Category Archives: Eugenics

Over the course of 175 years and more than 2 million pages of newsprint, its no surprise the Lewiston Falls Journal and its successors have on occasion gotten some things wrong, sometimes egregiously so.

For instance, consider the Lewiston Evening Journals August 1972 take on Watergate: An incident that must be rated as trivial compared to the major issues that should be the focal point of attention during the 1972 presidential campaign.

When Richard Nixon, who won the race, resigned in disgrace from the presidency two years later, the Journals editorial stood out as notably off the mark.

But shortsighted is one thing. Unforgiveable is quite another.

From 1900 through the 1930s, the Journal backed a movement mired in the pseudo-science of eugenics, which led followers to conclude that bettering the human race required active steps to prevent some people from having children.

The newspaper at times endorsed involuntary sterilization and flirted with the notion of having the government murder people to prevent them from having sex and potentially bring children into the world who might share qualities the movement frowned on, such as intellectual disabilities or addiction to liquor.

The Lewiston newspaper wasnt alone in its support for the real-life application of eugenics theory.

The ideas pushed by eugenics adherents proved so popular that many states passed laws allowing forced sterilizations, including Maine, and many prominent men and women, from Winston Churchill to Helen Keller, endorsed it.

The embrace of eugenics became common enough to be taught in many schools, touted in international conferences and endorsed by such diverse organizations as the U.S. Supreme Court and Germanys Nazi Party.

Nazi leader Adolf Hiter once told comrades, I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock, according to the former head of his economic policy office, cited in Stefan Kuhls 1984 book The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism.

The American eugenics movement began to fade in the 1930s and fell into disfavor nearly everywhere after Hitler carried its ideas so far that his minions slaughtered millions in a bid to snuff out people seen as unfit, including Jews, homosexuals, communists and people with mental and physical challenges.

Academics who have since delved into the eugenics push in America cite it as one of the intellectual foundations for Hitlers concentration camps.

PEACEFUL EXTERMINATION

Arthur Staples, who worked at the Journal for 57 years and edited it for two decades, laid out how he saw the problem in a 1925 column in which he complained, We have bred from the worst to the worst in the most foolish way.

As a result, Staples wrote, We are striving to lug along incompetents and feeble persons in the march of progress.

He pointed out how potato farmers throw away the small potatoes while society, coping with far more important choices, was attempting to raise the culls when it comes to people who are idiots, imbeciles and sub-normals.

Then Staples took an even greater leap.

He said men of conscience and courage no doubt including himself among them wonder if a certain form of peaceful extermination were not better.

Though Staples immediately said he wasnt advocating any such thing, merely pondering it, he proceeded to compare these poor travesties of human beings with demon-possessed swine.

Staples concluded society must take care that imbeciles and sub-normals do not reproduce, urging the state to sterilize them to improve the overall quality of Mainers.

The state, he said, must stop the growing rot in the seed of the race and not be squeamish about telling things as they are.

At the time, Staples and the Journal were hardly alone in their calls for government to sterilize people they regarded as lesser beings.

The Supreme Court, in the never-overturned 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, widely noted as one of its most dreadful rulings, agreed with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. when he insisted three generations of imbeciles are enough, in a ruling granting the right for states to sterilize residents to prevent feebleminded and socially inadequate people from having children.

It was a decision, and a movement, which led to the forcible sterilization of at least 60,000 Americans, many of them Black women. Maine was among the states to do so.

Not surprisingly, Nazi defendants at the war crimes trials at Nuremberg after World War II sought to justify their crimes by citing the precedent set in the United States for sterilization and extermination.

The judges didnt buy it. But there was some truth to their finger-pointing.

NEWS AND VIEWS SUPPORTING EXTERMINATION

On March 2, 1900, the Journal carried a news story under the headline By Painless Extermination.

Beneath it was a lengthy account of a new book by Dr. Duncan McKim of New York who proposed the betterment of society and the abolition of the evils of heredity by the gentle removal from this life of incorrigible criminals, idiots, imbeciles, epileptics and habitual drunkards.

He said they could be led into a lethal chamber where they could be gassed to death.

The painless extinction of these lives would present no practical difficulty, McKim said.

The number of individuals to whom the plan would apply is large, McKim wrote in his book.

The Journals story did not question either the idea motivating McKims proposal or his suggestion for implementing it.

McKims Heredity and Progress, published by G.P. Putnam, was part of a movement promoting the notion that people should, in effect, be bred like livestock or pedigreed dogs, aiming to improve the overall quality of humanity by culling the least fit.

It is not the mere wearing of a human form which truly indicates a man, McKim wrote. The idiot and the low-grade imbecile are not true men, for certain essential human elements have never entered into them, and never can; nor is the moral idiot truly a man, nor, while the sad condition lasts, the lunatic.

He wrote they are no more human than beasts of prey.

Once dismissed as mere animals, it wasnt hard for some in the movement to embrace the suggestion that involuntary sterilization or death was a reasonable solution to the problem McKim identified.

Its an idea the Journal found attractive.

In its Book Chat column on Feb. 24, 1900, the Journals illustrated magazine praised the volume and hailed McKims call for a gentle and painless death to those who are very weak and very vicious degenerates who are under the absolute control of the state, including murderers, habitual drunkards, nocturnal house-breakers and people with epilepsy, who were seen by some as a uniquely criminal class in those days.

Dr. McKim has brought the darker side of life before us in a clear and forceful manner and his arguments are logical and convincing, the Journal said.

It was a theme repeated now and again, with only occasional hesitation, in many of the papers stories and some of its opinion columns in the following decades.

In a 1904 front-page news story headlined Minds Mislaid And Minds Lost By Heredity And Vice, the Journal noted how Auburn schools had reported having 14 mentally incapacitated children.

The next sentences said, Criminal re-enforcement of decadents and imbeciles is a grave menace to the State. There are many cases where the reproduction of dangerous imbeciles has proved a fruitful source of municipal expenditure and moral waste. To prevent the breeding and intermarriage of decadent classes is essential to the well-being of the commonwealth.

It said feeble-mindedness is typically hereditary and that to descend from a long line of paupers is to descend further into pauperism.

In ancient Sparta, the story said, the answer would have been to lop the heads off the people it viewed as problematic, but the Journal noted with a tinge of regret that modern morality would not allow such barbarism.

In 1914, the paper reported favorably on the views of Gertrude MacDonald, principal of the State School for Girls in Hallowell, who told the Maine Federation of Womens Clubs that because defects are passed on in family lines, government should see to it that the continued pollution of its bloodstream must be checked by such means that have the approval of sane, far-seeing men.

Reproduction of the feeble-minded, the insane, the grossly immoral, the physically imperfect must be cut off, and it should lie within the power of the state to bring this to pass by segregation, for the most part, and more drastic means when absolutely necessary, MacDonald said.

In the same year, after a judge threw out a eugenics law in Wisconsin he deemed unconstitutional, the Journal wrote an editorial fretting that damaged goods would multiply as what it viewed as feeble-minded people reproduced until societys views on the issue change.

With better education, it said, we can climb the hill of the Capitol and get into written constitutions the better things needed by the nation namely a constitutional amendment to ease the way for the practical application of eugenics.

A BIG YEAR FOR BAD IDEAS

The push for forced sterilizations appears to have peaked in the Journal in 1925, the year Staples mused in his column about peaceful extermination of unfortunate Americans.

In June, the daily spotlighted an honor thesis by Bates College student Priscilla Frew that insisted defectives should be controlled so they cannot multiply, which means strict segregation or sterilization.

The following month, the Journal covered a talk to the Lewiston and Auburn Rotarians by Dr. Stephen Vosburgh, head of the Maine School of the Feeble Minded in Pownal. He told the group that segregation and sterilization were the only ways to stop the growth of feeble-minded Mainers.

