By Don Valentine
Our country’s purge of Blacks via eugenics is a hushed blight on our past. Eugenics as described by Texas Woman’s University, “… the belief that certain practices could improve the biology and genetics of the human race, with White, able-bodied people being considered the most “fit” representation of good genetics.” It gained traction as a tool by Whites in the Jim Crow era to maintain White dominance. It should be noted that eugenics was not a back wood country shenanigan. The theory was endorsed by respected minds like President Roosevelt, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell and Sir Winston Churchill.
British statistician Francis Galton originated the theory of human genetic engineering. The word is Greek, and means “good in birth.” Galton and his ilk believed that different races had genetically distinctive features that could be ranked; Caucasian ancestry ranked at the top, and that the randomness of nature could be replaced with efforts to delete unwanted genes. This provided the perfect grist for racists concerned about polluting the Aryan bloodline. In an ironic twist of randomness Galton’s cousin was the illustrious Charles Darwin.
At its peak the eugenics movement captivated White America, with a zealous hope that it could quietly erase away “the Black Garbage”of slavery. Variations of sterilization and eugenics were legally sanctioned in 32 states. Mississippi, North Carolina, California and were the most fervid advocates of social engineering. In 1961, a White doctor gave Fannie Hamer a hysterectomy without her consent. PBS noted that the Civil Rights crusader coined the moniker a “Mississippi appendectomy.”
North Carolina used sterilization as a pervasive eugenics tool on unconsenting Black Women. An article in Barrons reported, “A sterilization program that ran in the US state of North Carolina from 1929 to 1974 was explicitly designed to “breed out” Black citizens and met the UN definition of genocide, a study said this week.” California was the vanguard state for this inhumane medical practice. According to the Guardian magazine, “California’s program was unrivaled. It contributed to a third of total national sterilizations, and set an example for Nazi Germany’s sterilization laws.” It is clear why schools don’t want to teach that America helped mold any Nazi practices. To learn more read: Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.