Category Archives: Eugenics

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2021

Removing the street sign demonstrates PPGNY's ongoing commitment to reckon with Sanger's support for eugenics and to repair, heal and build a more inclusive PPGNY

NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In a vote of solidarity with Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) and its communities, today the New York City Council approved the removal of Margaret Sanger Square from outside PPGNY's Manhattan health center at Bleecker and Mott Streets. The un-naming of Margaret Sanger Square demonstrates PPGNY's commitment to reckon with the totality of its founder's legacy and systemic racism and ableism, which negatively impacts the well-being of Planned Parenthood patients and staff.

Margaret Sanger, who founded the organization that became Planned Parenthood, was a champion of birth control. She also embraced eugenics a racist and ableist ideology that deemed certain people unfit to parent. Through her support of eugenics, Margaret Sanger helped to build a reproductive rights movement that also deepened injustice in the health care system and denied bodily autonomy to communities of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, families with low incomes, and others.

Her actions some 100+ years ago continue to be weaponized by Planned Parenthood opponents that are often outside the doors of PPGNY's Manhattan health center. Public acknowledgment of Sanger's actions upholds PPGNY's mission to create a future where every person regardless of their race, income, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, abilities, or inabilities can access expert, compassionate sexual and reproductive health care without shame or judgment.

Statement from Joy D. Calloway, Interim President & CEO, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York:

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"Today marks a remarkable milestone in our journey to reckon with Margaret Sanger's legacy and our commitment to creating equitable access to sexual and reproductive health care for the communities we serve."

"Planned Parenthood of Greater New York strives to achieve reproductive justice for Black, Latinx, Indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and marginalized individuals who still carry the generational trauma of Margaret Sanger's actions to this day. The un-naming of Margaret Sanger Square outside our Manhattan health center indicates to PPGNY's patients, supporters, and opponents that the organization is ready to face the totality of Sanger's legacy and embrace the work of becoming an anti-racist, multicultural, and inclusive health care provider, educator, and advocate."

Statement from Merle McGee, Chief Equity and Engagement Officer, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York:

"For years we have witnessed Planned Parenthood opponents use Margaret Sanger Square as a symbol of hate to shame our patients, especially women of color, and stigmatize reproductive health care. As a trusted health care provider, PPGNY is obligated to dismantle barriers and create pathways to care and services for all of our communities with dignity."

"We are not canceling Margaret Sanger, we are being accountable for the totality of her legacy so we can repair, heal and build a more inclusive PPGNY."

In 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced the removal of Margaret Sanger's name from its Manhattan health center. Planned Parenthood of Greater New York's reckoning with Sanger's legacy is the result of PPGNY's Reviving Radical initiative, a long-term investment in shaping a new vision for PPGNY's relationship with and within the communities of color they serve, most of which are Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and immigrant communities.

Planned Parenthood of Greater New York is a leading provider of sexual and reproductive health care and education, and an advocate committed to improving health outcomes for all. PPGNY offers a wide range of services at 23 health centers across 65% of the state.

Contact: Jacquelyn Marrero, Jacquelyn.Marrero@ppgreaterny.org, 646-642-6682

Cision

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SOURCE Planned Parenthood of Greater New York

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Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Applauds the New York City Council for Approving the Removal of Margaret Sanger Square - Yahoo Finance

The worlds human population grew dramatically in the twentieth century, from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000. As it grew, population began to take the blame for some of the worlds most pressing and intractable problems, from poverty to geopolitical instability to climate change. But how did the fact of population growth become the problem of overpopulation, and how did framing the worlds major concerns as population problems limit the range of possible solutions?

My new book, Building the Population Bomb (Oxford University Press, 2021), answers these questions by tracing the development of two scientific theories of overpopulation, one environmental and the other economic, across the 20th century. It elucidates the sociotechnical networks that gave these theories the power to shape the worlds population by informing and legitimating governmental and nongovernmental interventions into the intimate lives of some of the worlds most vulnerable people.

The two theories of overpopulation grew out of competing scientific approaches to population that appeared in the United States in the 1920s, at the height of the eugenics movement and in the midst of intense debates about the value of immigration. Biologists focused on aggregate growth rates, which they read through a Malthusian lens to predict imminent overpopulation. They proposed immigration restriction and a eugenic birth control program. Statisticians and social scientists focused on age-specific fertility and mortality rates, which they read through a mercantilist lens to predict a disastrous slowing of population growth. They opposed immigration restriction but still favored eugenics; whether the U.S. population was growing too quickly or too slowly, all scientists agreed on the importance of promoting large families among the right people and small families among the wrong people.

The American eugenics movement also began to divide around the end of the 1920s. Older eugenicists, who aligned with the biological approach to population, continued to view Southern and Eastern Europeans and anyone who wasnt white as the wrong people and continued to favor direct government intervention into reproduction. Younger eugenicists, who aligned with the statistical and social scientific approach to population, distanced themselves from overt racism, which had become the hallmark of fascist eugenics programs in Europe. These younger eugenicists also eschewed state intervention into reproduction, instead favoring the creation of financial incentives and a social climate in which the right people would have large families and the wrong people would have small families, all under the guise of reproductive freedom. They called this program family planning.

In the 1930s, the American Eugenics Society became the home of this new brand of eugenics. Its leaders saw the burgeoning science of population as a key ally for their agenda and directed funding toward the statisticians and social scientists, supporting their mercantilist approach to population. These were the scientists who became known as demographers and to whom the New Deal state looked for assistance in administering its social and economic programs.

The Malthusian biologists were sidelined in the establishment of demography, but supporters of the older version of eugenics including businessmen, diplomats, and natural scientists kept Malthusianism alive in the American popular consciousness. After World War II, Malthusians and demographers both turned their attention to the global horizon, where it became clear that population was poised for rapid growth. North America, Western Europe, and Oceania were experiencing a postwar baby boom. More worrisome to American observers, however, was the fact that death rates were falling rapidly in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, while birth rates remained high. Malthusians compared the aggregate world population to the planets carrying capacity, warning that population growth anywhere would quickly deplete the Earths natural resources, stimulating the spread of global communism and ushering in nuclear war.

Demographers focused on the national level, comparing population growth rates to rates of economic growth. For them, overpopulation was a problem only in the Global South, where they warned that rapid population growth would prevent economic development. Empirical evidence for the demographic theory of overpopulation was scant; empirical evidence for the Malthusian theory of overpopulation was nonexistent. Nonetheless, the two theories supported one another to produce intense anxiety about population growth among the American public, the U.S. government, and the leaders of developing countries worldwide.

Demographers and their sponsors extended the interwar eugenic project of family planning to developing countries, where they aimed to create a climate in which birth control was so widely available and socially acceptable that it would be almost harder not to use it. This aim was facilitated by the IUD, the development and manufacture of which was bankrolled by the Population Council, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization that also funded demographic research in the Global South and the training of students from developing countries in demography graduate programs in the U.S.

