George W. Bush.

It's funny in a sick and ironic sort of way.

They thought their power was the result of "good breeding" but instead it was the consequence of a social pathology in which a very powerful and unfit elite suppressed and manipulated a greater population by method of brute force, political corruption, and historical fabrication.

[formercia]

33. It's like breeding dogs

The more you inbreed them to promote desired physical traits, the greater the chance of problems.

The best dogs are the mutts.

[BeHereNow]

13. What an incredible story- hard to believe school officials allowed it.

Can you imagine the uproar today if such a practice was considered
part of a school's admission procedure?
Heads would roll!
BHN

[aquart]

16. Depends on the school.

[starroute]

17. Eugenics wasn't necessarily racist to begin with

I've read a lot of old science fiction and other popular novels of the early 20th century, and eugenics comes up from time to time simply as an idea for eliminating genetic weaknesses and predispositions to certain diseases. There was also a lot of concern that modern medicine and technology were enabling people to survive and reproduce who would not have done so under more primitive circumstances, and that harmful genes were accumulating as a result.

That might even be true -- but these days we tend to assume genetic research will eventually let us clean up our gene pool if necessary without having to forcibly prevent certain individuals from reproducing. Early 20th century people, however, who couldn't anticipate a solution on the molecular level, were often reduced to angsting about what horrible decisions would be necessary to prevent the human race from degenerating into a collection of shambling idiots.

In retrospect it doesn't look pretty -- but it wasn't necessarily race-based, and not everyone who subscribed to eugenics should automatically be considered a racist. It was only in the 1950's that eugenics came to be considered a pseudo-science and fell entirely into the hands of out-and-out racial propagandists.

[undergroundpanther]

25. Genetic purity leads to death

A dirty gene pool keeps us healthy and alive.Monoculture spells DEATH to a living thing.

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_2/quarterman/
Eugenics IS racist.And it leads to elitism.Where elitists pick and choose who lives who dies.

Galton was no scientist, he was a sick snotty victorian elitist thug. I HATE GALTON!!Fucking crackpot asshole.

[hunter]

30. There's no definition of "dirty" and there can't be.

Sure, there's some nasties in our genetics, but they almost always turn out to have, or to have had, some purpose in some environmental situation, and even if they don't, well, when you get right down to it, there is no underlying purpose to these genetic combinations. We are all as random as rocks, and every last person on this planet is a roll of the genetic dice, and that is why we we must all be equally worthy of respect.

Suppose we decided white people were inferior because they sunburn too easy...

Clearly, the gene for white is bad, "those people" get skin cancer and have all sorts of metabolic disorders, and are susceptable to genetic diseases and mental defects that normally colored people don't tend to suffer. We must eliminate these genes from the gene pool, make sure that white people are never allowed to reproduce.

Well, you see where we are going. Maybe we find a gene for gay, and eliminate that. Why? Because we are ignorant and afraid, or we are exploiting that ignorance and fear in other people to control them.

Eugenics has never been anything but fancy clothing for an underlying racism, and a tool of political oppression.

If they are sterilizing the freaks, then there is an underlying threat that you, a member of some politically powerless underclass, might be next.

[iverglas]

37. thanks for the effort at nuance

If genetic counselling had been available at the time, we might never have had Arlo Guthrie. The risk of Woodie passing on the Huntington's gene might have been discovered, and he might have chosen not to have children. That would have been his choice, and he would have been absolutely entitled to make it, by any standards that an enlightened and progressive person might apply today. It would still have been "eugenics", just as it is eugenics every time a couple today receives genetic counselling and decides to avoid pregnancy, or the woman decides to terminate a pregnancy, because the risk of a serious inherited condition is high and the consequences for the child who would suffer its effects too awful -- or because the couple doesn't want to have to deal with a child affected by such a condition. Their choice, either way.

I'm allergic to everything, although fortunately not severely enough that my life has ever been at risk. But yesterday, I was stung by a wasp hiding in my dishcloth, and since this was my fourth life-time insect sting, my risk of severe reaction was exacerbated, and I had a few anxious moments. It seems that a tendency to allergies is hereditary, and the incidence of allergies is rising in the population; would someone with allergies avoid having children because of this? Some might. Personal choice. Facilitated by knowledge and expert advice. Still "eugenics".

100 years ago, people saw others suffering from what they believed, and what sometimes were, inherited conditions. Some people were concerned about that suffering in the interests of the individuals affected by it, some people were concerned about the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with people they regarded as degenerate. Some obviously had concerns of both kinds. And some proposed to compel compliance with their conclusions, while others did not. To pretend that the two kinds of concerns and policy positions were the same, and the people who had them no better than each other, is just wrong.

