Monthly Archives: June 2021

Kristan Hawkins, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET July 23, 2020

How a woman who advocated for the selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand.

All across America, video of activists attacking statues plays on a loop while some political leadersvoice their supportfor removing all reminders of people whose personal histories put them in a negative light. In asking for the U.S. Capitol to be cleansed of Confederate statues, House SpeakerNancy Pelosisaid they must go because their efforts were to achieve such a plainly racist end. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo saidon NBC's "Today" showthat removing statues is a healthy expression of priorities and values.

For those identifying historical figures with racist roots who should be removed from public view because of their evil histories, Planned Parenthoods founder, Margaret Sanger, must join that list. In promotingbirth control, she advanced a controversial "Negro Project," wrotein her autobiographyabout speaking to a Ku Klux Klangroup andadvocatedfor a eugenics approach to breeding for the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.

In a1939 letter to Dr. C. J. Gamble, Sanger urged him to get over his reluctance to hire a full time Negro physician as the colored Negroescan get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubt.

Like the abortion lobbytoday, Sanger urged Dr. Gamble to enlist the help of spiritual leaders to justify their deadly work, writing,We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

And that spirit of racism continues today, as more than 300 former and current employees of Planned Parenthood said recently inan open letter, noting a toxic environment.

Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist, white woman. That is a part of history that cannot be changed, they observed, writing that the pattern of systemic racism, pay inequity, and lack of upward mobility for Black staff continues.

Margaret Sanger in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 1934.(Photo: Unknown/AP)

Cultural iconKanye West has made headlines with hisrecent statements on Planned Parenthoodabortion vendors, which he said have"been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devils work.Hes right about the locations of the businesses.

The vast majority of the abortion vendors haveset up shopin minority neighborhoods, which can be seen in thescarce statisticsavailable at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Though they are only13% of the female population, African Americans made up 38% of all abortions tracked in 2016.

Democratic, not dramatic process: United or Divided States of America? 6 ways to think about removing Confederate statues

In the 1970s, when theSupreme Court's Roe V. Wade decision legalizedabortion, polling showed that Blacks were "significantly less likely to favor abortion" than whites. Yet in New York City,more black babies are abortedthan born aliveeach year.And the abortion industry think tank,the Guttmacher Institute,notes that the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.

It would seem that Sangers vision of ending Black lives has come to pass, though to be accurate she also endorsed endingChinese preborn lifeas well.

Among those who advocate for the removal of statutes, signs and traces of racist ancestors there is no balancing of good and bad deeds. It would be hypocritical to say that the racist attitudes andeugenics policy preferencesof Sanger should be ignored because it was a tacticto advancebirth control that some consider a social good, the position of famed feministGloria Steinem.

But consider Sangers own words. In an article titledA Better Race Through Birth Control,she wrote, Given Birth Control, the unfit will voluntarily eliminate their kind.

Birth Control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practised, Sanger wrote.It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society.

Just this week,Planned Parenthood of Greater New Yorkannounced it will remove Sanger's name from itsManhattan abortion vendor location because of her harmful connections to the eugenics movement.

Why stop there?

Sanger is honored in the SmithsoniansNational Portrait Galleryand atMargaret Sanger Squarein Manhattan. And aMargaret Sanger statuestands in the Old South Meeting House in Boston, which ironically enough is on theFreedom Trail commemorating the Revolutionary War. How a woman who advocated for the selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand and a mistake easy to address.

Learning from an ugly past: Use Confederate statues and names to educate

While there are other places celebrating her, these three are a good place to start.They should not be removed through mob violence, but rather through the use of democratic tools, as a Students for Life group at theUniversity of Missouridid in successfully petitioning for posters of Sanger to be removed.

Students for Life of America is launching an SOS: Strike Out Sanger campaign calling on pro-life people nationwide to demand the removal of Sangers statues and symbols, which represent a racist who actively targeted minority communities because she did not value their lives. The founder of Planned Parenthood does not represent our American ideals, and her images and honors should be pulled down to gather dust in historys closet.

Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America. Followher on Twitter: @KristanHawkins, or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life.

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Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenics advocate who shouldn ...

Eugenics the science of improving the race was a powerful influence on the development of Western civilisation in the first half of the twentieth century. And Melbournes elite were among its chief proponents.

In this period all the institutions and practices of modern societies came into being and eugenics played an important role in moulding them.

As the home of the Australian federal government in the early decades of the twentieth century, Melbourne was the ideal place for activists wishing to pursue a national eugenic agenda.

An important leader of this loose alignment of like-thinking middle class academics and doctors was the Professor of Anatomy at Melbourne University from 1903 to 1929, Richard Berry. His influence extended beyond the university, which still has a building bearing his name, to some of the most important members of the citys society.

Although there was a short-lived Eugenics Education Society, until the founding of the Eugenics Society of Victoria in 1936 eugenicists operated primarily as a pressure group within the university, the education department and various government agencies and committees.

Important legislation, in the form of three Mental Deficiency Bills, was presented to the parliament in 1926, 1929 and 1939 by the Premier Stanley Argyle, a friend and colleague of Berry.

The bill aimed to institutionalise and potentially sterilise a significant proportion of the population - those seen as inefficient. Included in the group were slum dwellers, homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics, as well as those with small heads and with low IQs. The Aboriginal population was also seen to fall within this group.

The first two attempts to enact the bills failed not due to any significant opposition but rather because of the unstable political climate and the fall of governments.

The third in 1939 was passed unanimously, but not enacted in the first instance because of the outbreak of war and, later, due to the embarrassment of the Holocaust.

Other state parliaments were inspired to also institute such legislation by Berrys many town hall lectures across the nation.

Important national Royal Commissions in the 1920s also recommended a range of eugenic reforms including measures relating to child endowment, marriage laws and pensions.

Perhaps the culmination of all this activity was the commissioning of a national survey of mental deficiency by the Federal Minister for health, Sir Neville Howse, in 1928.

It was carried out by Berrys colleague, the Chief Inspector for the Insane in Victorian William Ernest Jones. In it, he claimed that the statistics collected showed the incidence of mental deficiency was rising, mainly due to genetics, and was more often found in the working class. He concluded that it required urgent government action along the lines previously championed by Berry. It was tabled before parliament and created a sensation in the press.

Little happened, however, as the government fell and the Great Depression hit the nation. The Director of the Department of Health, John Cumpston, claimed that the dire financial situation destroyed any chance of such a reform.

Another important influence of eugenic thinking was found in the development of post-primary education in Victoria.

The most important educationalists involved in the radical developments in the development of secondary and technical schools in Victoria were either active in eugenic circles or closely associated with Berry.

Perhaps the most influential, the first director of education, Frank Tate, was associated on most important government bodies with Berry and strongly supported his research on head size and, on occasions, introduced his public lectures.

Others, such as the first Director of the Carnegie funded Australian Council for Educational Research, Kenneth Cunningham, as well as one of the most significant early psychologists, Chris McRae, published research claiming to show that working class children were unfit for academic secondary education and the university study that it led to.

McRae replicated in Melbourne suburbs research carried out in a variety of different socio-economic suburbs of London. He subsequently reported in the Victorian Education Gazette (sent out to every state school primary teacher) that those in schools in poorer suburbs will never go to university and should not follow the same curriculum people live in slums because they are mentally deficient and not vice-versa.

As a consequence, in this period the Victorian Education Department set up technical schools in the poorer suburbs of Melbourne with just a few academic high schools.

In comparison, in New South Wales the Director of Education, Peter Board, vigorously opposed such thinking and championed higher education opportunity for all. Many more state school children in New South Wales were given an academic secondary education and went on to university.

Richard Berry returned to England in 1929 butothers took up the mantle, founding the Eugenics Society of Victoria.

Its membership read like a whos who of Melbournes elite including the Chief Executive Officer of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research the precursor to the CSIRO, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, the President of the Royal College of Physicians and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Although the aims of the society included supporting the sterilisation of mental defectives, more and more they were involved in environmental reforms (such as slum clearance) and the birth control movement.