Malthusians initially saw family planning as a solution to their population problem as well. Working through such organizations as the Population Reference Bureau and the Population Crisis Committee, Malthusians appealed to the American public and U.S. policymakers to support the work of the Population Council and other nongovernmental organizations involved in family planning. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development began to earmark funds for this purpose in 1965. By the end of the 1960s, however, Malthusians were complaining that family planning was not doing enough to slow population growth. Instead, they recommended that governments impose legal limits on childbearing. They received intellectual support from a younger generation of biologists, most notably Paul Ehrlich, who published The Population Bomb in 1968, and Garrett Hardin, who coined the term tragedy of the commons, also in 1968. Demographers and their supporters described the Malthusian approach as coercive, so anything short of legal limits on childbearing, such as financial incentives to accept IUDs, passed as non-coercive.

The two theories of overpopulation, coming from the U.S., clashed on a global stage at the 1974 UN World Population Conference, where leaders of countries in the Global South rejected all efforts to limit population growth as imperialist. Intellectuals and heads of state from Asia, Africa, and Latin America blamed poverty and environmental degradation on the industrial practices of countries in the Global North. Declaring that development is the best contraceptive, they demanded the implementation of the New International Economic Order that had been laid out by the UN Conference on Trade and Development in 1972. Nearly 50 years later, however, experts in the U.S. continue to attribute poverty in the Global South and climate change worldwide to population growth. Economists recommend that developing countries reduce their birth rates in order to reap the demographic dividend, while natural scientists and bioethicists recommend that governments place limits on childbearing to stave off climate change.

As was the case in the mid-20th century, natural scientists and social scientists disagree over what constitutes overpopulation and what should be done about it. The tension between these two theories of overpopulation, however, promotes the popular belief that the worlds human population is growing too quickly and that something needs to be done about it. Together, they present population as a smokescreen to obscure the more proximate causes of the problems they attribute to population growth, namely, global socioeconomic inequality and environmental degradation. By focusing debate on how to most effectively and equitably slow population growth legal limits on childbearing or voluntary family planning proponents of overpopulation elide more direct regulatory and redistributive solutions to the worlds most pressing concerns. Framing these issues as population problems gets the U.S. and its corporations off the hook, at the expense of the most vulnerable members of the worlds population and the planet itself.

Originally posted here:

"Population bomb": how a wrong diagnosis misled the world - Big Think

I am glad readers are somewhat perusing my letters. Lets pay attention to facts and details.

A recent letter substituted progressives to Democrats (historically correct) with a bold assertion that Democrats nor the left support eugenics, abortion or cultural cleansing. Those were progressive pursuits. But, when reading the Democratic Party platform, one will read these words: that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. Again, corroborate what you know or believe.

This verification unequivocally refutes the claim that the Democrats and the left do not support abortions specifically. Do readers follow voting records of politicians or actions of the Department of Justice that the current administration advocate? Should the Democratic Party platform be denounced?

Another rebuttal is necessary. The major increase in crime during the Trump administration occurred largely in states and cities that are Democratic bastions wholly under their jurisdictions. President Trump honored the Ninth and 10th amendments. Crime and civil violence are escalating under this current administration. Can these points be refuted? No. Be cognizant of what is going on in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and more.

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Letter: Pay attention to facts - The Columbian

Eugenics has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States (like Charles Davenport and John Coulter), through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[1] Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.[2]

The concept of pureblood as a criterion for the uniqueness of the Yamato people began circulating around 1880 in Japan, while eugenics in the sense of instrumental and selective procreation, clustered around two positions concerning blood, the pure blood (, junketsu) and the mixed blood (, konketsu).[2]

Popularity of the pure-blood eugenics theory came from a homegrown racial purity or monoculture national belief that has been part of Japanese society since ancient times[citation needed]. The local movement was however less focused on modern scientific ideals and more on the "outside person" vs the "native or inside person" and blood purity.[2]

Later legal measures were supported by certain politicians and movements that sought to increase the number of healthy pure Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people suffering mental retardation, disability, genetic disease and other conditions that led to them being viewed as "inferior" contributions to the Japanese gene pool.[3][4]

Opposition to the eugenics movement persisted amongst several right-wing factions, including members of the Diet of Japan and obstetricians, who perceived eugenics as suggesting that the Japanese people were only animals, not inhabitants of the "country of the kami" (, shinkoku) as believed by the Japanese national Shinto tradition.[5] Yoshiichi Swa (), author of "Japan's Shinto Revolution",[6] wrote in 1940, "When we look up into the past, the people of our country are descended from the kami. Are they claiming we must sterilize these people?"[7]

Yamanouchi Shige (18761973), a plant cytologist, was one of the early and important members of the Japanese eugenics movement, who was trained under John Merle Coulter (18511928) an American eugenicist and botanist. He was a major promoter and academic of early Lamarckian theory, but later blended his ideas with Mendelian evolutionary theory.

His career is a direct link between United States and Japanese eugenics. His approach has been credited with searching for a way for the Japanese race to genetically surpass what was then the "dominant Western race" of the 19th and early 20th centuries by breeding smarter and stronger Japanese people.[8]

According to Jennifer Robertson of the University of Michigan, eugenism, as part of the new scientific order, was introduced in Japan "under the aegis of nationalism and empire building."[9] She identifies "positive eugenism" and "negative eugenism." Positive eugenism, promoted by Ikeda Shigenori, refers to "the improvement of circumstances of sexual reproduction and thus incorporates advances in sanitation, nutrition and physical education into strategies to shape the reproductive choices and decisions of individual and families"[10] Negative Eugenism, promoted by Hisomu Nagai, "involves the prevention of sexual reproduction, through induced abortion or sterilization among people deemed unfit".[10] "Unfit" included people such as alcoholics, lepers, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and criminals.[10]

Social Darwinism was at that time gaining credibility with scientists around the world and thus was introduced to Japan as well.[11]

Ikeda Shigenori ( ), a journalist who had been sent to Germany, started the magazine Eugenics movement (, Ysei-und) in 1926. In 1928, he promoted December 21 as "Blood-purity day" (junketsu de) and sponsored free blood-test at the Tokyo Hygiene Laboratory.[12]

Nagai, the "Doctor of Eugenics", assumed the position of chief director of The Japanese Society of Health and Human Ecology (JSHHE), which was established in 1930.[13]

By the early 1930s detailed "eugenic marriage" questionnaires were printed or inserted in popular magazines for public consumption.[14] Promoters like Ikeda were convinced that these marriage surveys would not only insure the eugenic fitness of spouses but also help avoid class differences that could disrupt and even destroy marriage. The goal was to create a database of individuals and their entire households which would enable eugenicists to conduct in-depth surveys of any given family's genealogy.[12]