[hunter]

42. Genes are neutral, there are no "dirty genes" in the pool.

The "dirty gene" idea is the one the racists found so appealing, and it still infects these conversations.

A body works, or it doesn't. Most unworkable genetic combinations don't even become people, and are not even recognized as miscarriages.

The rare cases, such a Huntington's, are not a significant fraction of the population, which is why they persist.

You nail it with this idea, and not in the way you suppose: "...some people were concerned about the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with people they regarded as degenerate.

To the people holding political power, "degenerates" were seen as a useless drain on the social and economic resources they controlled. The people who controlled the economy would rather buy weapons and propaganda to increase their political power than support some politically powerless person's stricken family member. As a side benefit of abandoning the disabled, the politically powerful would instill fear among the population they controlled.

The political elite, the people who controlled the economies, never recognized that they themselves were the plague that were bringing about so much death and destruction. By their own claims they should have eliminated themselves from the gene pool.

[iverglas]

43. as far as I can tell, you're the only one here using that expression

Well, you and undergroundpanther.

But hey, if you want to pretend that I or the person I was replying to used it, go right ahead. I can't stop you.

Myself, I'm a huge fan of diversity. That doesn't make it "wrong" for parents to decide not to take the risk of passing on a severe disability to a child. And doing that is indeed "eugenics".

I may be a fan of diversity, but that doesn't mean that I get to compel other people to do things to increase diversity any more than I get to compel them to do things to reduce diversity.

And in point of fact, when it comes to things like an inherited tendency to allergies, or any condition that is likely to manifest when two people combine their genes, what we might be producing is less diversity rather than more. Hmm.

[hunter]

44. starroute used "gene pool" at the start of this sub thread.

It makes sense for families to decide the acceptable risk. But if the state has some mechanism for deciding who will have or not have children then that mechanism will be abused. That's the historical reality of eugenics.

In the United States, particularly, there was a great fear of Southern European Catholics "breeding" faster the the Protestant white elite, and that same fear exists today in the case of, say, Mexican immigrants. You can see it right here on DU -- this great fear that brown people or asian people will displace the existing white population.

The reality is that people of almost any culture will not have so many children once they achieve some sort of political and economic autonomy. It's especially true that educated people who no longer feel at the mercy of God's Will or some invisible hand of fate will choose not to have children if the economic viability of the family would be threatened by more children, or if their is a significant likelihood of some very undesirable genetic trait being passed on.

There was never any sort of innocence or lack of hypocrisy in the American Eugenics movement. The very core of it was racist and intolerant.

[iverglas]

45. it's easy to win by defining the terms

There was never any sort of innocence or lack of hypocrisy in the American Eugenics movement. The very core of it was racist and intolerant.

Fine. Then, by definition, Margaret Sanger, for instance, was not part of that movement. So let's stop the conflating.


The reality is that people of almost any culture will not have so many children once they achieve some sort of political and economic autonomy. It's especially true that educated people who no longer feel at the mercy of God's Will or some invisible hand of fate will choose not to have children if the economic viability of the family would be threatened by more children, or if their is a significant likelihood of some very undesirable genetic trait being passed on.

Yes, duh. People also need to have the means to carry out such choices, contraception being rather a biggie in the spectrum of effective means. You can feel as autonomous as you might like, but actually being autonomous requires tools. It is also true that while the choice to limit family size is an effect of development, limiting family size is a contributor to development.

[hunter]

46. I'm trying to figure out what you are defending here...

Whatever Sanger's own beliefs may have been (and, no, she does not seem to have been overcome by the most egregious sorts of racism of her time) her activism was quite naturally conflated with the racism of that time, and good part of her hard won successes can be attributed to that.

But it's always been a fine U.S. tradition that it's someone else's reproduction that is causing the problems -- the human race is never seen as a single "we," but as an "us" and a "them."

The U.S, mainstream environmental movement reeks of this. People who use a thousand times more natural resources than the average resident of any third world nation will wring their hands about overpopulation, or nuclear power in India, etc.

They've got theirs, and they act as if it's theirs because they are fundamentally different than someone else, and it wasn't just a matter of them coming into existence in a better circumstance than, say, some baby born in squalar in the shadow of a Nigerian oil pipeline carrying the oil that will fuel some Sierra Club member's hybrid SUV.

To the politically powerful communities of the United States it's always been the unknown kid of some "disadvantaged" community who has to visit the Planned Parenthood clinic; it's always "those people."

Personally, I think it's utterly wretched that there is still a need for Planned Parenthood clinics. In my perfect world there would be a universal healthcare system, and people could get birth control, prenatal care and childcare (and yes, even safe abortions) in the same circumstances the U.S. elite now enjoy.

