Category Archives: Eugenics

Black students have attended the uni since the 1800s!

Did you hear David Hume pretty much got cancelled? Edinburgh Uni even changed the name of their infamous DHT to 40 George Square recently. I mean its pretty awkward when a great thinker and one of the Unis most famous alumnae doesnt think very much of black people. Yikes.

Because, lets face it, Edinburgh is oh-so white. The UKs last census revealed that black people make up a measly 1.4 per cent of the citys population. This context of a majority white space means that black stories and voices can be overlooked when care is not taken.

Beyond Edinburgh, black people are a minority group in the UK. That said, black people are only minorities in specific contexts. Black people around the world deserve respect and acceptance like everyone else. And believe it or not, there are places in the world where we dont have to prove our humanity.

So here are some facts and stories that reveal a history of Edinburgh that dares to look beyond deceased male caucasians. Cheers to all the people who were told to go back to Ahfricah and never did! We see you!

Here we go:

source url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013645427/resource/

Frederick Douglass went from oppressed slave to an abolitionist intellectual. His story is incredible. After escaping his life of slavery in Maryland he fled to the North as a free man.

In 1846, Douglass gave a speech at the Assembly Rooms sharing the story of an escaped slave to an audience of over 2000 people!

Adverts appeared in papers marketing the sale of enslaved people or offering rewards for their capture. In 1727 in the Edinburgh Evening Courant read:

Run away on the 7th instant from Dr Gustavus Browns Lodgings in Glasgow, a Negro Woman, named Ann, being about 18 Years of Age, with a green Gown and a Brass Collar about her Neck, on which are engraved these words [Gustavus Brown in Dalkieth his Negro, 1726.] Whoever apprehends her, so as she may be recovered, shall have two Guineas Reward, and necessary Charges allowed by Laurence Dinwiddie Junior Merchant in Glasgow, or by James Mitchelson Jeweller in Edinburgh.

By 1817, Scots owned about 37 per cent of the slaves on plantations in Jamaica. Edinburgh benefitted massively from these profits. Many of Newtowns residents were involved in the slave trade and the luxury of the area reflected this.

Sir Geoff Palmer OBE became Scotlands first black professor in 1989. Before this achievement, he was rejected from a PhD at The Ministry of Agriculture. Unfazed by this, he accepted a place studying a PhD delivered by Heriot-Watt and The University of Edinburgh.

I spoke to the amazing professor and activist who shared his thoughts on academia in the UK,academic staff representation in our higher education institutions does not reflect the racial demographics of our society.Black and others non-white graduates should be encouraged to to become academics. A diverse society requires diverse management to be fair and prosperous.

Acc 000095, Box 3, Folder 32 Alexander Graham Bell; Photograph of Alexander Graham Bell, an American scientist and inventor of the telephone.

Graham Bell attended The University of Edinburgh and is known best for inventing the telephone. However, he also supported the study of eugenics which insisted on the inferiority of non-white races and often sought to control or sterilise non-white populations.

Between 1756 and 1778 slaves attempted to obtain their freedom in Edinburgh courts. The last of these appeals was successful, the case of Joseph Knight. In 1778, the runaway servant argued that Scots law could not support the status of slavery and won.

The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act freed hundreds of thousands of slaves in the Caribbean and beyond. Although this law ended legal slavery, it was the beginning of hefty payouts to slaveowners for their losses!

The 90s saw organised far-right harrasment and violence against black folk living in the Muirhouse area in Northern Edinburgh. In response, the Muirhouse Anti-Racism Campaign was set up and campaigned for the council to pay for the costs of racism victims moving home and to evict perpetrators of racist crimes. They campaigned against the intimidation perpetrated largely by young men claiming to be a part of the far-right British Nationalist Party.

Jamaican-born William Ferguson is the first known black student to enrol at the uni in 1809. Also, Africanus Horton from Sierra Leone, graduated from The University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1859. This info was revealed by theUncoverED research project. The project is led by students at our uni held an exhibition in 2018 celebrating non-white communities and historic figures linked to the uni.

The Edinburgh Carribean society organises tours from Old town to Newtown that reveal a fresh perspective on the monuments and sights of Edinburgh. All the autumn dates for the tours are sold out unfortunately but Im sure more will pop up at the start of next year.

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Here's an accurate Black history of Edinburgh, from eugenics to reparations - The Tab

Good Genes, Amy Coney Barretts Nomination, and the Pastand Presentof Eugenics

This article features Government Accountability Project and our client Dawn Wooten and was originally published here.

Good genes, President Trump remarked as he gazed over at Amy Coney Barrett and her seven children, whilenominating her to fill the seatformerly occupied by Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg. It was a phrase he echoed at a nearly all-white rally last week in Bemidji, Minn., and for decades before.

In interviews throughout his fraught real estate career, Trump often mentioned his good genes, touting eugenics, a pseudoscientific theory of genetic superiority that took root in America, shaped Hitlers race laws and led to Nazi Germanys forced sterilization of undesirablesJews to lesbians to epileptics.