An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a secret document for the use of policy-makers, cited eugenics approvingly, calling for the medical profession not to concentrate on the sick and weak, and for mental and physical training and selective marriages to improve the population.[15]

After rejection of the originally submitted Race Eugenic Protection Law in 1938, National Eugenic Law (ja:, Kokumin Ysei H) was promulgated in 1940 by the Konoe government.[16]

This law limited compulsory sterilization to "inherited mental disease", promoted genetic screening and restricted birth control access.[17] According to Matsubara Yoko, from 1940 to 1945, 454 people were sterilized in Japan under this law.[18]

There were also campaigns to ensure reproduction amongst the "intelligent or superior elements" in the population.[5]

Family center staff also attempted to discourage marriage between Japanese women and Korean men who had been recruited from the peninsula as laborers following its annexation by Japan in 1910. In 1942, a survey report argued that

"the Korean laborers brought to Japan, where they have established permanent residency, are of the lower classes and therefore of inferior constitution... By fathering children with Japanese women, these men could lower the caliber of the Yamato minzoku."[2]

Eugenism was criticized by some Shinto ultranationalists as it seemed to treat Japanese people, considered of divine origin, as animals to be "bred".[19]According to Nagai Hisomu, the Japanese Army's ignorance and dismissal of the science behind eugenics also stalled the spread of eugenic ideology.[20]

One of the last eugenic measures of the pre-war regime was taken by the Higashikuni government. On 19 August 1945, the Home Ministry ordered local government offices to establish a prostitution service for Allied occupation soldiers to preserve the "purity" of the "Japanese race." The official declaration stated that:

Through the sacrifice of thousands of "Okichis" of the Shwa era, we shall construct a dike to hold back the mad frenzy of the occupation troops and cultivate and preserve the purity of our race long into the future...[21]

Such clubs were soon established by cabinet councillor Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa.[citation needed]

In post-war Japan, the Socialist Party proposed the Eugenic Protection Law (ja:, Ysei Hogo H) which was enacted in 1948 to replace the National Eugenic Law of 1940.[22] The main provisions allowed for voluntary and involuntary eugenic operations (sterilizations) of people who had hereditary diseases (Article 4), non-hereditary mental illness and intellectual disability (Article 12),[23] as well as where pregnancy would endanger the life of the woman. The operation did not require consent of the woman and her spouse, but the approval of the Prefectural Eugenic Protection Council. Therefore, this law violated the right to a person's autonomy.[24]

The law also allowed for abortion for pregnancies in the cases of rape, leprosy, hereditarily-transmitted disease, or if the physician determined that the fetus would not be viable outside of the womb. Again, the consent of the woman and her spouse were not necessary. Birth control guidance and implementation was restricted to doctors, nurses and professional midwives accredited by the Prefectural government. The law was also amended in May 1949 to allow abortions for economic reasons at the sole discretion of the doctor, which in effect fully legalized abortion in Japan.[24]

Despite the unambiguous wording of the law, the law was used by local authorities as justification for measures enforcing forced sterilization and abortions upon people with certain genetic disorders, as well as leprosy, as well as an excuse for legalized discrimination against people with physical and mental handicaps.[25][26]

Laws that decreed compulsory sterilization of the disabled were abolished with the approval of the Mother's Body Protection Law (() on June 18, 1996.[25][dead link] Victims are to be paid a compensation in 2019.[27]

The Leprosy Prevention laws of 1907, 1931 and 1953, the last one only repealed in 1996, permitted the segregation of patients in sanitaria where forced abortions and sterilization were common, even if the laws did not refer to it, and authorized punishment of patients "disturbing peace" as most Japanese leprologists believed that vulnerability to the disease was inheritable.[28]

There were a few Japanese leprologists such as Noburo Ogasawara who argued against the "isolation-sterilization policy" but he was denounced as a traitor to the nation at the 15th Conference of the Japanese Association of Leprology in 1941.[29] Under the colonial Korean Leprosy prevention ordinance, Korean patients were also subjected to hard labor.[30]

In postwar Japan, the Eugenic Protection Law (, Ysei Hogo H) was enacted in 1948 to replace the National Eugenic Law of 1940. The indications of the Eugenic Protection Law included leprosy. This condition discontinued when the law changed into the Women's Body Protection Law.

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Eugenics in Japan - Wikipedia

Eugenics is the belief that selecting the mating partners and controlling the offspring improves the quality of human life. According to history, it dates back to Ancient Greece, but after its adaption by the Nazis, eugenics gained much criticism, scrutiny and disapproval.

1. It is Very ExpensiveEngineering a perfect or desirable offspring is expensive. Not many couples can afford hiring a team of geneticists to engineer their dream baby. This further widens the gap between the rich and poor, with the rich producing the more dominant and more superior offspring.

2. It Kills Human DiversityThe human race is diverse because of the diversity of the parents. But when new generation of humans are controlled genetically, it eliminates diversity and creates a unified type of race that is deemed perfect and superior.

3. It Creates Extreme DiscriminationThere would be extreme discrimination against natural born babies because they will be considered inferior to those engineered ones with healthier bodies, smarter minds and better looks.

4. It May Multiply not Prevent Genetic MistakesThere is a catch to altering genes to prevent genetic mistakes. Down the line of eliminating genetic disorders produces humans with similar genetic makeup and a shallow gene pool. This could lead to serious ailments as in the case of purebreds.

5. It is Based on Nazi IdeologyArtificial selection has its dark foundations rooted in the eugenics program of the Nazis. Even if future eugenics program may be done with the best of intentions, it will always be influenced by the subjective beliefs of those in power the deciding body that determines what traits are desirable and undesirable.

Eugenics does have some benefits, but as an infant technology, it is has risks and prone to costly mistakes at the expense of actual humans. Artificial selection like eugenics is doubtful because no one has ever succeeded at manipulating or taming nature. But when the time comes that man perfects eugenics and decides to embrace it, man also needs to tame himself to use it for good, and good only.

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The Major Cons of Eugenics ConnectUS

A meme from 2019 posited that Dr. Henry Kissinger, who served as U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the Nixon and Ford administrations, delivered a speech to a World Health Organization (WHO) council on eugenics in 2009 at which he declared that the first step in controlling populations was to get them to accept mandatory vaccinations. Following that step, people would accept forcible organ donation, genetically modified children, and mandatory sterilization:

Once the herd accepts mandatory forcible vaccination, its game over! They will accept anything forcible blood or organ donation for the greater good. We can genetically modify children and sterilize them for the greater good. Control sheep minds and you control the herd. Vaccine makers stand to make billions, and many of you in this room today are investors. Its a big win-win! We thin out the herd and the herd pays us for providing extermination services. Now, whats for lunch, huh?