Vosburgh told the Rotarians that tests given to new arrivals at his school determine with ease whether the newcomer is an idiot, with the mental capacity of a 2-year-old, or an imbecile who has the mental abilities of a typical child between the ages of 3 and 7, or a moron, whose mind is equivalent to a 7- to 12-year-old.

He said a state law prevented all of them from getting married but town clerks failed to enforce it, so the state passed a law that permits sterilization of the so-called feeble-minded under some circumstances.

Vosburgh also said there were many sub-normal (people) in alms houses and attractive women of child-bearing age who should be cared for and segregated in institutions until they were too old to have children. Otherwise, he said, the state would have too many morons.

In November 1925, the Journal wrote an editorial about the states insane asylum discussing a delicate subject that requires a lot of common sense.

The paper said Maine ought to extend the sterilization law for idiots and imbeciles in order to sterilize these people by the authorities without having to get so many permissions.

After all, it said, society would never allow unnecessary operations of this sort only those approved after a proper hearing.

The chances of the idiot or the imbecile or even the moron or subnormal reproducing like to like are almost certain, the paper said. The chances are small that these people will produce normals.

Nobody likes to discuss this subject, the editorial noted. Nobody likes to sponsor these profoundly personal laws. But what is to be done? Is society through a mawkish sentimentality to be permitted to go on doing what we do not permit cattle to do? Are we going to overload society with fools?

It went on to detail a misinterpreted and often mistaken 1877 study of an American family published by Richard Louis Dugdale as The Jukes: a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity, Also Further Studies of Criminals.

Comparing the Juke family to the successful descendants of famed colonial-era preacher Jonathan Edwards, the Journal used their example to prove idiots produce idiots when allowed to have children and should not be allowed to reproduce.

It was a theme pushed repeatedly over the years by the Lewiston paper, until the scale of the eugenics-inspired horror unleashed by the Nazis became clear.

AFTER THE NAZIS

The Journal printed hundreds of news stories during and after World War II detailing German crimes. It wrote about the international tribunals prosecuting Nazi criminals. It published stories about concentration camp survivors and about the reality of the Holocaust they witnessed.

But it doesnt appear the Journal ever took note in later years of its own role in promoting eugenics or its complicity in the spread of a doctrine leading directly to the crimes against humanity laid out at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

That the Journal chose to push eugenics is made clear by comparing its coverage in those years to its morning counterpart, the Lewiston Daily Sun, which rarely mentioned eugenics and doesnt appear to have hailed it at all.

There is no apology possible for having played any role at all in laying the foundation for the Holocaust. But the paper can, at last, recognize its failure.

This was perhaps the worst thing the Journal and its successors ever did in 175 years of news coverage.

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The shameful support of eugenics by the Lewiston Evening Journal

Perhaps you've seen the word "longtermism" in your social media feed. Or you've stumbled upon the New Yorker profile of William MacAskill, the public face of longtermism. Or read MacAskill's recent opinion essay in the New York Times. Or seen the cover story in TIME magazine: "How to Do More Good." Or noticed that Elon Musk retweeted a link to MacAskill's new book, "What We Owe the Future," with the comment, "Worth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy."

As I have previously written, longtermism is arguably the most influential ideology that few members of the general public have ever heard about. Longtermists have directly influenced reports from the secretary-general of the United Nations; a longtermist is currently running the RAND Corporation; they have the ears of billionaires like Musk; and the so-called Effective Altruism community, which gave rise to the longtermist ideology, has a mind-boggling $46.1 billion in committed funding. Longtermism is everywhere behind the scenes it has a huge following in the tech sector and champions of this view are increasingly pulling the strings of both major world governments and the business elite.

But what is longtermism? I have tried to answer that in other articles, and will continue to do so in future ones. A brief description here will have to suffice: Longtermism is a quasi-religious worldview, influenced by transhumanism and utilitarian ethics, which asserts that there could be so many digital people living in vast computer simulations millions or billions of years in the future that one of our most important moral obligations today is to take actions that ensure as many of these digital people come into existence as possible.

In practical terms, that means we must do whatever it takes to survive long enough to colonize space, convert planets into giant computer simulations and create unfathomable numbers of simulated beings. How many simulated beings could there be? According to Nick Bostrom the Father of longtermism and director of the Future of Humanity Institute there could be at least 1058 digital people in the future, or a 1 followed by 58 zeros. Others have put forward similar estimates, although as Bostrom wrote in 2003, "what matters is not the exact numbers but the fact that they are huge."

In this article, however, I don't want to focus on how bizarre and dangerous this ideology is and could be. Instead, I think it would be useful to take a look at the community out of which longtermism emerged, focusing on the ideas of several individuals who helped shape the worldview that MacAskill and others are now vigorously promoting. The most obvious place to start is with Bostrom, whose publications in the early 2000s such as his paper "Astronomical Waste," which was recently retweeted by Musk planted the seeds that have grown into the kudzu vine crawling over the tech sector, world governments and major media outlets like the New York Times and TIME.

Nick Bostrom is, first of all, one of the most prominent transhumanists of the 21st century so far. Transhumanism is an ideology that sees humanity as a work in progress, as something that we can and should actively reengineer, using advanced technologies like brain implants, which could connect our brains to the Internet, and genetic engineering, which could enable us to create super-smart designer babies. We might also gain immortality through life-extension technologies, and indeed many transhumanists have signed up with Alcor to have their bodies (or just their heads and necks, which is cheaper) frozen after they die so that they can be revived later on, in a hypothetical future where that's possible. Bostrom himself wears a metal buckle around his ankle with instructions for Alcor to "take custody of his body and maintain it in a giant steel bottle flooded with liquid nitrogen" after he dies.

In a paper co-authored with his colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute, Carl Shulman, Bostrom explored the possibility of engineering human beings with super-high IQs by genetically screening embryos for "desirable" traits, destroying those that lack these traits, and then growing new embryos from stem cells, over and over again. They found that by selecting one embryo out of 10, creating 10 more out of the one selected, and repeating that process 10 times over, scientists could create a radically enhanced person with IQ gains of up to 130 points.

Nick Bostrom has explored the possibility ofengineering "radically enhanced" human beings by genetically screening embryos for "desirable" traits, destroying those that lack these traits, and then growing new embryos from stem cells.

This engineered person might be so different from us so much more intelligent that we would classify them as a new, superior species: a posthuman. According to Bostrom's 2020 "Letter From Utopia," posthumanity could usher in a techno-utopian paradise marked by wonders and happiness beyond our wildest imaginations. Referring to the amount of pleasure that could exist in utopia, the fictional posthuman writing the letter declares: "We have immense silos of it here in Utopia. It pervades all we do, everything we experience. We sprinkle it in our tea."

Central to the longtermist worldview is the idea of existential risk, introduced by Bostrom in 2002. He originally defined it as any event that would prevent us from creating a posthuman civilization, although a year later he implied that it also includes any event that would prevent us from colonizing space and simulating enormous numbers of people in giant computer simulations (this is the article that Musk retweeted).

More recently, Bostrom redefined the term as anything that would stop humanity from attaining what he calls "technological maturity," or a condition in which we have fully subjugated the natural world and maximized economic productivity to the limit the ultimate Baconian and capitalist fever-dreams.

For longtermists, there is nothing worse than succumbing to an existential risk: That would be the ultimate tragedy, since it would keep us from plundering our "cosmic endowment" resources like stars, planets, asteroids and energy which many longtermists see as integral to fulfilling our "longterm potential" in the universe.

What sorts of catastrophes would instantiate an existential risk? The obvious ones are nuclear war, global pandemics and runaway climate change. But Bostrom also takes seriously the idea that we already live in a giant computer simulation that could get shut down at any moment (yet another idea that Musk seems to have gotten from Bostrom). Bostrom further lists "dysgenic pressures" as an existential risk, whereby less "intellectually talented" people (those with "lower IQs") outbreed people with superior intellects.

This is, of course, straight out of the handbook of eugenics, which should be unsurprising: the term "transhumanism" was popularized in the 20th century by Julian Huxley, who from 1959 to 1962 was the president of the British Eugenics Society. In other words, transhumanism is the child of eugenics, an updated version of the belief that we should use science and technology to improve the "human stock."