In Britain Richard Berry continued to preach his uncompromising theory of rotten heredity. In 1934 he would argue that to eliminate mental deficiency would require the sterilisation of twenty-five per cent of the population. At the same time he also advocated the kindly euthanasia of the unfit.

But his legacy in Australia continued, with the Eugenics Society of Victoria operating until 1961.

Although Melbourne may wish to forget its dark past, the powerful leaders of the eugenics movement once controlled the city, and their beliefs influenced a generation.

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Eugenics in Australia: The secret of Melbourne's elite

In the early 20th century, eugenics was widely supported among the educated classes all across the West. Eugenicists fancied themselves benefactors of the human race, putting to use the most cutting-edge science to eradicate human suffering, and to improve the human race.

By giving nature a helping hand, carefully encouraging the reproduction of the fittest members of the human race, and discouraging the reproduction of the unfit, eugenicists believed they could rapidly create a race of strong, healthy, and super-intelligent human beings. No longer would the state and society be burdened with moral degenerates (the memorable term used by eugenicist Margaret Sanger), the mentally disabled, and those prone to costly and painful diseases.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was an enthusiastic proponent of eugenics. She openly advocated the forcible sterilization of the unfit, and the involuntary collection of such people into internment camps, where they would spend their entire lives in forced labor. She claimed that these methods were necessary, for the sake of peace. In various Western countries, including the United States, some of these recommendations were carried out. In the U.S. tens of thousands of people deemed unfit were forcibly sterilized.

Eugenics received a huge public relations blow, however, when Hitler took its principles further than most were willing to go, killing millions of Jews, mentally handicapped, gypsies, homosexuals, and other unwanted individuals, in the name of purifying the race. After Hitlers atrocities were exposed, the less brutal, but still profoundly inhumane experiments in eugenics being carried out by other Western nations fell out of favor.

Nowadays, however, people often speak of eugenics as a thing of the past a failed experiment.

This is wrong. Not only has eugenics not failed, but it is also a more potent force than ever before. The explosion in popularity of assisted reproduction techniques means that every day, parents all around the world choose what kind of baby they would like to have. While in some cases this is restricted only to a choice between a boy and a girl, some IVF clinics are offering to test embryos for such things as intelligence, susceptibility to certain diseases, eye color, etc. Those embryos human beings that do not meet the chosen criteria are unceremoniously discarded as waste, i.e. destroyed, murdered. They are treated as commodities, products, and judged to be unequal in dignity to their parents.

The same utilitarian, commercial, and eugenic treatment of human reproduction is found in clinics that offer artificial insemination. Women or couples who choose to become pregnant in this way, must first browse catalogues of sperm donors, selecting donors for desirable characteristics such as artistic ability, IQ, physical build, looks, etc.

These forms of eugenics are dressed up in the respectability of white lab coats, and presented in the language of modern marketing and choice. However, the same mentality that motivated Margaret Sanger i.e. the reduction of the value of human beings to certain qualities they possess is present. And in the case of IVF, the end result is often the same: i.e. a dead human being.

One thinker Garland-Thomson refers to this modern form of eugenics as velvet eugenics. As the author of a recent in-depth article on the problem in The Atlantic summarizes, Like the Velvet Revolution from which she takes the term, its accomplished without overt violence [Note: I disagree with her here. True, the violence is not overt, in the sense that it is hidden in IVF and abortion clinics; but modern eugenics is deeply violent]. But it also takes on another connotation as human reproduction becomes more and more subject to consumer choice: velvet, as in quality, high-caliber, premium-tier. Wouldnt you want only the best for your babyone youre already spending tens of thousands of dollars on IVF to conceive?

It turns people into products, says Garland-Thomson.

However, one particularly brutal form of eugenics is the practice of testing unborn children for various diseases, and then, should they test positive, aborting them, often quite late in the pregnancy. While this is always a horrific evil, there is something viscerally jarring about the degree to which this has been perpetrated on people with Down syndrome.