The over-the-top nature of this putative Kissinger statement (particularly its concluding sentence) should be a strong indicator its merely a fabrication. We find it unlikely that an experienced public speaker like Kissinger would use redundant adjectives (mandatory forcible vaccination), refer to the populace as a herd, or finish an address with the words Now, whats for lunch, huh? In no respect does it read like an excerpt from an actual speech.

More to the point, the passage comprises an incoherent jumble of outlandish claims that could only make sense to a conspiracy theorist, leaping from forcible vaccinations to genetically modifying and sterilizing children to providing extermination services and thin[ning] out the herd. Our efforts to find any evidence at all that Henry Kissinger uttered these words, or that he took similar public positions on other occasions, were in vain.

A World Health Organization Council on Eugenics does not exist, nor has such a body ever existed. The word eugenics has a long and sordid history, primarily as the name of a now-discredited social theory and movement from the early 20th century advocating the improvement of society by ensuring that people deemed genetically superior reproduce at a higher rate than those identified as inferior. On the rare occasions when eugenics is discussed in World Health Organization (WHO) documents, its in a historical context emphasizing that the practice served as a basis for the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany.

Kissinger is often portrayed as a kind of supervillain in the writings of conspiracy theorists, who have misquoted him before in the interests of identifying him with the alleged machinations of a secretive, elite cabal to rule the world. Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, theyve quoted him as saying. The statement meshes well with the ersatz sentiments attributed to Kissinger above. When pressed, however, nobody seems to be able to specify where or when he ever made any such pronouncements.

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Did Henry Kissinger Advocate 'Forcible ... - Snopes.com

The first U.S. Secretary of Education. A 1995 Nobel Prize winner. The first Black student to graduate from Caltech. An educator who spent years trying to diversify the universitys student population.

Their stories may not have been well-known at Caltech. But soon, the names and legacies of Shirley Mount Hufstedler, Edward B. Lewis, Grant Delbert Venerable and Lee F. Browne will be honored campuswide after the private research university announced the renaming of professorships and buildings following petitions and calls from students and alumni to strip the names of eugenicists from campus.

The renaming effort at the university came after a tumultuous year in which students and alumni, catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd, demanded that the school remove the name of founding president Robert A. Millikan for his support of eugenics.

Other universities, including USC, UC Berkeley and the UC Hastings College of the Law, have seen similar movements to acknowledge the past legacies of founders and notable campus figures.

Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in a statement that the renaming process involved an intense and thorough examination of Caltechs history and our aspirations for the future.

There were heartfelt differences of opinion, Rosenbaum said in an emailed statement, but in the end the Caltech community came together to construct an inclusive path forward true to our values.

As a result, the formerly known Robert A. Millikan Memorial Library has been renamed Caltech Hall, the most prominent campus building, to signal Caltechs aspiration to be an inclusive community.

After students and alumni circulated petitions, the university responded by forming a committee charged with reviewing the legacies of the men whose names appeared on campus and make recommendations. Millikan contributed greatly to the science community; he won a Nobel Prize for his research on the electron and built Caltech into a leading research institute while serving as president for 24 years. But the renaming committee found a disquieting picture of Millikans view on gender, race and ethnicity. Under his tenure, no women were ever hired onto the schools faculty, and Millikan once wrote that granting Black people the right to vote was an unthinkable disaster.

In announcing that his name would be removed last January, Rosenbaum said Millikan lent his name and his prestige to a morally reprehensible eugenics movement that already had been discredited scientifically during his time. That discredited ideology sought to use science to improve the human race by promoting traits deemed superior and breeding out those judged undesirable.

Sarah Sam, a student who co-authored one of the petitions as president of the Black Scientists and Engineers of Caltech, said she was thrilled that the university had finally taken the steps to finalize the renaming.

Additional changes have taken place since students launched a petition outlining other demands to create an inclusive campus. Caltech professors and staff members have taken it upon themselves to meet some of the goals outlined by the student group, Sam said, including increasing funds for a fellowship for incoming students of color and establishing an orientation program for incoming graduate students of color.

I never thought I as a student would be able to have such a huge impact on the culture, Sam said.

The university has also increased outreach efforts into underrepresented groups and launched a campus climate survey to receive feedback from students.

The other figures whose named have been removed from buildings and professorship titles include E.S. Gosney, the founder of the Human Betterment Foundation, a Pasadena-based eugenics group; Harry Chandler, a former Los Angeles Times publisher; William B. Munro, Henry M. Robinson, and Albert B. Ruddock, all of whom were affiliated with the Human Betterment Foundation.

The Lee F. Browne Dining Hall has been renamed to remove Chandler. Browne served as Caltechs director of secondary school relations in the 1970s, and for two decades, developed outreach programs to encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue a science career path.

The website for the Ruddock House, a dormitory where residents were known as the Rudds, has already been updated to its new title, the Venerable House, named after Grant D. Venerable, the first Black student to graduate from Caltech. In documents, Millikan went to the board of trustees to question whether Venerable should be allowed to live on campus. (Millikan did end up offering Venerable student housing.)

Two professorships have been renamed the Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professorship and the Edward B. Lewis Professorships of Biology to remove references to Millikan and Ruddock. Hufstedler served as a trustee for 39 years and helped the university increase outreach to women while advising on issues including childcare, womens issues and public policy. Lewis, who graduated in 1942 and later joined the faculty, and won a Nobel prize for his research on how genes regulate development in the body.

The process in selecting new names was led by community outreach and committee deliberations, Shayna Chabner-McKinney, the university chief communications officer, said in an email.

Previously, Caltech also benefited from the Human Betterment Foundation when the founder died and transferred assets to the university. According to the committee report, during the transfer process, Caltech housed the foundation in a small office on campus. It used the funds from the transaction to offer postdoctoral fellowships, the Gosney Fellowship, which the university last awarded in June 2020.

Michael Chwe, a Caltech alumnus and UCLA political science professor, said he felt he university has not fully acknowledged its ties to the eugenics foundation and was slow to discuss the complex legacies of people like Millikan, who were celebrated for their scientific merit, while others like Venerable were not talked about.

If were not clear about our own history, then every other person who we arent clear to gets implicated, Chwe said. [The renaming is] a great step, but one small step in making Caltech a welcoming place for everyone.

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After admitting founder's eugenics past, Caltech honors a ...

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (January 2021)

Population planning in Singapore spans two distinct phases: first to slow and reverse the boom in births that started after World War II; and second, from the 1980s onwards, to encourage parents to have more children because birth numbers had fallen below replacement levels.