It should be clear from this why the "Future of Humanity Institute" sends a shiver up my spine. This institute isn't just focused on what the future might be like. It's advocating for a very particular worldview the longtermist worldview that it hopes to actualize by influencing world governments and tech billionaires. And to this point, its efforts are paying off.

Robin Hanson is, alongside William MacAskill, a "research associate" at the Future of Humanity Institute. He is also a "men's rights" advocate who has been involved in transhumanism since the 1990s. In his contribution to the 2008 book "Global Catastrophic Risks," which was co-edited by Bostrom, he argued that in order to rebuild industrial civilization if it were to collapse, we might need to "retrace the growth path of our human ancestors," passing from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural phase, leading up to our current industrial state. How could we do this? One way, he suggested, would be to create refuges e.g., underground bunkers that are continually stocked with humans. But not just any humans will do: if we end up in a pre-industrial phase again,

it might make sense to stock a refuge [or bunker] with real hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers, together with the tools they find useful. Of course such people would need to be disciplined enough to wait peacefully in the refuge until the time to emerge was right. Perhaps such people could be rotated periodically from a well-protected region where they practiced simple lifestyles, so they could keep their skills fresh.

In other words, Hanson's plan is to take some contemporary hunter-gatherers whose populations have been decimated by industrial civilization and stuff them into bunkers with instructions to rebuild industrial civilization in the event that ours collapses. This is, as Audra Mitchell and Aadita Chaudhury write, "a stunning display of white possessive logic."

Robin Hanson's big plan is to take people from contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures and stuff them into underground bunkers with instructions to rebuild industrial civilization if ours collapses.

More recently, Hanson became embroiled in controversy after he seemed to advocate for "sex redistribution" along the lines of "income redistribution," following a domestic terrorist attack carried out by a self-identified "incel." This resulted in Slate wondering whether Hanson is the "creepiest economist in America." Not to disappoint, Hanson doubled down, writing a response to Slate's article titled "Why Economics Is, and Should Be, Creepy." But this isn't the most appalling thing Hanson has written or said. Consider another blog post published years earlier entitled "Gentle Silent Rape," which is just as horrifying as it sounds. Or perhaps the award should go to his shocking assertion that

"the main problem" with the Holocaust was that there weren't enough Nazis! After all, if there had been six trillion Nazis willing to pay $1 each to make the Holocaust happen, and a mere six million Jews willing to pay $100,000 each to prevent it, the Holocaust would have generated $5.4 trillion worth of consumers surplus [quoted by Bryan Caplan in a debate with Hanson]

Nick Beckstead is, along with MacAskill and Hanson, another research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute. He's also the CEO of the FTX Foundation, which is largely funded by the crypto-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Previously, Beckstead was a program officer for Open Philanthropy, which in 2016 gaveHanson $290,345 "to analyze potential scenarios in the future development of artificial intelligence."

Along with Bostrom, Beckstead is credited as one of the founders of longtermism because of his 2013 PhD dissertation titled "On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future," which longtermist Toby Ord describes as "one of the best texts on existential risk." Beckstead made the case therein that what matters more than anything else in the present is how our actions will influence the future in the coming "millions, billions, and trillions of years." How do we manage this? One way is to make sure that no existential risks occur that could foreclose our "vast and glorious" future among the heavens, with trillions of simulated people living in virtual realities. Another is to figure out ways of altering the trajectory of civilization's development: Even small changes could have ripple effects that, over millions, billions and trillions of years, add up to something significant.

One implication of Beckstead's view is that, to quote him, since "saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries, it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal."

Nick Beckstead suggests that "saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal."

Why would that be so, exactly? Because "richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive." This makes good sense within the longtermist worldview. As Hilary Greaves another research associate next to Hanson and MacAskill notes in an interview, we intuitively think that transferring wealth from the rich to the poor is the best way to improve the world, but "longtermist lines of thought suggest that something else might be better still," namely, transferring wealth in the opposite direction.

William MacAskill initially made a name for himself by encouraging young people to work on Wall Street, or for petrochemical companies, so they can earn more money to give to charity. More recently, he's become the poster boy for longtermism, thanks to his brand new book "What We Owe the Future," which aims to be something like the Longtermist Bible, laying out the various commandments and creeds of the longtermist religion.

In 2021, MacAskill defended the view that caring about the long term should be the key factor in deciding how to act in the present. When judging the value of our actions, we should not consider their immediate effects, but rather their effects a hundred or even a thousand years from now. Should we help the poor today? Those suffering from the devastating effects of climate change, which disproportionately affects the Global South? No, we must not let our emotions get the best of us: we should instead follow the numbers, and the numbers clearly imply that ensuring the birth of 1045 digital people this is the number that MacAskill uses must be our priority.

Although the suffering of 1.3 billion people is very bad, MacAskill would admit, the difference between 1.3 billion and 1045is so vast that if there's even a tiny chance that one's actions will help create these digital people, the expected value of that action could be far greater than the expected value of helping those living and suffering today. Morality, in this view, is all about crunching the numbers; as the longtermist Eliezer Yudkowsky once put it, "Just shut up and multiply."

In his new book, MacAskill takes a slightly more moderate approach. Focusing on the far future, he now argues, is not the key priority of our time but a key priority. But this move, switching from the definite to the indefinite article, still yields some rather troubling conclusions. For example, MacAskill claims that from a longtermist perspective we should be much more worried about underpopulation than overpopulation, since the more people there are, the more technological "progress" there will be. Trends right now suggest that the global population may begin to decline, which would be a very bad thing, in MacAskill's view.

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MacAskill sees an out, however, arguing that we might not need to create more human beings to keep the engines of progress roaring. We could instead "develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) that could replace human workers including researchers. This would allow us to increase the number of 'people' working on R & D as easily as we currently scale up production of the latest iPhone." After all, these AGI worker-people could be easily duplicated the same way you might duplicate a Word document to yield more workers, each toiling away as happy as can be researching and developing new products. MacAskill continues:

Advances in biotechnology could provide another pathway to rebooting growth. If scientists with Einstein-level research abilities were cloned and trained from an early age, or if human beings were genetically engineered to have greater research abilities, this could compensate for having fewer people overall and thereby sustain technological progress.

As Jeremy Flores writes on Twitter, "you can almost see the baby Einsteins in test tubes complete with mustaches and unkempt gray hair"!

But perhaps MacAskill's most stunning claim is that the reason we should stop polluting our beautiful planet by burning coal and oil is that we may need these fossil fuels to rebuild our industrial civilization should it collapse. I will let MacAskill explain the idea:

Burning fossil fuels produces a warmer world, which may make civilisational recovery more difficult. But it also might make civilisational recovery more difficult simply by using up a nonrenewable resource that, historically, seemed to be a critical fuel for industrialisation. Since, historically, the use of fossil fuels is almost an iron law of industrialisation, it is plausible that the depletion of fossil fuels could hobble our attempts to recover from collapse.

In other words, from the longtermist perspective, we shouldn't burn up all the fossil fuels today because we may need some to burn up later on in order to rebuild, using leftover coal and oil to pass through another Industrial Revolution and eventually restore our current level of technological development. This is an argument MacAskill has made many times before.

From the longtermist perspective, we shouldn't burn up all the fossil fuels today because we may need to burn themlater in order to pass through another Industrial Revolution and eventually restore our current level of technological development.

Just reflect for a moment on the harm that industrialization has caused the planet. We are in the early stages of the sixth major mass extinction in life's 3.8 billion-year history on Earth. The global population of wild vertebrates mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, amphibians declined by an inconceivable 60% between 1970 and 2014. There are huge "dead zones" in our oceans from pollution. Our planet's climate forecast is marked by mega-droughts, massive wildfires, melting glaciers, sea-level rise, more species extinctions, the collapse of major ecosystems, mass migrations, unprecedented famines, heat waves above the 95-degree wet-bulb threshold of survivability, political instability, social upheaval, economic disruptions, wars and terrorism, and so on. Our industrial civilization itself could collapse because of these environmental disasters. MacAskill argues that if the "Civilization Reset" button is pressed, we should do it all over again.