I thought ofeugenics two weeks agowhen nurse Dawn Wooten filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging immigrant women at an ICE detention center in Irwin County, Ga., weresubjected to coercive hysterectomieswithfirsthand accounts from detaineescontinuing to emerge.

Among them, Pauline Binam, a Cameroon native, said Dr. Mahendra Amin was meant to excise ovarian cysts, but removed her Fallopian tube against her will. Amindubbed the uterus collectordenied the allegations, as did ICE. The ACLU and other groups are investigating the allegations.

The New York Times reported Tuesdaythat 16 more women came forward, alleging unnecessary and non-consensual surgeries that some say were painful or felt coerced into, brought to Dr. Amin in shackles, never understanding what was being done or why. The Irwin County correctional facility also reported an alarmingly high number of gynecological procedures for a facility of its size.

These horrifying reports take on extra urgency with Ginsburgs passing andthe nomination of Barretta woman who has pledged her loyalty to People of Praise, an authoritarian religious group that promotes faith healing, speaking in tongues and prophecies over medicine, and where women, called handmaidens (until the success of the Netflix series based on Margaret Atwoods book The Handmaids Tale), submit to the will of their male leads, who make decisions concerning their careers, marriage and, yes, their wombs.

In the early 1970s,Ginsburg challenged a North Carolina eugenics programwhich she argued was unconstitutional. Her client, Nial Ruth Cox, an unwed black teenage mom, was coerced into a tubal ligation or else her familys welfare benefits would be terminated.

Why do you keep worrying, keep asking questions? her surgeon asked her, assuring her the procedure was reversible, while secretly listing her an 18-year-old mentally deficient Negro girl, and therefore worthy of permanent sterilization.

Why do you keep asking questions?

I had heard that throughout my life when I pressed my late mother about her elusive youth, and more recently, when I uncovered she was imprisoned in a Nazi womens slave labor camp and began finding survivors. A woman named Fela spoke of beatings, hunger, humiliating sexual abuse and then something I wasnt prepared to hear.

She got such a shot! she said referring to my mother. They injected us all. We didnt know what it was. Then we all stopped getting our periods.

The words hit me like a bullet. Its not that I didnt know about Nazi experiments, but because my mom could have kids, I hadnt gone there. I figured Fela hadnt heard of amenorrhea or was ashamed of her infertility.

Those who survived the Holocaust were committed to regenerating the Jewish nation, which meant those who were unable to get pregnant suffered great shame, says Cooper Union history professor Atina Grossmann, author of Reforming Sex.

Nazi policies of sterilization have been well documented at state health offices under the Department of Gene and Race Care, Grossmann notes.

The sterilization law went into effect in 1934, resulting in some 320,000 Germans sterilized from 1934-1939 at some 1,100 state clinics. These barbaric procedures were carried out at 1,100 state clinics and later at Auschwitz and Ravensbrck, where Polish gentile women were designated rabbits.

But at a small womens camp in a remote Sudeten town,why would the Nazis bother to sterilize Jewish girls smuggled in from Poland?Then I thought of the ICE detention center in sleepy Irwin County, Ga., where invisible hands decided the fates and fertilities of incarcerated young women, and proof was in short supply.

Those who courageously came forward were met with retaliation. Wooten claims she was demoted after speaking out and that most of her witnesses vanished without a trace. DHS tried to deport Pauline Binam, but Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas)had her plane halted at OHare Airportand had her to testify at a Congressional subcommittee last week.

Others werent as lucky. A witness in a sexual abuse case at an ICE detention center in El Paso, Texas, was deported,reported The Texas TribuneandProPublica.

There is a pattern of burying the evidence, says Naomi Steinberg, VP of policy and advocacy for HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). Medical records are being destroyed, there is an alleged refusal to test people for COVID at these centers, which point to medical neglect, violence and cruelty.

My attempts to corroborate Felas allegations didnt yield site specific proof, but led me to a cache of Nazi correspondence presented as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.

In a letter to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, dated June 23, 1942, SS-Oberfuehrer Brack writes:

According to my impression there are at least 2-3 million men and women well fit for work among the approx. 10 million European Jews. In consideration of the exceptional difficulties posed for us by the question of labor, I am of the opinion that these 2-3 million should in any case be taken out and kept alive. Of course this can only be done if they are in the same time rendered incapable of reproduction. I reported to you about a year ago that persons under my instruction have completed the necessary experiments for this purpose.

Further correspondence detailed X-rays done on men and injections given to women.

In a letter to Himmler, dated June 7, 1943, Professor Clauberg wrote:

One adequately trained physician with perhaps 10 assistants will most likely be able to deal with several hundred, if not even 1,000 per day.

One thousand sterilizations a daythat was the goal. These letters provided the basis of the definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Brack, a defendant at the Nuremberg tribunal, was subsequently hanged.