The first phase started with the launch of the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board in 1966 to aggressively promote family planning, after Singapore faced post war food and housing shortages".[1] SFPPB targeted low-socioeconomic status individuals, particularly females, and worked to encourage contraceptive use, such as condoms and birth control.[1] The SFPPB advocated for small families, establishing the "Stop-at-Two" programme, which pushed for small two-children families and promoted sterilisation in order to have population control. SFPPB also opened more clinics to better the health and welfare of families.[1]

The government program Stop-at-Two was very successful. The program could even be considered too successful.[2] The policy that encouraged couples to have no more than two children started to cause a population decline and impact the population structure of Singapore in a negative manner.[3] The government has made attempts to reverse the falling birth rates, initiating phase two.

Phase two has been very unsuccessful.[4] A lot of policies set in place by the government during phase one made phase two difficult to take place. In phase one, civil workers were not paid for maternity leave after their second child, hospital fees were higher after the second child, top school choices were given to only children with parents who had been sterilized before the age of 40, which was rewarded with seven days of paid leave.[4] During phase two, several of these policies were still taking place and individuals remained having one child, or no children.[4]

The government eventually became pro-natalist, and officially announced its replacement "Have-Three-or-More (if you can afford it)" in 1987, in which the government continued its efforts to better the quality and quantity of the population while discouraging low-income families from having children. The Social Development Unit (SDU) was also established in 1984 to promote marriage and romance between educated individuals.[5]

World War II in Singapore ended in 1945, and the years following caused the population to increase faster than the economy was developing. There were about 1 million baby boomers born between the years of 1947 and 1964, live births increasing 58%.[6]

With the rapid increase of Singapore after the war, the country soon faced the effects of overpopulation, which could be the depletion of natural resources, degradation of environment, a rise in unemployment, and a higher cost of living. From 1947 to 1957, the social forces which caused the postWorld War II baby boom elsewhere in the world also occurred in Singapore. The birth rate rose and the death rate fell; the average annual growth rate was 4.4%, of which 1% was due to immigration; Singapore experienced its highest birth rate in 1957 at 42.7 per thousand individuals. This also happened to be the same year the United States saw its peak birth rate. Upon Singapore experiencing many of the effects of overpopulation, and in fear of experiencing more, the Singapore government decided to step in.[6]

Family planning was introduced to Singapore in 1949 by a group of volunteers led by Constance Goh that eventually became the Family Planning Association of Singapore and established numerous sexual health clinics offering contraception, treatments for minor gynaecological ailments, and marital advice. Until the 1960s there was no official government policy in these matters, but the postwar British colonial administration, followed by the Singaporean government, played an increasingly important role by providing ever larger grants to the Association, as well as land for its facilities network, culminating in 1960 with a three-month nationwide family planning campaign that was jointly conducted by the Association and government. The population growth rate slowed from 45% per year in the 1950s to around 2.5% in 1965 around independence. The birth rate had fallen to 29.5 per thousand individuals, and the natural growth rate had fallen to 2.5%.[7]

Singapore's population expansion can be seen in the graph below:

At the time of independence, many Singaporeans lived in the Central Area in overcrowded shophouses; and the bulk of the work of the Housing Development Board had not yet been completed. In 1947, the British Housing Committee Report noted Singapore had "one of the world's worst slums 'a disgrace to a civilised community'", and the average person per building density was 18.2 by 1947 (high-rise buildings had yet to be constructed en masse); about 550,000 people lived in squalid squatter settlements or "ramshackle shophouses" by 1966.[9] Rapid population growth was perceived as a threat to "political stability and living standards" that led to population overcrowding that would overwhelm employment opportunities and social services in education, health and sanitation.[10]

Despite their fall since 1957, birth rates in the 1960s were still perceived as high. On average, a baby was born every 11 minutes in 1965; Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH) a women's hospital where most babies in Singapore were delivered saw over 100 deliveries per day in 1962. In 1966, KKH delivered 39,835 babies, earning it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for "largest number of births in a single maternity facility" each year for ten years. Because there was generally a massive shortage of beds in that era, mothers with routine deliveries were discharged from hospitals within 24 hours.[11]

In 1959, the People's Action Party came to power, and in September 1965 the Minister of Health, Yong Nyuk Lin, submitted a white paper to Parliament, recommending a Five-year Mass Family Planning programme that would reduce the birth rate to 20.0 per thousand individuals by 1970. This was to become the National Family Programme; in 1966, the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board (SFPPB) had been established based on the findings of the white paper, providing clinical services and public education on family planning.[10] Initially allocated a budget of $1 million SGD for the entire programme, the SFPPB faced a resistant population, but eventually serviced over 156,000. The Family Planning Association was absorbed into the activities of the SFPPB.

Lee Kuan Yew as first Prime Minister of Singapore held wide sway over the government's social policies before 1990.Lee Kuan Yew was recorded in 1967 as believing that "five percent" of a society's population, "who are more than ordinarily endowed physically and mentally," should be allocated the best of a country's limited resources to provide "a catalyst" for that society's progress. Such a policy for Singapore would "ensure that Singapore shall maintain its pre-eminent place" in Southeast Asia. Similar views shaped education policy and meritocracy in Singapore.[12]

In the late 1960s, Singapore was a developing nation and had not yet undergone the demographic transition; though birth rates fell from 1957 to 1970, in 1970, birth rates rose as women who were themselves the product of the postwar baby boom reached maturity. Fearing that Singapore's growing population might overburden the developing economy, Lee started a vigorous Stop at Two family planning campaign. Abortion and sterilisation were legalised in 1970, and women were urged to get sterilised after their second child. [10][8]

The government also added a gradually increasing array of incentives and disincentives between 1968 and 1973, penalising parents for having more than two children, raising the per-child costs of each additional child:[10][13]

The Singapore Family Planning and Population Board created a large array of public education material for the Stop-at-Two campaign, in one of the early examples of the public social engineering campaigns the government would continue to implement (Speak Mandarin, Speak Good English, National Courtesy, Keep Singapore Clean and Toilet Flushing Campaigns) that would lead to its reputation as "paternalistic" and "interventionist" in social affairs.[8][19] The "Stop at Two" media campaign from 1970 to 1976 was led by Basskaran Nair, press section head of the Ministry of Culture, and created posters with lasting legacy: a 2008 Straits Times article wrote, "many middle-aged Singaporeans will remember the poster of two cute girls sharing an umbrella and an apple: The umbrella fit two nicely. Three would have been a crowd."[20] This same poster was also referred to in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's 2008 National Day Rally speech. Many other posters from the "iconic" campaign included similar themes of being content with two girls, to combat the common trend in developing Asian societies for families with only daughters to continue "trying for a boy".