Why would he argue this? If you recall his earlier claims about 1045people in vast computer simulations spread throughout the Milky Way, then you've answered the question for yourself.

Sam Bankman-Fried is a multi-billionaire longtermist who founded FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange whose CEO is Nick Beckstead. Is cryptocurrency a Ponzi scheme? According to Bankman-Fried's description of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), it sure sounds like it. He recently claimed that "by number of Ponzi schemes there are way more in crypto, kinda per capita, than in other places," although he doesn't see this as especially problematic because "it's just like a ton of extremely small ones." Does that make it better, though? As David Pearce, a former colleague of Bostrom, asked last year on a social media post that links to an article about Bankman-Fried's dealings, "Should effective altruists participate in Ponzi schemes?"

Bankman-Fried has big plans to reshape American politics to fit the longtermist agenda. Earlier this year, he funded the congressional campaign of Carrick Flynn, a longtermist research affiliate at the Future of Humanity Institute whose campaign was managed by Avital Balwit, also at the Future of Humanity Institute. Flynn received "a record-setting $12 million" from Bankman-Fried, who says he might "spend $1 billion or more in the 2024 [presidential] election, which would easily make him the biggest-ever political donor in a single election." (Flynn lost his campaign for the Democratic nomination in Oregon's 6th district; that $12 million won him just over 11,000 votes.)

Given Bankman-Fried's interest in politics, we should expect to see longtermism become increasingly visible in the coming years. Flynn's campaign to bring longtermism to the U.S. Capitol, although it failed, was just the beginning. Imagine, for a moment, having a longtermist president. Or imagine longtermism becoming the driving ideology of a new political party that gains a majority in Congress and votes on policies aligned with Bostrom's vision of digital people in simulations, or Hanson's suggestion about underground bunkers populated with hunter-gatherers, or MacAskill's view on climate change. In fact, as a recent UN Dispatch article notes, the United Nations itself is already becoming an arm of the longtermist community:

The foreign policy community in general and the United Nations in particular are beginning to embrace longtermism. Next year at the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 2023, the Secretary General is hosting what he is calling a Summit of the Future to bring these ideas to the center of debate at the United Nations.

This point was driven home in a podcast interview with MacAskill linked to the article. According to MacAskill, the upcoming summit could help "mainstream" the longtermist ideology, doing for it what the first "Earth Day" did for the environmental movement in 1970. Imagine, then, a world in which longtermism the sorts of ideas discussed above become as common and influential as environmentalism is today. Bankman-Fried and the others are hoping for exactly this outcome.

This is only a brief snapshot of the community from which longtermism has sprung, along with some of the central ideas embraced by those associated with it. Not only has the longtermist community been a welcoming home to people who have worried about "dysgenic pressures" being an existential risk, supported the "men's rights" movement, generated fortunes off Ponzi schemes and made outrageous statements about underpopulation and climate change, but it seems to have made little effort to foster diversity or investigate alternative visions of the future that aren't Baconian, pro-capitalist fever-dreams built on the privileged perspectives of white men in the Global North. Indeed, according to a 2020 survey of the Effective Altruism community, 76% of its members are white and 71% are male, a demographic profile that I suspect is unlikely to change in the future, even as longtermism becomes an increasingly powerful force in the global village.

By understanding the social milieu in which longtermism has developed over the past two decades, one can begin to see how longtermists have ended up with the bizarre, fanatical worldview they are now evangelizing to the world. One can begin to see why Elon Musk is a fan of longtermism, or why leading "new atheist" Sam Harris contributed an enthusiastic blurb for MacAskill's book. As noted elsewhere, Harris is a staunch defender of "Western civilization," believes that "We are at war with Islam," has promoted the race science of Charles Murray including the argument that Black people are less intelligent than white people because of genetic evolution and has buddied up with far-right figures like Douglas Murray, whose books include "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam."

It makes sense that such individuals would buy-into the quasi-religious worldview of longtermism, according to which the West is the pinnacle of human development, the only solution to our problems is more technology and morality is reduced to a computational exercise ("Shut-up and multiply"!). One must wonder, when MacAskill implicitly asks "What do we owe the future?" whose future he's talking about. The future of indigenous peoples? The future of the world's nearly 2 billion Muslims? The future of the Global South? The future of the environment, ecosystems and our fellow living creatures here on Earth? I don't think I need to answer those questions for you.

If the future that longtermists envision reflects the community this movement has cultivated over the past two decades, who would actually want to live in it?

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from mile P. Torres on "existential risk" and the future

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Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy ...

Thursday, October 13, 5p.m., Graham Hall, Brown Fine Arts Center

Jacqueline D. Antonovich is Assistant Professor of History at Muhlenberg College. Professor Antonovich is a historian of health and medicine in the United States, with particular interests in how race, genderand politics shape the medical field and access to health care. Professor Antonovich also founded Nursing Clio, a public-facing academic blog that explores intersections of medicines history (and present) and identity, especially race and gender.

Between 1900 and 1930, efforts to curb abortion, restrict contraceptionand promote eugenics dominated public and legal discourse on marriage, pregnancyand childbirth in the United States. This talk examines the role of women physicians in driving discourse, circulating ideasand setting policy agendas on reproductive surveillance and restrictions during this period. Through two case studies, we will explore how women physicians became an effective force for bringing eugenics to the massesbecoming the middleman between scientist and mother, researcher and reformer.

Antonovichs lecture is in conjunction with the Kahn Institute yearlong project Health and Medicine, Culture and Society: Crossroads in a Liberal Arts Education.

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A Desire to Cure, Not to Punish: Women Physicians and Eugenics in the American West, 19001930 by Jacqueline D. Antonovich - Smith College Grcourt Gate

This article features Government Accountability Projects whistleblower complaints and was published here.

Many may think of forced sterilization as a thing of the past, a practice so heinous that there is no way it is still continued today. However, if the history of this practice tells us anything, it is that a target will always remain on the heads of the marginalized. The only thing that changes with time is the manner in which that target manifests.

Ableism and the demonization of mental health struggles play an extremely large role in the global history of involuntary sterilization. In the United States, California acted as a forced sterilization kingpin, passing 3Asexualization Acts in 1909, 1913, and 1917. These legislative pieces targeted those who were mentally ill, mentally deficient, and feebleminded. These distinctions are placed in quotations, as many of the defining factors of such labels were essentially baseless, or racist/misogynistic in nature. For example, feeblemindedness was a label assigned to people who displayedpromiscuity, criminality, or social dependency. Social dependency, of course refers to impoverished people. The promiscuity associated with feeblemindedness was often aimed atyoung women who had sexual partners outside of marriage or at a young age.

The American eugenics movement propelled sterilization ideology into the mainstream. During the early 1930s,forced sterilization was heavily imposed upon young women with intellectual disabilities, based on the idea that they might have children they could not adequately care for, and thus add additional strain on social programs and systems. Additional targets of sterilization policy included those who wereincarcerated, or occupants of psychiatric facilities. This targeting disproportionately affected Black and Latino men, and young women. Unfortunately, there were also a number of race specific sterilization programs, through which thousands of Native American,Black, andLatinawomen were forcibly sterilized. Six years after the passing of the Family Planning and Resource Act in 1970,25% of Native American women of childbearing agehad been sterilized.

Many of these sterilization procedures were carried out without the consent of the victim, with many laws requiring permission from institutional leadership, whether it be an attending physician or superintendent. The frequency of these unjust procedures eventually stirred enough controversy that the matter of sterilizing persons diagnosed with mental illnesses was brought to the Supreme Court.