We dont have to turn everything into Nazi Germany to warrant shock and a response, says Grossmann. We have our own history of eugenics in the U.S., which inspired Nazi racial policy.

The first American eugenics case that made it to the Supreme Court,Buck v. Bellin 1927, deemed the involuntary tubal ligation of a feeble minded unwed mother in Virginia beneficial to the welfare of society. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously wrote: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

The ruling paved the way for 30,000 sterilizations to occur in 39 states, as well as the Immigration Act of 1924, which prevented Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany from settling here.

Involuntary sterilization was so pervasive among Black women in the South, it was dubbed the Mississippi appendectomy,according to the Boston Womens Collectives Our Bodies, Ourselves.

From the 1930s to the 70s, a third of Puerto Rican women had been subjected to la operacin, as they called the procedure, brought to light by Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trias, a Puerto-Rican New Yorker who founded the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA) and the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA).

In 1970, Puerto Rico had the highest sterilization rate of anywhere in the world. That was also the year the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act passed, which targeted 25-50 percent ofNative American women.

North Carolina revoked its eugenics program in time to declare RBGs suit moot, but not every state has.Buck v. Belllives on in Virginia. California, which rendered 200,000 of its citizens infertile, authorized the forced sterilization of 150 women inmates from 2006 to 2010.

It may be premature to refer to the cases in Irwin County as mass sterilization, says John Whitty, staff attorney with the Government Accountability Project representing Wooten. Estimates range from 10 to 100, based on limited access to a small number of those in a position to discuss these matters. Already, the number is frightening enough.

Or as HIASs Steinberg says: I have a feeling this is the tip of the iceberg.

In his closing statement at the Nuremberg Trials, prosecutor Telford Taylor referred to involuntary sterilization as a violation of the most fundamental tenet of medical ethics and human decency.

That moral imperative guided Ginsburg, who spoke of sterilization at her SCOTUS Senate confirmation hearing,stating the importance of procreation to an individuals autonomy.

And thats why we must oppose Barretts appointment to the highest court. A judge who believes in authoritarianism over autonomy, appointed by a president who shamelessly shouts good genes, invoking the darkest chapters in our history and known to silence witnesses and be less than forthcoming with the truth, is an affront to our values.

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Ms. Magazine: "Good Genes," Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination, and the Pastand Presentof Eugenics - Government Accountability Project

You didnt see it in the movie about her, or in most of the innumerable tributes (all well-deserved) recently, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg also fought an injustice in North Carolina.

In 1973, the Supreme Court justice-to-be took on the sordid legacy of eugenics in this state. As director of the ACLU Womens Rights Project, Ginsburg and Womens Rights Project co-founder Brenda Feigen filed a federal lawsuit in North Carolina on behalf of Nial Ruth Cox, a Black woman who had been forcibly sterilized by the state in 1965.

When Cox became pregnant at age 18, county officials gave her mother a choice: to have Cox sterilized, or to lose welfare benefits for her children. Cox and her mother also were told by a doctor that the process was reversible when it wasnt. Those officials saw the pregnancy as proof of Coxs immorality.

The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).

A panel of judges reversed the decision in 1975, Ria Tabacco Mar, the current director of the ACLUs Womens Rights Project, wrote last week in a Washington Post op-ed.

But by that point it didnt matter, the three-judge panel ruled. The sterilization program had been ended and so whether it was unconstitutional became moot.

In the end, the state did compensate forced-sterilization victims. And Ginsburgs memories of it were vivid and her opinions obviously strong.

When Mar hosted a discussion with Ginsburg about her career in February, she wrote on her op-ed, she didnt get to a planned question about the North Carolina eugenics case for lack of time.

Ginsburg said to her afterward, You didnt ask me about forced sterilization!

Now Mar writes that she wishes she had.

Sad to say, the issue has resurfaced. Some immigrant women in a privately operated detention center in Georgia allege that they underwent hysterectomies without their consent.

The more things change ?

Greensboro News & Record

The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).

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An issue that has resurfaced - Laurinburg Exchange

October 5, 2020 | :

Indiana University is removing the name of former President David Starr Jordan from places on its Bloomington campus because of his support for eugenics, the Kokomo Tribune reported.

David Starr Jordan

IUs Board of Trustees voted 8-1 Friday to strip Jordans name from a classroom building, a garage and a creek. The Jordan River will be Campus River temporarily; Jordan Hall will be Biology Building and Jordan Parking Garage will be East Parking Garage.

The move came as a recommendation from IU President Dr. Michael McRobbie.

Jordan was an IU zoology professor before becoming president from 1885 to 1891.

Eugenics is the practice of controlled selective breeding of humans often carried out through forced sterilization, and Jordan wrote about his belief that humanity would thrive only if the fittest were promoted, reportedThe Tribune.

Jordan promoted a branch of eugenic thought known as negative eugenics, which later sought, through marriage laws, forced sterilization practices, and immigration controls, to prevent breeding among those deemed to be of unfit stock, McRobbie told the board.

