Eugenics in the US. 19th Century inspires Nazis

[Voice_of_Europe]

I just found this article in a german news paper about this book*:

* Edwin Black: "War Against the Weak".
Four Walls Eight Windows, New York; 552 Pages; 27 Dollars.



Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race

It's a documentation about Eugenics programs in the US 19th and 20th Century when a nordic race thought that italian and eastern european immigrants were unworthy and spoiling the good american blood.

<http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/reviews.php>
<http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/intro.php>
<http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,283741,00.html>

"Up until 1970 60'000 men and women got forcibly sterilised!
Doctors took away the wombs, ovaries, testicles of mainly poor, "stupid", insane, criminal, colored people mostly from "low" social levels"

"the lower 10 percent"

"the Big Apple is a myth" and was then viewn as a threat to the predominant white people "who built this country"...


Just made me think....
and wanted to share the thoughts with you


*Edited to add links

[htuttle]

1. Bush Sr was a big supporter of the Eugenics movement while in Congress

Supposedly, his overwhelming interest in the issue earned him the nickname 'Rubber's Bush' (which would have been during the late 1950's I believe). He also apparently called several fairly notorious eugenics supporters to testify in favor of forced contraception for certain groups. Don't have a link handy however -- I read it in a book some time ago.

[KansDem]

3. Bush Sr. refered to some of his grandchildren...

as the "little brown ones"

Sources tell TIME that the former President, who once famously referred to his Mexican-American grandchildren, including George P., as "the little brown ones,"

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/06/12/bush.html

I thought this a little strange...

[apsuman]

7. not in the habit of defending Senior Bush...

I think the reporter is wrong.

George P. Bush is the son of Jeb. His wife is Columbian (again, I think).

The only reference i know of where Senior Bush was recorded saying "... brown ones..." was to President Reagan while on an airport tarmac. He was pointing out his family at a distance, and the reference was not a derogatory one, he was trying to point out his grandchilren, I took the comment as a grandfatherly one, as I believe it was meant.

Also, if his son saw fit to date, marry, and reproduce with a "dark one" then you have to agree that either Senior managed to raise his children in non-racist ways, or that Jeb was able to see through his "whitie" upbringing and all of it's flaws. Either way you have to give one or more Bushes EXACTLY the credit that so many dems hate giving to ANY of them.

Finally, if you want to keep on the sins of the father, then it needs to be pointed out that Al Gore Sr. voted against Civil Rights Act, and that Bush Sr. Sr. (Prescot?) fought against McCarthy.

[Karenina]

8. You need to be able to "nuance"

to understand family dynamics and family "core beliefs." I respectfully suggest you take a closer look. If you grew up white in a predominantly white community and cannot for the life of you see it, please just stay on board and ask questions after you look at the family history.

[apsuman]

10. the point I was trying to make....

The point I was trying to make is:

I saw the clip (some years ago now) and as I recall was that he was simply trying to point out his grandchildren.

Was it the most enlightened way to point them out? Probably not. Was it racist? I don't think even in a million years.

Look, if you want to attack any of the Bush family, there are really substantive issues to get real traction, this just isn't one of them.

[starroute]

12. Quote from George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography

Not only was the American Eugenics Society itself headquartered at Yale, but all parts of this undead fascist movement had a busy home at Yale. The coercive psychiatry and sterilization advocates had made the Yale/New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical School their laboratories for hands-on practice in brain surgery and psychological experimentation. And the Birth Control League was there, which had long trumpeted the need for eugenical births -- fewer births for parents with "inferior" bloodlines. Prescott's partner Tighe was a Connecticut director of the league, and the Connecticut league's medical advisor was the eugenics advocate, Dr. Winternitz of Yale Medical School.

Now in 1950, people who knew something about Prescott Bush knew that he had very unsavory roots in the eugenics movement. There were then, just after the anti-Hitler war, few open advocates of sterilization of "unfit" or "unnecessary" people. (That would be revived later, with the help of General Draper and his friend George Bush.) But the Birth Control League was public -- just about then it was changing its name to the euphemistic "Planned Parenthood."

Then, very late in the 1950 senatorial campaign, Prescott Bush was publicly exposed for being an activist in that section of the old fascist eugenics movement. Prescott Bush lost the election by about 1,000 out of 862,000 votes. He and his family blamed the defeat on the expose. The defeat was burned into the family's memory, leaving a bitterness and perhaps a desire for revenge.

http://davidicke.www.50megs.com/icke/magazine/vol5/bush/bush4.htm

[bobthedrummer]

13. Very interesting.

Thanks for reminding us about this.

[catzies]

2. Welcome to DU, Voice_of_Europe

:hi:

This should be in our General Discussion forum, not Latest Breaking News.

[Flightful]

4. Eugenics was the "political correctness" of the era

The practice of eugenics was endorsed by all political parties during the Great Depression- the founder of the socialist forerunner of the NDP advocated forced sterilization of "lunatics, cripples and women of Irish extraction" while the right-leaning government of Alberta legislated the Eugenics Act that mandated sterilization of disabled people.

[DrWeird]

5. And Republican ideology.

See, for example, the neo-eugenic, pseudoscientific book The Bell Curve. They were selling the damn things in K-mart.

[seemslikeadream]

6. welcome to you

If you are able to watch on line C-SPAN Book TV

Edwin Black was featured

http://www.booktv.org/misc/southernbook_101203.asp

[meow2u3]

9. And contrary to popular DU belief...

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was really a genocidal racist and an advocate of eugenics who promoted birth control and/or abortion for minorities, the disabled, and the poor. She hid behind feminism and women's choice to justify birth control and abortion, the issue being what so many DUers end up buying into, and ending up harming women and turning them into sex playthings for irresponsible men--and themselves.

Think about it--I'm not asking you to adopt my views, just to see the issues from another's view.

[WoodrowFan]

14. NONSENSE

RW slander. There were several parts of the Eugenics movements. One part inspired the Nazis: forced sterilization of the unfit, etc. The other part wanted to promote family planning and healthy children in order to convince the "better sort" to keep having children, NOT to stop the poor or minorities from having families. Sanger was a member of the second group, NOT the first.

[camero]

15. Sorry, it's well documented that she was

http://www.spectacle.org/997/richmond.html

The leaders in the German sterilization movement state repeatedly that their legislation was formulated after careful study of the California experiment as reported by Mr. Gosney and Dr. Popenoe. It would have been impossible, they say, to understake such a venture involving some 1 million people without drawing heavily upon previous experience elsewhere." (2) Who is Dr. Paul Popenoe? He was a leader in the U.S. eugenics movement and wrote (1933) the article 'Eugenic Sterilization' in the journal (BCR) that Margaret Sanger started. How many Americans did Dr. Popenoe estimate should be subjected to sterilization? Between five million and ten million Americans. "The situation will grow worse instead of better if steps are not taken to control the reproduction of mentally handicapped. Eugenic sterilization represents one such step that is practicable, humanitarian, and certain in its results." (3)

Three months before the German 'sterilization law' was passed, Rudin's "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need" article was published in the journal (BCR) Margaret Sanger started and continued to influence until its demise in 1940.

Margaret Sanger corresponded with Ernst Rudin and never once renounced his eugenic views.

[bobthedrummer]

11. Tommy Thompson is such a great pal of Charles Murray {The Bell Curve}

that he hired him for input into the Wisconsin Works/W2 plan for the end of welfare, which was adopted as the federal model.
Charles Murray is another eugenicist.