The Buck vs. Bell case, heard and decided in 1927, set the legal precedent that granted states the right to sterilize occupants of state institutions, whether they be prisons or hospitals. The court argued that nonconsensual sterilization did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and that it was beneficial as a whole as it was intended for the betterment of society. Epilepsy, imbecility, and feeblemindedness, were categorized as hereditary traits, and thus it was seen as imperative to prevent them from passing down.This ruling has not been overturned.

To no surprise, American eugenics, both in theory and in practice, came to inspire Nazis in Germany. Californias Asexualization Laws were the backbone of theNazi Sterilization Law of 1934, which would effectivelysterilize roughly 300,000 to 450,000 people.

Forced sterilization was not secluded to the early 1900s, however, nor was it reserved for genocidal brutality. In the United States, eugenic and racist policies continued to clip the fallopian tubes of women of color around the nation. Perhaps what is most sinister, is that the issue has never died, and continues to weasel its way into modern politics and injustice.

In September of 2020, awhistleblower revealed that Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), had been performing hysterectomieson unknowing women who were being held in immigration detention centers. According to the whistleblower report, a gynecologist providing care to women inIrwin County Detention Center in Georgia, removed the uterus of every woman sent to his office. This amounted to areported 20 hysterectomies carried out by Dr. Amin, sinisterly referred to as the Uterus Collector.Over 40women would later tell their storiesof physician misconduct and abuse, and unnecessary procedures. Women were unaware of the reasons for their procedures, and were misguided as aresult of poor English to Spanish translation.

Interestingly enough, voluntary sterilization is not a readily available option for many women who seek it out. Hysterectomies and tubal ligations are known forrequiring a husbands signature, orprevious live-births. Through and through, the circumstances disarm all women of choice; one group may be forcefully sterilized by the state, while the other would be refused the option of elective sterilization. Meanwhile,the non-invasive, reversible sterilization option for men is a vasectomy, which has no history of requiring spousal consent, nor any age requirement once adulthood is reached.

I would like to acknowledge the objective fact that men of color were targeted victims of American eugenicist policy. Thus, involuntary sterilization is not quite a unique stain specific to womens health. However, in current conversations surrounding bodily autonomy, circumstances reminiscent of eugenicist policy are relevant. Whether it be that incarcerated or detained women are involuntarily sterilized, or that those seeking elective sterilization are turned away, there exists a rich history as to why social determinations have been preset for the respective groups.

These are century old battles of self determination, the right for any individual to choose for themselves what may happen with their bodies. Intersectionality should once again be a critical aspect of bodily autonomy activism. Recognition of the historic attacks on other members of marginalized communities presents the unique opportunity to meld these experiences with the intent of developing a common understanding, a common goal.

The rest is here:

NYU Local: Women's Health: Involuntary Sterilization Then and Now - Government Accountability Project

Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, made several antisemitic remarks and spoke of fake children infiltrating his home in unaired portions of his recent interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Ye who was locked out of hisInstagramandTwitteraccounts in the last few days over antisemitic comments advanced several antisemitic conspiracy theories in the unaired portion of the interview obtained by Motherboard.

Planned Parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a known eugenics, with the KKK to control the Jew population, Ye told Carlson. When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are. This is who our people are. The blood of Christ. This, as a Christian, is my belief.

Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a known supporter of the eugenics movement, and Planned Parenthood has previously denounced Sanger for her belief in the theory.

However, Yes claims about the Jew population appear to reference the antisemitic Radical Hebrew Israelite ideology, which claims that Jews are impostors and thieves who have stolen the identity and birthright of the true Israelites, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Ye also appeared to reference the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people control financial institutions when discussing the winter holidays celebrated at his childrens school.

My kids are going to a school that teaches Black kids a complicated Kwanzaa, Ye said. I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it would come with some financial engineering.

Following an aired comment that he would be the first Latino president, Ye also told Carlson, I just, I trust Latinos when I, you know, when I work with them. I trust them more than, Ill be safe, certain other businessmen, you know.

Instagram removed a post from Ye last week and restricted his account after he suggested that rapper Sean Diddy Combs is controlled by Jewish people. Twitter suspended Ye soon after, when he said he was going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.

Beyond the antisemitic remarks, Ye also told Carlson in the unaired segment that fake children professional actors, he clarified had been placed in his house to sexualize his children, Motherboard reported.

Link:

In unaired portions of Tucker Carlson interview, Ye made antisemitic remarks, spoke of fake children infiltrating his home - The Hill

By Deborah Bailey, Contributing Editor

Planned Parenthood is doing the extra work to make it known that Black women are at the heart of the fight for reproductive freedom.

Planned Parenthood Federation, whose network of clinics serves 400,000 Black women each year, has organized a Stand for Black Women campaign, designed to send a message about the central role of Black women in the struggle for reproductive freedom.

The Supreme Court failed this country by stripping away the constitutional right to abortion for millions of people by overturningRoe v. Wade, said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation.

This resulted in unacceptable barriers that keep Black people from the comprehensive health care they need and deserve, McGill Johnson told the AFRO.

Planned Parenthood, founded in 1916, has traveled a rocky road historically with Black women.

Margaret Sanger, a leading voice in the reproductive rights movement of the early twentieth century and a founder of the clinics that evolved into the Planned Parenthood of today, was a firm believer in Eugenics, a theory that was condemned by many social scientists as racist. Eugenics hold that the human race can be improved through planned breeding.

In a 2014 statement on their website, Planned Parenthood distanced itself from Sangers beliefs, saying her views caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of generations of Black people, Latino people, Indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and many others.

Planned Parenthood has partnered with Womens March, formed in 2017 in response to former President Trumps policies.

Today, both the Womens March and Planned Parenthood say they want to make it clear, Black women represent the core of why reproductive freedom must be maintained in America.

First term Congresswoman Cori Bush, one of eight honorees recognized by Planned Parenthood during the organizations special brunch event, Stand for Black Women, spoke to the heart of reproductive freedom as a core concern for Black women.

The decision to overturn Roe this past June was a continuation of this countrys shameful legacy of legislating and politicizing our bodies, Bush said.

Bush recently chose to make her own story of abortion public. Sharing the story of the abortion she had as a teenage woman opened a flood gate for other Black women to emerge from shame to tell their own stories as survivors of sexual violence, commented Bush.

I publicly shared my abortion story for the first time, one year ago today, said Bush who is a registered nurse and has introduced four bills affirming reproductive rights since January 2021, when she assumed her role in Congress. I know that by sharing my story, that has the potential to help someone else, Bush said.

Bush and all of the activists, organizers honored continue to ensure that Black womens voices are at the center of efforts to push back on womens rights like the Womens March event across the nation this weekend.

Ebonie C. Riley, senior vice president of Policy and Strategic Partnerships with the National Black Action Network, was amongst the Black women honored by Planned Parenthood at the recent Stand for Black Women event.

Riley, hails from a family of organizers and social justice advocates.

Organizing is not something you do just to post on your social media page, said Riley. This is not glamorous work. It is essential work our necessary business, she added.

Other honorees include, Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, Marcela Howell, founder and president of the National Black Womens Reproductive Justice agenda, West Virginia Delegate (WV-51) Danielle Walker, Actress Lynn Whitfield, and Amalgamated Bank, who was honored as a Corporate Champion for Reproductive Health.

McGill Johnson said Planned Parenthoods Stand for Black Women movement is not only for middle and upper income Black women, who have platforms echo their voices, but for Black women living in underserved circumstances; most impacted by restrictions on abortion.

We have advocates in every state who are helping to elect people in every state who support access not just to womens health but to voting rights and alternatives to gun violence and all the issues that we need to live safe and free lives, McGill Johnson concluded.

Women, men and persons who stand for preserving the right to abortion in the United States are gathering to march on the nations capital this weekend and in hundreds of cities across the U.S.

The National Womens March has been working since the Supreme Courts reversal of Roe v. Wade, on the Womens Wave marches held the weekend of Oct. 8 across the nation. The group is determined to send a message prior to current political figures as well as those running for governor in Novembers state and national elections.