In addition to promoting just having two children, the government encouraged individuals to delay having their second child and to marry late, reinforcing the inevitable demographic transition. Other slogans and campaign material exhorted Singaporeans with such messages as:

The Straits Times interviewed mothers who were sterilised in that era, noting it was common to get sterilised at a young age, citing a woman who had undergone tubal ligation at KKH at the age of 23, herself coming from a large family of ten. "The pressure [disincentives] was high. The Government clearly didn't want us to have more than two." A gynaecologist doctor who worked KKH recalled sterilisation rates became "sky high" after the disincentives had been implemented; it was common for hospital workers to chide women who were pregnant with third-order or higher births, recommending abortions, while such women talked about their pregnancy "[as if] they committed a crime". The Straits Times also suggested the disincentives had been very effective; one woman cited how sterilisation certification had to be shown to a school for a third child to receive priority, while she and four out of five sisters eventually underwent sterilisation.[20] Expensive delivery fees ("accouchement fees") for third-order and higher births would also be waived with sterilisation.

The campaign was known to target the uneducated in particular; Lee believed that, "Free education and subsidised housing lead to a situation where the less economically productive people ... are reproducing themselves at [a higher rate]." He believed that implementing a system of government disincentives would stop "the irresponsible, the social delinquents" from thinking that having more children would entitle them to more government-provided social services.[22]

The government justified its social policy as a means of encouraging the poor to concentrate their limited resources on nurturing their existing children, making them more likely to be capable, productive citizens.[10] The government also had to respond to criticism that this policy favoured Chinese over minority races; Malays and Indians were stereotyped to have higher birth rates and bigger families than the Chinese, further fuelling accusations of eugenics.[23]

As Singapore modernised in the 1970s, fertility continued to drop. The natural replacement rate reached 1.006 in 1975; thereafter the replacement rate would drop below unity. Furthermore, the so-called "demographic gift" was occurring in Singapore as with other countries; increases in income, education and health and the role of women in the workforce were strongly correlated to levels of low population growth. According to a paper by the Library of Congress, by the 1980s, "Singapore's vital statistics resembled those of other countries with comparable income levels but without Singapore's publicity campaigns and elaborate array of administrative incentives."[10]

Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed at the perceived demographic trend that educated women most of all the college-educated would be less likely to marry and procreate. Such a trend would run antithetical to his demographic policy, and part of this failure, Lee conjectured, was "the apparent preference of male university graduates for less highly educated wives". This trend was deemed in a 1983 speech as "a serious social problem".[10] Starting 1984, the government of Singapore gave education and housing priorities, tax rebates and other benefits to mothers with a university degree, as well as their children. The government also encouraged Singapore men to choose highly educated women as wives, establishing the Social Development Unit (SDU) that year to promote socialising among men and women graduates, a unit that was also nicknamed "Single, Desperate and Ugly".[10][23] The government also provided incentives for educated mothers to have three or four children, in what was the beginning of the reversal of the original Stop at Two policy. The measures sparked controversy and what became known as The Great Marriage Debate in the press. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by the views of Lee Kuan Yew, who had questioned that perhaps the campaign for women's rights had been too successful:

Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn't get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers...our most valuable asset is in the ability of our people, yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal career opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role ... as mothers, the creators and protectors of the next generation.

The uproar over the proposal led to a swing of 12.9 percent against the People's Action Party government in the 1984 general election. In 1985, especially controversial portions of the policy that gave education and housing priorities to educated women were eventually abandoned or modified.[10][13]

A 1992 study noted that 61% of women giving birth had secondary education or higher, but this proportion dropped for third-order births (52%) and fourth-or-higher-order births (36%), supporting the idea that more children per capita continue to be born to women with less qualifications, and correspondingly, lower income.[24]This issue is greatly known as the Great Marriage Debate. Many incentives were given to graduate women to marry and give birth to produce babies which were believed to be 'highly intelligent' to maximise the talent pool in Singapore. Women without O-Level qualifications, deemed low-income and lowly educated, were offered by the government seven days' paid sick leave and $10,000 SGD in cash incentives to voluntarily undergo the sterilisation procedure. [8]

In 1986 the Government of Singapore had recognised that falling birth rates were a serious problem and began to reverse its past policy of Stop-at-Two, encouraging higher birth rates instead. By 30 June of that year, the authorities had abolished the Family Planning and Population Board,[25] and by 1987, the total fertility rate had dropped to 1.44. That year, Goh Chok Tong announced a new slogan: Have Three or More (if you can afford it), announcing that the government now promoted a larger family size of three or more children for married couples who could afford them, and promoted "the joys of marriage and parenthood".[10] The new policy took into account Singapore's falling fertility rate and its increased proportion of the elderly, but was still concerned with the "disproportionate procreation" of the educated versus the uneducated, and discouraged having more than two children if the couple did not have sufficient income, to minimise the amount of welfare aid spent on such families.[24] The government also relaxed its immigration policies.[citation needed]

In October 1987, future Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, then a young Brigadier-General, exhorted Singaporeans to procreate rather than "passively watch ourselves going extinct".[26] United Press International noted the "baffled" reaction of parents, many who had grown up in an era where they were told that having more than two children was "antisocial". One parent commented, "are we being told to have more children for the sake of the country or for ourselves?"[27] Goh Chok Tong, despite the scepticism, remained optimistic that the population rate would be restored to the replacement rate by 1995. An NUS sociologist however, observed that Singapore had "a new breed of women" one "involved in their careers [and] used to a certain amount of leisure and more material possessions" and hence would not be as receptive to financial incentives as previous women of the 1960s and the 1970s. As of 2011[update], Singapore's birth rate has not yet been restored to replacement level.[28]

Phase Two started in the early 1960s. The natural rate of increase (per 1,000 population) between the years of 19551960 (five years previous to phase two) was 35.4. Five to ten years later, the natural rate of increase decreased to 27.8.[29] Following that, 20 years later the natural rate of increase continued to decline. The natural rate of increase between the time period of 19801985, was 12.2, and several years after that, between the years of 20102015 the natural rate of increase, continued decreased to 4.6.[29] The lowest natural rate of increase seen in Singapore and according to the data of the United Nations (2017) will continue to decline. The rate of natural increase in Singapore is forecasted to decrease to 1.2 between the period of 20252030.[29]

The modern SDU, renamed the Social Development Network in 2009, encourages all Singaporean couples to procreate and marry to reverse Singapore's negative replacement rate. Some of the social welfare, dating and marriage encouragement, and family planning policies are also managed by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.

