New Yorks liberal intelligentsia doubtless gave knowing nods last week when Sen. Mary Landrieu noted, The South hasnt always been the friendliest place for African-Americans. <\/p>\n
After all, coastal progressives love to mock the ignorance and racism of other parts of the country. <\/p>\n
Yet New Yorks intellectuals have their own history of ignorance and racism. Indeed, that history is on view now at a new exhibit at New York University. <\/p>\n
Haunted Files: The Eugenics Records Office recreates an organization once housed in Cold Spring Harbor. Opened in 1910, the offices purpose was nothing less than the improvement of the human race. Its lead scientist (if you can call him that) was Harvard biologist Charles Davenport, assisted by Princeton alum Harry Laughlin. <\/p>\n
With funding from the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and land donated by the Harriman family (whose money came from the railroads), the Eugenics Records Office had the financial backing of the most important and forward thinking folks of the time. <\/p>\n
With file cabinets, typewriters, meticulously edited letters and baskets for sorting correspondence, the office recreated at NYU seems the model of efficiency for the period. <\/p>\n
Efficiency in service of what? Just look at the pedigree charts that try to sort out the race and genetic traits of different members of a family. <\/p>\n
Eugenicists applied Mendels genetic theories about the inheritance of recessive genes in plants to human beings. There are files on dwarfism, sexual perversion and mulattoes. <\/p>\n
Everything is neatly organized from newspaper clippings about mixed-race children to correspondence from field researchers about rates of degeneracy in particular populations. <\/p>\n
More of the banality of evil than one thought could fit in a so few square feet. <\/p>\n
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Follow this link: <\/p>\n
Haunted Files': The dark side of progressivism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Yorks liberal intelligentsia doubtless gave knowing nods last week when Sen. Mary Landrieu noted, The South hasnt always been the friendliest place for African-Americans Continue reading