Jordan later became president of Stanford University.

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Indiana University Removes Name of Former President From Campus Sites - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

President Donald Trump recently made a reference to the controversial "racehorse theory" of human breeding, which has become a subject of scrutiny by critics as many wonder whether the Republican actually endorses it. The "racehorse theory" is an offensive and dangerous notion that selective breeding can boost a particular nation in certain ways. The controversial "racehorse theory," infamously practiced by the Nazis when they massacred millions of Jews, involves selective breeding and eugenics. The theory, which was initially used for horses and breeding, was later used to justify the selective breeding of humans. The unfounded theory espouses that human race can be made better by selective breeding, a claim which has been widely discredited.

Trump, on September 18, the night Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, made a campaign appearance in Bemidji, Minnesota, and made an alarming reference to eugenics and the racehorse theory. "You have good genes, you know that right? the president said to a nearly all-white crowd. A lot of it is about the genes, isnt it? Dont you believe? The racehorse theory, Trump said. You think were so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."

Author of 'NeuroTribes', Steve Silberman, also slammed Trump's reference to the theory, likening it to the Nazis. Silberman tweeted: "As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us."

As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us. https://t.co/CHMLg804mp

President Trump also appeared to make a reference to eugenics during the first 2020 presidential debate against his political rival, Democratic nominee Joe Biden on September 29. Trump told Biden: "You could never have done the job we did. You dont have it in your blood."

The Republican has also referred to the "racehorse theory" before he won the presidency. Trump, while talking to CNN's Larry King in 2007, had said: "You can absolutely be taught things. Absolutely. You can get a lot better. But there is something. You know, the racehorse theory, there is something to the genes. And I mean, when I say something, I mean a lot."

This is not the first time Trump's reference to eugenics has come under the scanner and has been analyzed. The Republican's biographer, Michael D'Antonio, the author of 'The Truth About Trump', had previously stated that the Trump family has a "very deep attraction" to eugenics. D'Antonio, while talking to Rolling Stone, had said: "The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development, that they believe that there are superior people, and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get superior offspring."

President Trump, who contracted the novel coronavirus last week, came back to the White House from the Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday, October 5. However, he is still believed to be infectious and received widespread backlash for removing his mask when he returned to the White House, and urged Americans to not to fear the COVID-19 disease that has killed over 209,000 people in the country.

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Has Trump endorsed 'racehorse theory'? POTUS likely a believer in controversial notion about 'superior people' - MEAWW

[Editors Note: This is Part 1 in a four-part series on disability and horror.]

Watching horror films is a disabling experience, Angela M. Smith, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies for the University of Utah and author of the book Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema, said. Its a controlled encounter with discomfort, with the vulnerability of our minds and bodies to images and suggestions that opens us to unwilled transformations.

The horror film revels in the world of deformity and grotesqueness and, to a disabled viewer, that can be confusing in how relatable it is. For many, to be disabled is also to look different, so how does a person with a disability approach the horror genre when the presented thing to fear is themselves?

Smith said people werent ready for Freaks in the 1930s, and shes absolutely correct. Freaks, for better and worse, remains one of the only U.S. features to have a predominately disabled cast despite being released 88 years ago. Directed by Dracula helmer Tod Browning, Freaks tells the story of a circus troupe and what happens when they discover that little person Hans (Harry Earles) is being poisoned and duped by the able-bodied Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova).

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Freaks, weirdly enough, feels like an authentic horror feature. Even now, the majority of films see able-bodied actors portraying disability that, coupled with able-bodied screenwriters and directors, presents a tableau of disability an imitation. Freaks is the story of a close-knit family, a group of outcasts who support and love each other.

I want to be part of that community, Salome Chasnoff, director of the documentary on disability in horror, Code of the Freaks said to IndieWire. I love the affection and commitment they have to each other. I want to live in a world where people are that committed to me.

Much of this comes from the fact that Browning himself was a part of a traveling circus in his youth. He saw the disabled people that commonly populated what were then called freak shows and wanted to find a way to pay tribute to them. So when star Earles brought up to Browning that he should adapt the short story Spurs by Tod Robbins, the director made MGM buy it for Browning to direct. The basic tenets of the story in Spurs remain, namely the relationship between Hans and Cleopatra, but Browning and a series of directors worked to create a depiction that, at the time, presented the circus performers as people.

Everett Collection (freaks1932-fsct08)

And that warmth is found in snatches throughout Freaks. Outside of the community Chasnoff refers to, there are various storylines showing the day-to-day world of these performers. Frances OConner, who has no arms, is seen casually eating with her feet while performer Prince Randian, known as The Living Torso, rolls a cigarette with his mouth. These scenes, presented so matter-of-factly, display disability as normal. What looks unconventional to an able-bodied person is basic and unspectacular. In these scenes Browning tries to destigmatize the disabled and remind them, in 1932, that theyre people.