Channel NewsAsia reported in January 2011 that the fertility rate of Singaporeans in 2010 were 1.02 for Chinese, 1.13 for Indians and 1.65 for Malays. In 2008, Lee Kuan Yew said the below-national-average birth rate for the Chinese was a "worrying trend".[30] That same year, he was quoted as saying, "[If] you marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university."[22][31]

Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While most agree that the policies have been very interventionist, comprehensive and broad, the Library of Congress Country Study argues "it is impossible to separate the effects of government policies from the broader socioeconomic forces promoting later marriage and smaller families," suggesting that the government could only work with or work against much more powerful natural demographic trends. To the researchers of the study, the methods used in 1987 to attempt to reverse the falling birth rate was a demonstration of "the government's [continued] assumption" that citizens were receptive towards monetary incentives and administrative allocation of social services when it came to family planning.[10]

However Saw Swee Hock, a statistician and demographer quoted in the Straits Times in 2008, argued the demographic transition "was rapid because of the government's strong population control measures," but also admitted that, "even without the Stop at Two policy, the [total fertility rate] would have gone below 2.1 due to [the demographic transition]."[20] When demographic transition statistics are examined in 1960, the total fertility rate was approximately ~6 Asian MetaCentre researcher Theresa Wong notes that Singaporean birth rates and death rates fell dramatically in a period that occurred over "much shorter time period than in Western countries," yet such a short time frame is also seen in other Southeast Asian countries, where family planning campaigns were much less aggressive.[8] According to Saw Swee Hock, "the measures were comprehensive and strong, but they weren't reversed quickly enough".

Though newer modern policies exhibit "signs that the government is beginning to recognise the ineffectiveness of apurely monetary approach to increasing birth rates", a former civil servant noted that the government needs "to learn to fine-tune to the emotions rather than to dollars and cents. It should appeal more to the sense of fulfilment of having children". Such measures include promoting workplaces that encourage spending time with the family, and creating a "Romancing Singapore Campaign" that "[directly avoided being linked] to pro-children and pro-family initiatives," since "people get turned off" when the government appears to intervene in such intimate social affairs as marriage. However, this is still seen by some citizens as "trivialising" love and "emotional expression", which "should not be engineered".[20][8] In 2001, the government announced a Baby Bonus scheme, which paid $9000 SGD for the second child and $18000 for the third child over six years to "defray the costs of having children", and would match "dollar for dollar" what money parents would put into a Child Development Account (CDA) up to $6000 and $12000 for the second and third child respectively. In 2002, Goh Chok Tong advised "pragmatic" late marriers "to act fast. The timing is good now to get a choice flat to start a family."[32]

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Population planning in Singapore - Wikipedia

Theres a certain set of descriptors we often hear in conjunction with the word redneck: drunk, wild, backwoods, hick, hillbilly. Communist generally isnt one of them. But thats the association coal barons tried to draw in the early 20th century to discredit their striking workers.

Just take the example of Police Chief Sid Hatfield of Matewan, West Virginia, who helped defend local miners during the bloody, decades-long West Virginia Mine Wars. He was a member of the Hatfield clan, which had a fierce rivalry with the local McCoy family. In August 1921, he was gunned down on the steps of a West Virginia courthouse by armed detectives hired by the coal operators. At the time, historians say he was portrayed as a wild hillbilly who got what was coming to him. The only problem is the infamous Hatfield and McCoy feud had been quiet for two decades by then, and Hatfield was a caring policeman who walked drunk coal miners in the area home instead of arresting them.

At the same time that the coal operators were trying to frame Hatfield as a redneck, they were also trying to paint striking coal miners as reds highly organized communist instigators, says Wilma Steele, historian and board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Somehow, coal companies in West Virginia wanted folks around the country to believe rednecks could be both unmanageable and primitive as well as foreign militants coming to overthrow the U.S. government. Sometimes, the words were even used interchangeably.

They shot one of those Bolsheviks up in Knox County this morning, a local coal baron said of a Young Communist League organizer, according to a 1932 New Republic piece later republished in Patrick Hubers journal article Red Necks and Red Bandanas. He didnt give the redneck a chance to talk.

Huber says in his text that seeing the word Bolshevik the leftist organization founded by Vladimir Lenin that eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union might surprise readers. But the contempt behind the word, he writes, is hardly new. Its unclear whether Harry Sims, the 19-year-old redneck fatally shot in Knox County, actually considered himself a Bolshevik, but historians said miners who held communist sentiments werent connected to foreign governments they simply didnt like capitalism.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history. At the time, miners were fed up with low wages, dangerous jobs and endless debt to their employers. They were also furious about the murder of their friend Sid Hatfield. After his assassination, pent-up rage boiled over and the miners formed an army of about 10,000 to fight the coal companies. They finally surrendered after federal troops were called in. But during the battle, coal operators tried to make miners seem like a menacing threat. Lon Savages Thunder in the Mountains mentions a telegram that Walter R. Thurmond, president of the Logan Coal Operators Association, sent to a congressman.

Unless troops sent by midnight tonight, the Town of Logan will be attacked by an army of from four to eight thousand reds, it warned.

The first time I saw that telegram, I assumed reds was short for redneck, a term that Steele says union miners reclaimed as a badge of honor after coal operators tried to use it to disparage and insult them. During the Battle of Blair Mountain, striking miners wore red bandanas in a display of solidarity, and the nickname redneck stuck. According to Hubers history of the Battle of Blair Mountain, redneck was always used as a pejorative, although in the century before the Mine Wars it referred to racist, poor, white Southerners. Huber writes that during the 1920s and 1930s, it also came to mean a Communist and was used by coal operators to denigrate miners in the Appalachian coalfields. After the Mine Wars, the meaning changed once again.

During the last four decades of the twentieth century, redneck also referred to a miner who was a member of a labor union, particularly one who was on strike, Huber wrote. This last, now-obsolete meaning provides insight into how the United Mine Workers used language and symbols to foster union solidarity among racially and ethnically divided miners.

Striking coal miners wore red bandanas in a display of solidarity, and the nickname redneck stuck.

While Huber writes that meaning is obsolete, historians like Steele are enthusiastically bringing it back, handing out red bandanas to anyone who will listen. Steele says reds is actually a reference to communist and socialist activity, not an abbreviation for redneck. Invoking that term was intended to imply that the miners were secretly foreign agents.

Coal operators chose that term to scare people with, Steele explains. Associating them with the communist reds in other parts of the world coming to overthrow the government. They used it on people of lower class, especially Black people [and] immigrants. We accepted that identity of solidarity. We were the only group that used [redneck] in our own way.

Our own way was a pro-union, pro-labor identity not an anti-American one. And historians have said that while some miners werent capitalists, its hard to know how many identified as communist or socialist because many kept their views quiet. Still, they werent infiltrated by foreign agents; these beliefs were their own. The idea of a union miner might not quite line up with the idea of a militant communist. But fear, not logic, was always the coal operators goal.