But no, we always gotta trod a little more on the downtrodden, because somehow they have to suffer for whatever pittance they get.

I don't know, if you're looking for the kind of heros who give communities the tools they need to lift themselves up, it ain't easy finding the good stuff in our vile, racist past. U.S. American hero-saints all tend to be tainted by it.

[hedgehog]

18. One of the hidden aspects of history is the tie between Margaret

Sanger and eugenics. She was concerned that women not be forced to have too many children, but also concerned that undesirable women like immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe not have too many children! I'm not against birth control, just pointing pout that this may have been part of the reason so many Catholics were against birth control early in the 20th century. Later, as they entered the middle class, Catholic attitudes (as opposed to the teachings of the hierarchy) tracked closer to mainline American attitudes.

[undergroundpanther]

26. Sanger and galton are connected in the way they thought

about other peoples lives.I think we should sterilize elitists and social darwinists,maybe socialized and unsocialized peychopaths also need to get out of the gene pool.Maybe these fuckfaces invented bullshit like eugenics because they are projecting their own inferiority on whom they deem inferior.Maybe these ultra wealthy pampered bullshitters and social engineers are the real inferiors? They can't stand anyone different than themselves existing..and they attack the weak..why? because they cannot fight someone different and strong enough to tell these mad 'scientists' to go piss up a rope and grow the fuck up and get over themselves?

[iverglas]

39. someone I expect better from

I'm disappointed.

[iverglas]

38. stop it, now, please

She was concerned that women not be forced to have too many children, but also concerned that undesirable women like immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe not have too many children!

Sanger never, ever expressed any such concern. You are falling for the lies that have been propagated for some years now by the anti-choice lie machine, which engages in this massive effort to discredit Sanger for the sole purpose of discrediting Planned Parenthood and undermining women's access to contraception and abortion services.

Do the work before vilifying an individual based on those lies, please. And before spouting nonsense speculation like

I'm not against birth control, just pointing pout that this may have been part of the reason so many Catholics were against birth control early in the 20th century.

The "Catholics" who were against birth control were the men in funny hats running the RC show, just as they are now, and the interests they were promoting had pretty much nothing to do with the interests of the women dying in childbirth in their 10th or 12th pregnancies, just for instance.

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. So, what were we just saying about Americans having an irrational

preference for tall presidents? Isn't it time to dismiss body-types and start concentrating on the only two organs which matter when voting for a president? A brain and a heart.

[porphyrian]

22. That's phrenology-dumb. - n/t

[undergroundpanther]

24. Francis Galton needs to be seen

For the CRACKPOT he is. Whenever YOu use the word"normal" remember where it came from A fantasy based in something like the price is right's game Plinko.

http://www.mouthmag.com/issues/74/pp12-13no74.html
Galton got a box put pins in the box rolled marbles in the box and they formed a bell curve, the"norm"Norm the word came from a carpenter's "norm" now a T square..Eugenics is CRACKPOT bullshit by so called scientists who do not have any character or understanding of nature and reality.Eugenics words have infiltrated our language and how we relate. It is used by elitists to pick and choose the worthy people to exist by criteria they INVENTED.Because these elitists are psychopaths and they want a world without love, they want a world of domination and submission..They want a master and slave reality to be imposed upon a democratic diverse reality where they are always the masters.And eugenics is a LIE a toxic LIE.
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. Galton started the statistical meaning of 'normal'; the word was in use before that

From the OED entry for 'normal':

10. Statistics. = GAUSSIAN
1877 F. GALTON in Proc. Royal Inst. 9 Feb. 297 It {sc. a distribution} is perfectly normal in shape.

But 100 years earlier:

2. a. Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional. (The usual sense.)
1777 Pennsylvania Gaz. (Electronic text) 30 July, A dark brown horse Colt, about 3 years old, with a star in his forehead, some marks of the hopples on his fetlocks, torts normal.

[formercia]

34. The photograph of George HW Bush was among those pictures.

There's probably a few copies floating around somewhere.

[iverglas]

40. "the one status distinction it seemed they'd forever be denied -- victim"

Actually, anyone who is used as a means to someone else's end, without his/her knowledge or consent, is a victim.

These subjects may have been privileged, but that certainly does not mean that all of them agreed with the purpose being pursued by the people using them for that purpose.

The subjects were evidently not harmed themselves, but their selves were appropriated by someone else, and that's unacceptable no matter to whom it is done.

I know I would regard it as harming me if someone appropriated my very existence to further an agenda I found abhorrent.