Its one of the few films where we can see our disabled ancestors before they were excised from the movies, Carrie Sandhal, Associate Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago said. We got to see them as actors as well as people.

For many disabled people who grew up without others like them, Freaks became a gateway feature to champion. The shooting process was difficult, unaided by the fact that the circus performers were forced to eat outside the MGM commissary, due to complaints from the studios stars about seeing them. And once the film was finished, head of production Irving Thalberg was not happy with what he saw. Test screenings were rumored to have audiences fleeing the theater. One woman allegedly threatened to sue MGM because the sight of the disabled actors on-screen caused her to have a miscarriage. Its unclear whether much of this was created by MGM itself in order to better sell Freaks as a horror feature.

Regardless, the studio immediately excised 30 minutes out of the movie, much of which were scenes showing the circus performers in a positive light. Its a classic film tragedy that still stings today, especially for disabled performers like Adam Pearson who believe Freaks is a masterpiece.

Its so unfortunate that half of it is on the cutting room floor, he said. It got completely bastardized and diluted by the studio.

After further cuts, many of which are now lost, the feature was transformed into a horror movie aimed at able-bodied audiences. Reviews were negative and Freaks was a box office bomb. Not only did it effectively end Brownings career as a director, many of the able-bodied actors were blacklisted. The actors with disabilities, like the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, were left purely making features that treated them as the freaks MGM wanted them to be.

Courtesy Everett Collection

As Smith lays out, the way Freaks turned out was par for the course in 1930s cinema. As she explained, eugenics was a huge element of not just horror films at the time but within society.

There wasa [belief] in external appearance as something thatcould reveal inner pathology, she said. So visible disability or difference was interpreted as a sign of this inner deviance, which was also interpreted in terms of immorality and criminality.

That theme is seen in 1930s features such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but its not so clear-cut in Freaks.

In the 1930s, audiences didnt want to confront difference and accept human variability, and so they condemned Freaks, Smith said.

The characters arent aesthetically conventional, but for over half the movie we see them as kind-hearted, normal people. In fact, the irony Browning presents is that for all of Cleopatras beauty she is so cold-hearted that shes willing to kill Hans for his money. The film languished for several decades until the 1960s when it was embraced by the counterculture as an example of oppression, injustice, and rebellion. And within the last few decades the movie has been the subject of fierce discussion by disabled advocates, critics, and movie lovers about whether its genius or exploitative.

It definitely exploits the sensationalistic thrills of the freak show, presenting these bodies as deviant and threatening, but only after it shows us that these performers are quite ordinary people, driven to defend themselves against supposedly normal individuals who prey on and harm them, Smith said.

But it also forces the viewer, more able-bodied than not, to confront the nature of difference and realize how we view those who are different, and disability by extension, has more to do with societal norms and our prejudices than the person themselves.

[Tod Browning] was a huckster. He had come from exploitation, Tommy Heffron, film and video artist and an Assistant Professorin the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University, said. But for all of Brownings hucksterism, Heffron said the director still created empathy in his characters while simultaneously making a film so shocking it was banned in England for 32 years. More importantly, for Heffron especially, the fact that audiences are still talking about it 88 years later speaks volumes. Its something Pearson seconds, especially factoring in that it remains the only U.S. film to have a predominately disabled cast.

Freaks is divisive, its dated, but its also groundbreaking, entertaining, and frustrating. Have we necessarily improved when it comes to disability in horror? The answer is uncertain. But this Halloween season it might be worth diving deeper into the world of horror to find out the disability narratives underneath.

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Freaks Is the Granddaddy of Disabled Horror, for Better and Worse - IndieWire

News broke last week of an official complaint filed against immigration officials alleging a pattern of hysterectomies without informed consent on women from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Georgia. Dawn Wooten, the nurse who blew the whistle on the allegations of abuse, and who legal advocacy groups filed the complaint on her behalf, had worked at the privately-operated Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, for three years. During that time, she alleged multiple hysterectomies were performed on Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of whom said they did not understand the procedure. ICE has denied the claims, the doctor accused of performing the procedures has denied the claims through attorneys, and the hospital where the procedures would have taken place, said it only has records showing that two hysterectomies were performed on those in immigration custody since 2017, according to the Washington Post.

While the cruelty of the allegations came as a shock to many, coerced sterilization is not unprecedented in the broader history of reproductive injustice and violence against people considered "undesirable" in the United Statesoften disabled and indigenous people, people of color, and immigrants.

Racism has been part and parcel of American reproductive healthcare from its beginning. J. Marion Sims, the man known as the "father of modern gynecology," exemplifies this. Sims garnered acclaim for groundbreaking gynecological surgical techniques that he perfected after performing dozens of experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women in Montgomery, Alabama, beginning in 1845. Sims operated on Black women without anesthesia, even though he used it during surgeries on white patients during the period. Sims's decision to operate on Black women without anesthesia went beyond a lack of care for the women; it was tied to pernicious assumptions that Black people were not susceptible to pain. "There was a belief at the time that Black people did not feel pain in the same way," explained Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and professor of medical humanities, in an interview with NPR in 2018. "Their pain was ignored," Gamble says. Baseless theories like these continue to inform modern medicine in measurable ways. Racial biases and false beliefs are associated with Black patients receiving less pain medication for broken bones and cancer than white patients, according to research published in 2016 by the National Academy of Sciences.