Unfortunately, the Mine Wars werent the last time Appalachians would be painted as backwoods, primitive, and worthy of fear or contempt. Elizabeth Catte, author of What Youre Getting Wrong About Appalachia and the editor of my own forthcoming book about rednecks has covered the forced sterilization of Appalachian people. Catte says Charles Davenport, the director of the Eugenics Record Office, once said Virginias mountains were full of mongrels, and called hillfolk a badly put together people. In her book, Catte notes that individuals were sterilized if they were deemed unfit.

Eugenicists of the past were preoccupied with the fiction that people they perceived as socially undesirable would outpopulate [them], Catte said via email. All non-white people were socially undesirable (keeping in mind that who counts as white shifts over time), as were disabled people, immigrants, and poor white people.

Forced sterilization ended in most states by mid-century. But ideas about poverty, who deserves help and who is unsalvageable remain. Catte says modern writers like JD Vance still use eugenicist principles and ideas to advance their conclusions. Vance, who recently announced a bid for the U.S. Senate, wrote the now-infamous Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016. The memoir follows his Ohio family through drug addiction, poverty, and his eventual way out by becoming a Yale-educated military veteran leaving out his current success as a venture capitalist. The problem is, according to Cattes book, Vances memoir forces illogical conclusions on Appalachians, and some eugenicists even mentored him.

He cites Razib Khan and Charles Murraywho earned their reputations writing very contested theories about race and genetics, Catte says of Vances inspirations. One obvious goalis to make an argument that some people are beyond saving. They become very unsympathetic.

As an example, Catte says Vance found inspiration in a 2012 Discover magazine article by Khan, titled The Scots-Irish as Indigenous People. Certainly no Scots-Irishman was ever indigenous in the U.S., yet Khan wrote in the since-deleted article that in traveling across America, the Scots Irish have consistently blown my mind as far and away the most persistent and unchanging regional subculture in the country. He also called these families clan-like. Vance continued Khans conclusions and writes that Appalachian people have unique genetic characteristics with innate traits, positing that the culture of Greater Appalachia is remarkably cohesive. If the culture is cohesive, then it could be assumed that everyone fits the Amy Adams depiction of Vances moma hopeless drug addict who only causes pain and doesnt want to accept help. Catte wrote that its not only an inaccurate depiction of a racially diverse region, but those ideas find a lot of sympathy with eugenicists.

It turns out that if you create and sell a version of Appalachia as a place filled with defective people, eugenicists start paying attention to your work, Catte wrote.

These kinds of harmful stereotypes about Appalachian people can have real costs. In May, news broke that pharmaceutical reps mocked the same communities they pumped full of opioids. Emails with Beverly Hillbillies parodies and jokes about pillbillies were circulated between top executives at AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest drug distributors in the country, according to The Guardian. Jayne Conroy, one of the countrys most prominent attorneys working to address the opioid epidemic, says it was shocking to see pillbillies and other slurs used against the victims of this crisis.

Its one thing to uncover documents showing that Big Pharma companies put profits over safety we see that all the time, Conroy says. But to mock the people who were among the most deeply affected byoxycontin and other prescription opioids, I just cannot understand that. Its reprehensible.

An AmerisourceBergen spokesperson said via email that some of the jokes and content were created outside the company and forwarded via email internally, and that the company operates as a wholesale distributor in an environment that at times lacked clear regulatory guidance.

It is important to note that when these emails were sent, unfortunate terms like pillbillies frequently appeared in news coverage surrounding the opioid epidemic, a company spokesperson said via email.

From reds to redneck and hillbilly to pillbilly, giant corporations across industries have used unflattering terms to demean, belittle and undermine the people of Appalachia for decades. These evolving slurs have contributed to violence and oppression against poor and working class people in the region for more than 100 years now including Appalachias immigrant and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities whose stories are often neglected relative to those of their white neighbors.

Those who want to reclaim these words and fight back against whatever iteration of insult comes next can look to historians like Steele, who say we should take lessons from the past. Steele believes returning to the radical roots of the term redneck is incredibly important, and that a modern redneck believes in union solidarity, accepting people who might be different than us, and listening to everybody while sharing power and respect.

My goal is to prove who you are is more important than [stereotypes], Steele says. The story of the redneck is all of us. Were all important in that story.

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The Unexpected, Radical Roots of Redneck - Daily Yonder

Dr. Luther West a former Northern Michigan University biology professor who openly supported the promotion of conservative eugenic legislation and eugenic administration in the 1920s is a wholly blameless person. At least, thats what Philip Niswonger seems to argue in his recent letter to the editor. But his letter to the editor is entirely unconvincing, as it solely consists of a series of nonsensical non sequiturs.

According to Niswonger, NMUs radical decision to even consider renaming a university building that currently bears Wests name illustrates the universitys intention to unjustly ruin Wests professional reputation. He further argues that Wests views on eugenics were largely consistent with those of his professional contemporaries.

While Wests views may have been consistent with many, if not a majority, of his professional contemporaries, those views were not unanimously held. As Time Magazines Paul Gray noted more than two decades ago, a number of people including G.K. Chesterton, H.L. Mencken, Walter Lippmann and Clarence Darrow had ridiculed and debunked eugenic theories prior to the Second World War. And while the popularity of the eugenics movement in the United States influenced most states to initially enact their own compulsory sterilization laws, various appellate courts ruled that these laws were unconstitutional prior to Buck v. Bell the Supreme Courts infamous 1927 decision which approved of such laws, opining that [t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough.

In any event, the purpose of naming a public building after someone is to commemorate that person both their achievements and shortfalls. When a community makes a decision to publicly celebrate someone in this manner, its choice is a reflection of the communitys collective values.

On the one hand, West served as head of NMUs biology department, and later as dean of the universitys College of Arts and Sciences. Those are certainly significant achievements.

On the other hand, West appeared to have no qualms about embracing scientific racism before coming to NMU. For example, he voluntarily attended the Third Race Betterment Conference, where he contributed an academic paper on eugenics. After arriving at NMU, West continued to promote eugenics as a biology professor, teaching a class called Genetics and Eugenics until at least the 1940s.

As a university community, we must ask ourselves whether we want to continue publicly venerating West, someone who was a proud supporter of eugenics in his professional life and as far as we know, never publicly disavowed those views and appeared comfortable with scientific racism, just because he held important leadership positions at NMU. We should also ask ourselves what our answer to that question reveals about ourselves, and the values we hold dear.

-Aaron Loudenslager, former North Wind opinion editor 2012

Editors Note: The North Wind is committed to offering a free and open public forum of ideas, publishing a wide range of viewpoints to accurately represent the NMU student body. This piece is a letter to the editor, written by a reader of the North Wind in response to North Wind content. It expresses the personal opinions of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the North Wind. The North Wind reserves the right to avoid publishing letters that do not meet the North Winds publication standards. To submit a letter to the editor contact the opinion editor at [emailprotected]with the subject North Wind Letter.

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Letter to the EditorLuther West is not blameless - North Wind Online