The Womens March, formed in 2017 in response to former President Trumps policies, has had its share of problems including the concerns of Black women in the past.

Help us Continue to tell OUR Story and join the AFRO family as a member subscribers are now members! Joinhere!

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Black women and reproductive freedom meet a crossroad in the fight for abortion rights - Afro American

By the year 2045, the majority of the U.S. population will be racially diverse. Already, this reality is impacting our culture, politics, businesses, and national sense of identity.

Companies are particularly eager to get ahead of the change and ensure theyre catering to a rapidly diversifying market and workforce. Gen Z, the most racially diverse generation in American history, will make up roughly 27% of the workforce by 2025. For them, as for many millennials, racial and ethnic diversity are core norms of family, school, and work life.

With more people conscious of racial inequities and mandating official recognition and celebration of diversity, its worth drilling down into what exactly race and ethnicity mean. How are they different, where do they overlap? And how do both impact how we interact with society?

To put the definitions in their simplest terms:

Race refers to categories of human beings that are typically defined by shared biological characteristics. Skin color, hair texture, facial features, and even body shape have historically been used to define race.

Ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to cultural identification and expression. Language, arts, cuisine, customs, holidaysa massive amount of a persons identity is determined by the ethnicity they grow up with and around.

Lets take a deep dive into race first, because its one of the most used words and has a particularly complex history.

Race is primarily an external way of viewing peoples identities. It is based on observed physiological differences associated with regional origins around the world.

In the US, we encounter categories of race all the time on official documentation. But the U.S. Census uses relatively broad definitions, limited to the following categories: White, Black or African-American, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian. The Census Bureau has also started tracking Multiracial populations in much greater detail (in the U.S., this population increased 276% in the last 10 years).

Youll notice that the categories above lump people rather surprisingly into categories we might not expect (such as that Middle Eastern people are considered racially White by the Census), or which callously gloss over stark differences in physical traits (Asian simultaneously describes people of Indian, Japanese, or Indonesian origin/descent).

And in fact, theres a very simple explanation for why its so hard to fit people neatly into these vague buckets: Race, from a scientific, genetic, and biological perspective, does not exist.

Genetic differences are not a sufficient explanation for what humans perceive as race. All human beings share over 99% of the same DNA. There are some genetic differences based on geographical origin, but even within the same regionor race, if you likethere can be significant variation (so that people of different races may have amore similar genetic makeup than people of the same race, but from different regions).

If there were a genetic explanation for race, we would expect to see trademark genes that only pop up in certain populations. But of all the genetic markers that account for what we perceive as racial difference (i.e., less than 1% of the human genome), only 7% of them are specific to one geographical region.

This is really important to stress, because historically, studies of racial differences have been presented and construed as scientific projects. The reality, however, is that race is entirely socially constructed by human beings.

That doesnt mean its not important. For hundreds of years now, race has been used to categorize human beings and assess their value and potential. Today, it remains a heavy influence on all peoples unconscious biases, which can sometimes lead to violent or even deadly consequences. Theres no doubt that race remains a powerful determinant of much human behavior.

But this scientific insight does underline the rapidly approaching obsolescence of our current (and historically influenced) ideas about race.

The idea that whiteness or blackness of skin can be used to describe different categories of human beings only appeared several hundred years ago. It did not exist in the ancient world, and it was only with the acceleration of the Atlantic slave trade by Portuguese explorers in the 1400s that Europeans became exposed to racial categories based on skin color.

The Scientific Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries further developed the concept, especially in order to justify the continued enslavement and unequal treatment of people of color in the New World. As one scholar puts it, this conception of race was based on three fundamentally flawed premises:

One, that biologically distinct races existed in nature; two, that some races were more intelligent than others . . . and three, that these races could be classified and ranked from superior to inferior according to the typical brain, shape, weight or size for each so-called race.

Professor Alice Conklin, Ohio State University

These ideas eventually coalesced into formal scientific disciplines, resulting in the now utterly discredited studies of phrenology (the study of skull shapes and corresponding mental characteristics) and eugenics (the practice of improving a races characteristics by breeding out supposedly undesirable traits). Crucial to the eugenics agenda in the early 20th century was, of course, the concept of racial purity. Taken to one of its most violent extremes, this resulted in the rise of antisemitism all over Europe and, eventually, the Nazis atrocities against that continents Jewish population.

These pseudosciences have been discredited because there is no biological justification for them. Yet, while it has an extremely fraught history full of scientific error and human bias, racial categories are still seen as important markers of identityboth by people and the governments that serve them.

The social construction of race is therefore a double-edged sword. It has led to the denigration and disenfranchisement of specific races based on alleged inequalities in mental, physical, behavioral, and even spiritual ability. (Which has resulted in some very strange arguments, such as the relatively common Abolitionist viewpoint in 19th-century America and England that Black people were intellectually inferior, and therefore required the charity and sympathy of the dominant races, rather than enslavement.)

But it has also led us to an increased awareness of our perceived and actual differences. While race is not a scientifically justifiable distinction, it has played a deeply important role in our nations recent history. In the last century, this led to many economic, legal, and social corrections that sought to create a more equitable playing ground for people of all races and national origins in our society. The visibility of race is partly what makes it such a powerful, immediate marker of identity (even though many of us intuitively believe that it is, in reality, a superficial marker of difference).

Racial identity is therefore an important way for people to define themselves, connect with one another, and organize on behalf of shared interests. For example, data concerning racial demographics helps the government fund and assess new ways of ensuring equitable access to resources. Racial identity can also generate greater solidarity between different ethnic groups, which can help promote the interests of more people rather than less.

At the same time, in a country where multiracial populations are proliferating and growing extremely quickly, we have to ask how useful race will continue to be as a recognizable marker of difference.

My two daughters, Mia and Lila, are both multiracial. Their race according to the U.S. Census would be a combination of Black and White (their mom is Lebanese). But their ethnicity would be considered African-American and Middle Eastern/Lebanese. I cant help but think that as more people begin to look multiracial, race as we know it will become increasingly obsolete as ethnicity continues to influence day-to-day livesas it always has.

Which brings us to the idea of ethnicity. On the surface, this is a much older idea. Ethnicity describes the shared cultural expression and self-identification of a group, typically rooted in historical and geographical origins.

Someone who grew up in Italy but is racially Black might find their own sense of identity is mostly influenced by Italian culture. The fourth-generation descendant of Irish immigrants living in Boston may feel much more affinity to Irish-American culture and identity than to its Old World Irish counterparts.

Ethnicity is therefore both historical and contextually dependent. It is much more present in our lives than race in some ways, because it incorporates ancestry, culture, and the interaction of these things with our daily environment.

The idea of ethnicity, like so many ethnic identities themselves, has also developed over time. In this country, groups of distinct national originsparticularly the Irish and Germansonly began to be seen as separate entities around 50 years after the American Revolution.

Often, the recognition of these groups led to intensified prejudice and agendas that sought to guarantee their exclusion from political life. In the early 20th century, as these ideas progressed, efforts were even launched to help Americanize immigrants (who comprised many different races and ethnic backgrounds) in order to facilitate assimilation.

At the same time, a parallel idea developed in American politics and thought: A multiethnic society has more advantages (and more manpower) than an ethnically homogeneous one. The view that a pluralistic society was more competitive and harmonious than Old World European nations eventually led to the modern commonplace that America is a melting pot. And more to the point, that American identity is flexible enough to accommodate people and identities of non-American origin.

Many of us grew up with this multiculturalist viewpoint in school. But academics have also spent the last century showing how persistent and vital ethnic identities have remained in the so-called melting potnot to mention how easily new hybrids have popped up and established themselves as distinct communities (such as Italian-American, Chicano, Chinese-American, and so on).