A generation after Sims built his career on the backs of Black women, the eugenics movement was growing popular in the United States. With it, States began to pass laws mandating compulsory sterilization for specific populations. The state of Indiana is widely considered to have adopted the world's first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and similar laws were later adopted in 31 other states across the country during the 20th century. The target populations of these laws were defined in legal or pseudo-medical terms"imbeciles," the "feeble-minded"but the laws were deployed in ways that disproportionately victimized poor women and women of color.

Rather than pushing back on eugenic policies during the progressive era that ensued, physicians, legislators, and social reformers further legitimized their prejudiced pseudo-medical norms. American magnates like the Carnegie Foundation and John D. Rockefeller shelled out to fund projects at the Eugenics Record Office, a private research institute that openly supported sterilization as a solution to what it called "defective and delinquent classes of the community." In 1927, when the constitutional legality of compulsory sterilization was questioned in Buck v Bell, the Supreme Court also affirmed that permitting compulsory sterilization of "those who are manifestly unfit" did not violate the constitutional rights of those persons, by a vote of eight to one. Carrie Buck, the plaintiff, was classified at the time as "feeble-minded," but as has been noted, it was actually societal prejudice that earned her this unclear label. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who authored the majority opinion in Buck v Bell, went so far as to claim that compulsory sterilization policies were "better for all the world." Rhetoric like this that framed eugenic sterilization as a positive public health strategy helped ensure the longevity and widespread impact of shameful coerced sterilization policies across the country.

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History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States - Teen Vogue

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Are we Nazi Germany? This is the incredulous response when people hear that an American detention facility has been accused of performing nonconsensual hysterectomies the surgical removal of the uterus on women. Because of the terror associated with Hitlers reign, people tend to connect any extreme systemic violence to that period of history. While it is certainly true that the human rights violations of Nazi Germany were abhorrent, there is just as much violent oppression throughout American history. In fact, the sterilization of women of color has been a huge problem in the United States since the 19th century. The sterilizations that took place at Irwin County Detention Center do not constitute a terrible exception; instead, such occurrences are the norm.

America is a country with a deeply racist past, built through the labor of slaves. While chattel slavery is the most obviously violent form that racism has taken throughout Americas history, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) have faced oppression in a multitude of ways throughout the decades.

Often undergirding the rationale for racist oppression is eugenics, the belief that reproduction should be encouraged in certain desirable groups and discouraged in other undesirable groups. Of course, desirable, in most cases, refers to white, particularly white upper-class people. On the other hand, undesirable generally refers to people of color. Essentially, eugenics calls for the population of people of color to be reduced or at the very least not increased by any means necessary.

Even before the term eugenics was commonly known, plantation owners during American slavery controlled the reproductive lives of their female slaves. Enslaved women were often beaten to the point of infertility, and those who did carry out successful pregnancies were often separated from their children. As the field of eugenics became more popular, doctors and scientists tried different methods to discourage certain groups from reproducing while encouraging others.

In the early to mid 1900s, they frequently blocked upper-class white women from accessing birth control or voluntary hysterectomies, due to their desirable genetics. Around the same time, large numbers of Black women who visited hospitals left without their reproductive organs intact. These women almost never gave consent to the procedure, and were often not even notified that it was happening. After coming to the hospital for routine checkups or minor emergencies, hundreds of women left confused and irreparably harmed by doctors who were supposed to care for them.

According to the whistleblowers report, the women at the Irwin County Detention Center reacted in much the same way when asked about what had happened to them: confused and hurt. Many of the women at the facility visited an outside gynecologist who performed hysterectomies even when the womens medical issues did not call for the surgery. One woman explained that she went into the gynecologists office to have a cyst removed, but he performed a hysterectomy and she left without her uterus.

The gynecologist sterilized women at the facility in other ways as well. One section of the report describes the predicament of a woman who was scheduled to have her left ovary removed, but the gynecologist removed the right one mistakenly. He then went back in to correct the mistake by removing the left one. By the end of her time in the gynecologists office, she was infertile. Whether by medical incompetence or intentional harm, the gynecologist destroyed her reproductive future. At the time of the report, he had become so notorious among the women of the detention center for his sterilizations that he had been nicknamed the uterus collector.

In the world of medicine, patients must be fully informed about what a procedure entails before they can consent to it. As written in the report, the women who visited the gynecologist often expressed that they did not understand why they needed a hysterectomy. In the case of the first woman described above, she went in for a cyst removal and yet received a hysterectomy. Her doctors were not clear with regard to what procedure she needed and why. These women did not and could not have given proper informed consent.

If such gross negligence occurred at a hospital in a predominantly white, upper-class neighborhood, there would be severe and swift consequences for the doctors involved. Yet the Irwin County Detention Centers gynecologist was permitted to continue practicing. Presumably, he was allowed to mistreat these women and perform these sterilizations because, as immigrants and women of color, they are undesirable. Essentially, the Irwin County Detention Center facilitated the practice of eugenics by preventing women of color from reproducing.

There is no doubt that the information coming from the Irwin County Detention Center is disturbing and horrifying. However, it is important to note that none of the atrocities detailed in the report are new or different from what has been happening all over America for centuries. In the last 100 years alone, tens of thousands of Black, Latina and Indigenous women have endured forcible sterilizations because people in power do not believe that they should be able to reproduce. The actions of the gynecologist at the Irwin County facility are not a blip, or an exception; they are part of a long pattern in the history of eugenics. Yet, perhaps the outrage that people are demonstrating in reaction to the whistleblowers report of the detention center sterilizations is exactly what is needed; it is, above all, vital that those fighting for justice never become numb to the racist atrocities of America.

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The ICE Detention Facility Sterilizations Are Nothing New in US History - Study Breaks

Patrick Henry, Times columnist Published 5:01 p.m. CT Oct. 2, 2020

On Sept. 18, Donald Trump was in Bemidji,153 miles from here, but we were on his mind.

"From St. Paul to St. Cloud, from Rochester to Duluth, and from Minneapolis, thank God we still have Minneapolis, to right here, right here with all of you great people, this state was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their families. They were tough and they were strong."

Standard political oratory salute the audience with the narrative they like to tell about themselves (though thank God we still have Minneapolis refers back to his preposterous claim, earlier in the speech,that if Joe Biden wins, people will be saying of that city, It used to be over there. Its all ashes now).

Patrick Henry(Photo: Times photo)

But Trump didnt stop there. What he said next was not just a dog whistle, but as one commentator has noted, a train whistle.

You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of its about the genes, isnt it? Dont you believe? The racehorse theory you think was so different? You have good genes in Minnesota. (The voice recognition software at rev.com, where the transcription of the speech can be found, misheard and produced resource theory. In the video of the speech its perfectly clear: racehorse.)

The audience at Bemidji Aviation Services was overwhelmingly white. Standing right behind Trump were people who are looking for our votes: Rep. Tom Emmer, for CD6;Michelle Fischbach, for CD7;Jason Lewis, for U.S. Senate. When the president made his genes remark, all three of them smiled approvingly and Fischbach applauded while grinning.

Earlier in the speech Trump had detonated his usual blast at recent arrivals to Minnesota. Dripping with sarcasm, he said, Lots of luck. Youre having a good time with the refugees. He then, of course, singled out Somalis.

By the time he got to genes, his meaning couldnt have been more evident. Its white people who are tough and strong, who deserve to build a better life for themselves and for their families. People of color are a threat.

Do we believe in the gene thing? I mean, I do, Trump is on tape saying on another occasion. And he also said this: "All men are created equal. Well, it's not true. Because some are smart; some aren't."

Youd think that conservative Americans, who pledge allegiance to the Founders, would recoil from such a blatant contradiction of a central theme of the Declaration of Independence.

Of course some people are smarter than others, but Thomas Jeffersons point is that in all matters of public policy, everyone is on an equal footing. IQ has nothing nothing to do with it.

Donald Trumps adherence to eugenics the racehorse theory of breeding for people is among the scariest of his authoritarian inclinations. We need to be wary of it the way Germans needed to be wary in the early 1930s. Its not just that You [white Minnesotans] have good genes. Its the clear implication that other peoples genes are bad, which easily slips over into dangerous meaning such people must be kept out, deported, eliminated one way or another.

Trumps gene theory, which grounds his admiration for the pioneers who braved the wilderness and the winters, spills over into his convictions about education.

He has recently condemned the New York Times 1619 Project, which brings into focus the central role of slavery in American history. He proposes withholding federal funding from California until it jettisons the 1619 Project from school curricula. He has decried what he calls ideological poison, that if not removed will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together,and has said that under his plan, Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

To say that the only way youth will love America with all of their heart and all of their soul is to be taught exclusively about the good things the good genes did to be Minnesota specific: overlooking the decimation of Native peoples; forgetting the Duluth lynching; disregarding the research of St. Cloud State professor Christopher Lehman in Slaverys Reach: Southern Slaveholders and the North Star State is to treat youth (and those of us no longer young, too) with condescension and contempt. The civic bonds that tie us together are threatened far more by Trumps 20,000+ documented lies than by the truth about our history.

Recent Times interviews with local candidates were instructive, but the questions thrown were mostly Wiffle Balls. Given Trumps total takeover of the GOP, every Republican candidate at every level, state and federal, must be asked on the record Do you endorse or repudiate Donald Trumps racehorse theory? There is no middle ground.