Of course, there are limits to the assimilatory spirit of American identity. We all remember how President Obamas race was used to try to exclude him from running for president. That gambit gained ground because many Americans easily believed that a racially Black man might not be ethnically American enough to be presidentdespite Obama having attended our most prestigious schools, already held office, and lived in the U.S. his entire adult life. (In fact, I think its telling that we even believe, somewhat superstitiously, that a president has to be born on American soil to qualify for office. That doesnt exactly mesh with the idea of America, the Great Melting Pot.)

Ethnicity and race therefore exist in parallel to, and sometimes in tension with, one another. Race is a largely external form of identification, which in many ways defies scientific and even social common sense. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is an extremely profound marker of cultural and ancestral identification, but also highly dependent on history and context. It can communicate an enormous amount of information about a person, but it can also change over the course of a single lifetime.

And while race continues to be debunked as a valid form of biological identification or distinction, theres no doubt that its externality will continue to ensure it is used (and potentially abused) to assess the differences between human beings. While on a more personal level, ethnicity will continue to play a deeply vital role in identifying cultural differences in our society (as it always has).

One quote I found really speaks to this tension between race and ethnicity. At a conference about the scientific history of race, a professor who identifies with African, Indigenous, and European origins explained that most Indigenous peoples dont think of themselves as members of an Indigenous or American Indian or Native race:

I can speak for my own people, the Ojibwe . . . we have a long history of viewing our tribal identity, as viewing it in political and kinship frameworks rather than racial or biological constructs.

Professor Deondre Smiles, University of Victoria, Canada

Most of us, consciously or not, would agree with this outlook. We define our ethnicities and our cultural affinities based on where we grow up, where our parents came from, and where weve spent significant portions of our lives up to that point.

Ethnicity, nationality, ancestry, tribe, motherland, my culturethere are so many ways to describe the cultural differences that define our identities and lay the groundwork for human connection through diversity.

As our nation continues to mature in its attitude toward race and ethnicity, we must remember that both are vital to individuals identities. There can be no true authenticity without recognition of the differences between the two and celebration of the role they play in sharing your true self.

This article was adapted and reprinted with permission fromDiversity Explained.

Read this article:

The difference between race and ethnicityand why it matters - Fast Company

Several months ago, in a letter to the editor defending Northern Michigan Universitys decision to remove Luther Wests name from the physical structure now known only as The Science Building, I issued a stern warning to our university community: Remain vigilant as people are continuously attempting to distort history for their own self-interests.

It should come as no surprise, then, to find out that the effort by close friends and family members of the late West to rehabilitate his fractured image continues today.

At the beginning of the current academic year, Mark D. West, who is Luther Wests grandson, wrote a letter to the editor arguing that NMU had unjustly sullied his grandfathers reputation with allegations of racism and the darkest aspects of eugenics. In doing so, he apparently contended that the university had ignored evidence provided by the West family incontrovertibly contradicting the universitys serious allegations that West supported the eugenics movement during the early 1900s.

Taken at face value, however, the evidence provided by the West family only shows two things.

First, when interviewed by Miriam Hilton in 1972 about his experience at Battle Creek College, where he was first employed as an academic, West said the college (prior to its closure in 1938) had been interested in race betterment as a general idea which could potentially come in any form and he emphasized that the college did not embrace scientific racism.

Second, during his first year of teaching at NMU, West modified the description for one of the courses he taught, replacing the term eugenics movement with eugenics reform.

In concluding that their evidence exonerates West from the universitys allegations, the West family conveniently ignores the larger context in which West came to teach at Battle Creek College and NMU, not to mention the actions of the man himself.

For example, as I recounted in some detail in a previous letter to the editor, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who served as president of both Battle Creek Colleges Board of Trustees and the Race Betterment Foundation during the 1920s, publicly espoused racist views over a 20-year period (1881-1901) in two published books Plain Facts for Old and Young and Ladies Guide in Health and Disease: Girlhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood prior to his involvement with Battle Creek College. He also helped organize a series of ostensibly academic conferences on race betterment, where scientific racism flowed freely among its participants.

At the First Race Betterment Conference, for instance, which took place in 1914, one professor proclaimed that the intermarriage of whites and blacks may be bad because the latter purportedly have been developed under the tropics and [therefore] have never undergone social discipline.

Given this disturbing history, when West accepted an academic position at Battle Creek College, an institution largely financed by Kellogg and which served as a vehicle to spread and provide intellectual support for his scientific racism during the 1920s and 30s, West should have known that he was making a conscious decision to work for an institution of high education whose academic mission was inextricably intertwined with scientific racism which in this case, was also seeped in white supremacy.

Once he finally arrived at Battle Creek College, though, West did not shy away from showing his strong support for eugenic principles.

For example, when he attended the Third Race Betterment Conference in 1928, West discussed his support for the creation of a eugenics registry that would place the truly superior stocks on record and advocated for conservative eugenic legislation and a conservative sort of popular [eugenics] education.

West also embraced eugenics outside of his academic life, serving as a chairman for a local committee of the Fitter Families Contest, a competition in which human participants (divided into small, medium and large family classes) were ranked based on the mental, physical and moral health of family members.

When interviewed about his experience more than 40 years later by Miriam Hilton, West had a difficult choice to make. On the one hand, he could try to whitewash Battle Creek Colleges involvement in scientific racism, thereby portraying the college and, by implication, his own time there, in a more favorable light.

On the other hand, he could have been intellectually honest, even if doing so might impugn his reputation, and acknowledge what we all know today: both the Race Betterment Foundation and Battle Creek College were founded for the purpose of providing intellectual support for scientific racism.

And West could have admitted that many of his actions while at Battle Creek College were inappropriate and then expressed regret for his role in supporting scientific racism while there.

Instead of displaying moral and intellectual courage by admitting his human faults, however, West chose the short-sighted path of cowardice.

The West family ignores this vital background when continuing to object to NMUs decision to remove his name from a campus building. Someday I hope that the West family can remember West for who he was a flawed human instead of the perfect person they appear to have constructed in their collective memory today.

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 Editor Removal of Luther West's name is just - North Wind Online

"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you'd say, 'Get that son of a b- off the field right now. Out! He's fired." Donald J. Trump, September 2017.

"The players are like cattle, and the owners are ranchers. And the owners can always get more cattle." Former Dallas Cowboys president Tex Schramm, during the 1987 NFL player's strike.

Since the first years of the 21st Century, David Zirin has been writing, speaking, publishing, and making documentaries about the politics of sports. As the sports editor for The Nation, and through his radio program, podcasts, eye-opening books, and a popular syndicated sports column, The Edge of Sports, Zirin is a people's historian of sport.

Zirin zeroes in on the ongoing legacies of the power, pilfering, and profiteering connecting dots between owners and advertisers, as well as developers, politicians, and the military. Zirin also complicates our understanding of sports and politics with topics ranging from eugenics, race, gender, and gaming, to the health, safety, and everyday lives of athletes and their families. Zirin exposes corporate monopoly sports' graft, greed, and gratuitous violence. He tells stories about athletes' ideas, political perspectives, and awe-inspiring talent.

All of Zirin's books should be made into documentaries. Two, so far, have. Not Just a Game Power, Politics & American Sports, Media Education Foundation, released in 2011, is based on the book A People's History of Sports.

On September 7, 2022, Zirin and director and editor, Jeremy Earp released, Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL. The video of the Trump quote above is the opening scene.

"Digging deep into the history of the league and navigating a stunning excavation of decades of archival footage and news media, Zirin traces how the NFL, under the guise of "sticking to sports," has promoted wars, militarism, and nationalism; glorified reactionary ideas about manhood and gender roles; normalized systemic racism, corporate greed, and crony capitalism; and helped vilify challenges to the dominant order as "unpatriotic" and inappropriately 'political.' The result is a case study not only in the power of big-time sports to disseminate stealth propaganda and reinforce an increasingly authoritarian status quo, but also the power of athletes to challenge this unjust status quo and model a different, more democratic vision of America."