This is the opinion of Patrick Henry, retired executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research and author of the forthcoming Flashes of Grace: 33 Encounters with God. His column is published the first Sunday of the month.

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Trump's 'racehorse theory' is divisive and dangerous - SC Times

When I was conducting research for my new book on the destructive aspects of modern heterosexual relationships, I started looking into the archives of early 20th-century books about courtship and marriage written by physicians and sexologists.

In the process, I made a discovery that would radically alter my understanding of why so many parts of heterosexual culture remain mired in violence and inequality.

Almost all of the original self-help books for couples were written by proponents of the eugenics movement, an ostensibly scientific project that aimed to encourage reproduction among the white middle class, while discouraging or preventing population growth among people of color and the poor.

These early marriage manuals revealed that the project of defining healthy heterosexual marriage in the United States was also a white supremacist campaign designed to help white families flourish. As the marriage counseling industry evolved in the 20th century, some of the key assumptions made in these original manuals would persist, even influencing marriage advice aimed at Black families.

By the early 20th century, many prominent eugenicists were concerned about the state of marriage. White women, cowed by abusive husbands, were unwilling to have sex, and marriage increasingly seemed to be an exercise in mutual misery.

This, in their view, could limit the ability of the best elements of the human gene pool to propagate. So, with the support of the Eugenics Publishing Company, they set out to educate white readers with tips for how to achieve a friendly and harmonious marriage.

These texts reveal some common assumptions made about early 20th-century marriage. Women were not expected to feel an easy or instinctive attraction to men, nor were men expected to concern themselves with womens emotional or physical well-being. One point nearly all sexologists agreed upon: Women needed to understand that men were naturally inclined toward aggression and sexual selfishness, so they should cut their husbands a little slack.

William Robinson, an early 20th-century sexologist, hoped that his marriage advice manuals would address the disgust, deep hatred and desire for injury and revenge that heterosexual couples felt for one another.

Marie Stopes, a British eugenicist, wrote at length about how most new brides were repulsed by the revelation of their husbands naked bodies, and were driven to suicide and insanity by mens violence during the first night of marriage. Harland William Long, another eugenicist writer, agreed, observing that many a newlywed couple have wrecked the possibility of happiness of a life time because the great majority of brides are practically raped on entrance into the married relation.

The British sexologist and eugenicist Havelock Ellis argued that this violence was natural, and explained that a husband took a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a woman by inflicting pain upon her.

But Ellis also insisted that the pain he inflicts, or desires to inflict, is really part of his love, and that, with proper training, a man could be taught to express this love with more gentleness, and mitigate the repulsion and passivity that seemed to be a normal part of womens experience of sex.

Eugenicists were well-aware that white men regularly raped white women, so its striking that this period coincided with the widespread lynching of Black boys and men falsely accused of raping white women.

Yet eugenicists described white mens rape of women not as criminal, but as an inherent masculine impulse in need of suppression. Of course, they didnt advocate for the lynching of these men. Instead, education and good hygiene would do. Sexologists promoted soaps, perfumes, makeup, douches and corsetry as the key to marital happiness. If women and men smelled better, maybe, the thinking went, men wouldnt need to force their wives to have sex with them.

Some of the core tenets of those first self-help books written by eugenicists incompatibility and deference to men persist in modern marriage advice.

With the rise of the self-help industry, late 20th-century marriage advice shifted from mens and womens repellent bodies to their incompatible personalities.

Relationship counselor John Grays Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus sold over 50 million copies and was the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1990s. The books central message is that men and women do not naturally like or respect one another, and need to learn to accept and accommodate their innate gender differences for the sake of their relationships.

The central themes found in these self-help books are now marketed to straight Black readers, too. For instance, Steve Harveys 2009 New York Times bestseller, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, sold over 3 million copies and repackaged many well-worn marriage tropes for Black women readers. In it, Harvey argues that men and women are fundamentally at odds, that straight couples must work to be attractive to each other and that Black women need to accept mens limitations for the good of Black families and communities.

Men, Harvey writes, have got to feel like were king, even if we dont act kingly. A man, he continues, needs that from his woman so that he can have the strength to keep on doing right by you and the family. Because Black men suffer the burden of anti-Black racism, it is in their homes and relationships, according to Harvey, that they must be treated like royalty.

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Omitted from all of this, of course, is Black womens experience of anti-Black racism, and the various ways it is compounded by the unique forms of misogyny that Black women endure what queer Black feminist Moya Bailey has termed misogynoir.

Much has been written about the hardships endured by queer people. Almost all of us are familiar with queer suffering. Yet we tend to overlook the miseries of straight culture, despite overwhelming evidence.

Relatively honest accounts of these miseries exist in the past and present world of self-help books, or what I call the heterosexual repair industry.

Inside the volumes of marriage advice for straight couples, one message has been clear: forging modern heterosexuality is a difficult accomplishment, one undeniably shaped by the intersections of white supremacy and misogyny.

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The white supremacist origins of modern marriage advice - The Conversation US