David Phillips writes in Awards Daily, "A blistering documentaryBehind the Shield does an incredible job of showing how the NFL closes ranks to prevent any change that might affect its bottom line by alienating its white-majority, hyper-masculine audience. It knows that violence sells, so for years the NFL ignored and suppressed evidence that the repeated blows to the head sustained by players during games and practices had been linked to CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), a neurodegenerative disease with a long list of debilitating symptoms."

Sports and politics have always been deeply intertwined; Zirin reminds us time and again, with grace and eloquence, fire in the word. The aggressive, deeply theorized, and stubborn willful ignorance, denial, and disavowal about those connections between sports and politics, gaming and power, profit and violence continue to poison the play and joy of sport. Yet, there has always been resistance, refusal, and renewal from athletes and fans that do not agree with the profit-margin politics and the commodification of bodies that dominate not on the NFL.

Here are a few of Zirin's titles for over two decades: What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States; Muhammad Ali Handbook; The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World; and Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy.

In 2021, Zirin published The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World. Not focusing directly on Colin Kaepernick, "Through extensive interviews with high school and college students around the country, the bulk of The Kaepernick Effect is dedicated to understanding how young people were inspired to launch a social movement from below."

He is also co-authored, with former NFL player Michael Bennett, the New York Times bestseller Things That Make White People Uncomfortable.

" Zirin has brought his blend of sports and politics to multiple television programs including ESPN's Outside the Lines, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN, and Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. He has also been on numerous national radio programs from sports radio to National Public Radio's Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, and All Things Considered. Zirin has also been an advisor to filmmakers ranging from Ken Burns to Ang Lee and has appeared in a number of documentaries. He also produced a segment on the forthcoming Showtime documentary about Dr. Harry Edwards. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, New York Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, the Pittsburgh Courier, and many other publications."

As always, in a provocative and insite-ful manner, Zirin continues taking on Goliath.

Behind the Shield [Vimeo]

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Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL - Boing Boing

When I go down the internet rabbit hole of my past, I dont look up exes or the girls who bullied me in eighth grade. I look instead for things that really hurt: the group home I was in during my junior year of high school thats now someones house; the residential campus near the beach that closed in an abuse scandal; and DeJarnette, the state-run childrens institution thats now listed as the most haunted asylum in Virginia.

I lived in DeJarnette as a stop-over when I was 14, relatively new to the foster care system, and waiting for a bed to open up at a long-term facility. A quick search for DeJarnette pulls up scores of ghost hunter-type videos showing the usual fare: brave explorers with flashlights and ghost-tracking equipment entering a looming, abandoned brick building.

The white, two-story columns on the front almost seem to glow in the dark. The rows of windows flanking the entrance are boarded up, giving the facade an eerie appearance. Inside, someone insists they saw a shadow move. Someone else calls out that they felt a cold draft. If youve watched one haunted nighttime urban exploration video, youve seen them all.

The difference is that I walked those halls. I recognize the once-grand arches that frame the doorways. When the adventurers get to the corridor with the bedrooms, and sweep their flashlights along the graffitied walls, I always wonder which one was mine.

The facility, originally known as the DeJarnette State Sanitarium, was founded in 1932 by Dr. Joseph DeJarnette. Hed been in the sanitarium business since 1906, previously managing a colony for people with epilepsy and those he referred to as feebleminded. In the 1920s, he petitioned Virginias state government to pass a law allowing compulsory sterilization. His lobbying worked. He targeted those he called defectives and the feeble-minded.

In addition to people of color, he forcibly sterilized single mothers, alcoholics, those with mental conditions and epilepsy, the poor, and the incarcerated. He was reported to have close ties to Hitler and the Nazis. By 1938, it was said that, at his urging, the United States had sterilized over 27,000 people.

He was ousted from the center in the early 1940s. The building was converted into a childrens mental hospital in 1975 when Virginia took over.

Dr. Joes evil spirit is said to walk the halls. Some say theyve heard childrens voices in the darkness or moans and other noises from the former patients reported to have perished due to medical experiments.

I doubt the teens who once lived there were aware of Dr. DeJarnette by name. I wasnt. However, the buildings ties to eugenics were among the first things new kids learned about the center.

Why did they do it? I asked the girl assigned to show me around on my first day after shed filled me in on the buildings history.

They think your kids are gonna end up like you, she said. If we dont have babies, theyll be less of us and more of them. I wasnt totally sure what more of them meant, but I understood less of us. Less of me.

Despite DeJarnette having an imposing presence and a horrifying history, few memories of my time there match the buildings ghostly reputation.

Once a week, we made sandwiches to sell to the staff. I learned to cook bacon for the BLTs that were on the menu. I was clumsy in the kitchen; I left home at 13 and hadnt cooked much for myself except microwaveable foods and things I could graze on. A DeJarnette counselor showed me how to get the flames on a gas stove exactly right and what to look for when bacon is fully cooked.

Sandwiches were made assembly-line style, with each kid doing a single job dozens of times. The week I was on mayonnaise duty, I learned that you should spread condiments to the edges of the bread. I looked at the slice in my hand. The mayo was an uneven glob. I spread it evenly and proudly fixed all the inadequate slices.

I lived in DeJarnette during the winter. The holidays were approaching. It was my first Christmas in the system. I was learning the ropes, yet I was still hopeful for Christmas presents, even if I wasnt sure where they would come from.

A woman from a local church came to collect our Christmas wish lists.

You can get anything you want, as long as its less than 10 dollars, she told us.

My expectations were perpetually low back then. I fixated on the phrase anything you want. There were endless possibilities at that price point. Id started shoplifting shortly before I left home. I was well aware of the multitudes of things for less than 10 dollars that one can easily slip into a baggy pants pocket. However, I asked for a Def Leppard tape, thinking of the luxury. Tapes were difficult to shoplift. All mine had been left behind. I failed to consider that I no longer had my boom box either.

We celebrated Christmas in the dayroom after lunch. I was thrilled to receive my tape, despite not having a way to listen to it. I knew I would leave DeJarnette as soon as my social worker found a long-term arrangement for me. The tape symbolized hope and the belief that someday, I would have a tape player again.

Photo Courtesy Of TJ Butler

I dont have children. I never wanted them, even when I was younger. However, there is a wide gulf between choosing not to have children and someone taking the choice away from you.

Even as society began to condemn Dr. Joes ideology, he was a vocal proponent of the practice until he died in 1957. The United States was changing, and by the late 70s, eugenics was considered discriminatory and offensive. Despite progressive attitudes, Virginia continued compulsory sterilization until 1979.

Eugenics allowed a stranger to decide what kind of person you were and what side of more of them and less of us you fell on. Most of us will agree this is an offensive, abhorrent concept. We like to believe weve progressed beyond beliefs like that. Yet the fight for reproductive freedom continues today.

October can be a spooky month. A few nights ago, I made a mug of tea and settled onto my couch to watch DeJarnettes latest ghost chaser videos. I didnt mind indulging in the rabbit hole as Halloween is approaching. But Id never go there after dark. Im not afraid of the spirits of lost children, Dr. Joes many victims, and even Dr. Joe himself, who all roam the halls, according to the videos. Instead, Im afraid of stepping on a nail or cutting myself on rusty metal. At my age, Im worried about more practical things.

In the world of social services custody, certain places focus on kids who will age out of the system rather than ever going home. I was one of those kids. I left DeJarnette in the spring when a bed opened up for me at a long-term residential center.

I dont have typical teenage memories of homecoming dances, first dates, sweet 16, or getting a drivers license. I like to think I have something better; I made it through the system and didnt become a statistic. Im thriving today, and thats worth far more than the girl I was back then would have asked for.

Some people believe decades of past experiences and emotions can leave residual energy in a place. Maybe thats partly what the ghost hunters are searching for. Because when you consider the collective traumas and experiences of all those who spent time in that cavernous, state-run institution, there was plenty of haunting going on. It wasnt ghosts, though. It was us.

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I Lived In An Asylum Turned Childrens Institution, Said To Be Haunted By Its Horrifying Past. - HuffPost