While Down syndrome unquestionably comes with many detrimental health problems, many people with Downs also live long, productive, and happy lives. In fact, an overwhelming majority of people with Downs describe themselves as happy far more than those without Downs. And yet, in many countries around the world, Down syndrome is practically going extinct. Some medical experts are hailing this as some kind of a medical triumph. This is a farce. If the extinction of a disease by killing everyone with that disease is a triumph, we could achieve the miracle of eradicating all disease in a matter of days. We dont, because killing a person with a disease is not a solution to that disease.

One country that has attracted a lot of attention on this issue is Denmark, in which only a tiny handful of people with Down syndrome are born every year. Many of these are born only because in utero testing failed to detect the disease, or because the parents werent deemed at risk and didnt bother getting the testing in the first place. Only rarely do the parents of a child diagnosed with Downs choose to give birth to that child.

The article in The Atlantic mentioned above provides a fascinating in-depth look into the moral quagmire of this issue. While the publication and the author are clearly pro-choice, nevertheless, the article seriously wrestles with the issue, and provides some fascinating insights and conclusions. I urge you to read it, if you have the time.

The author calls Down syndrome the canary in the coal mine for selective reproduction. As she writes: Recent advances in genetics provoke anxieties about a future where parents choose what kind of child to have, or not have. But that hypothetical future is already here. Its been here for an entire generation.

Testing for Downs is relatively accurate, which means that a large percentage of children with Downs are detected before birth. In many Western countries, the default position is to abort that child, basing the decision on a quality of life definition and determining the childs life unworthy of living.

The irony, however, is that we currently live in something of a golden age for people with Downs. Treatment options are better than they ever have been. People with Downs live longer than they ever have. Most persons with Downs will learn to read and write, and many of them will work paying jobs.

The author of the article rightly questions why, in light of this, abortion has become the default position, and whether there may be some other way we should be looking at the issue.

One theme that emerges strongly in the article is the degree to which fear plays a part in the decision to abort. However, as the author notes, this fear often simply doesnt match the reality of what life with a child with Downs is like. That is, when couples receive a diagnosis of Downs, their imagination often immediately leaps to the worst-case scenario. The decision to abort, to end the life of their child, is made based upon this worst-case.

As the sister of one man with Downs who was interviewed in the article notes, If you handed any expecting parent a whole list of everything their child could possibly encounter during their entire life spanillnesses and stuff like thatthen anyone would be scared. Her mother agrees, adding, Nobody would have a baby.

One researcher in the U.S., David Wasserman, a critic of eugenic selective abortion, has made the excellent point that (in the words of The Atlantic author) prenatal testing has the effect of reducing an unborn child to a single aspectDown syndrome, for exampleand making parents judge the childs life on that alone.

This is the dark side of our societys pursuit of perfection, and perfect control.

Modern science comes to us wrapped in a mythology the mythology of perfect control. This mythology promises us that if we just use the scientific method the right way, we can eradicate all pain and uncertainty in our lives. This promise in turn leads us to have certain expectations. We expect easy, predictable lives. And when science fails to deliver on its promises as it inevitably will our whole world is shattered.

Often, we respond by desperately seeking to wrest control back. For parents with an unborn child with Downs, this often means that they will be tempted (and often strongly encouraged by doctors and family) to erase the problem, instead of welcoming life, accepting the challenge to love, and experiencing the learning and personal growth that always come from embracing lifes difficulty.

Every child should be welcomed and loved. To welcome a child into the world requires a leap of faith. It is a leap that should come with no conditions.

As the Bible tells us, every child is created in the image and likeness of God. No characteristic can alter that no disease, no handicap, not even any sin or crime, can efface that dignity. Humans are not beasts. It is acceptable to select and breed animals for certain characteristics, since humans have authority to use animals for certain, specific purposes. But humans can never be reduced in this way to something-to-be-used. To do so is to do incomparable violence to their immeasurable value, which is not found in their usefulness, but in their being.

The author of The Atlantic article, while maintaining loyalty to the pro-choice worldview, does a decent job of highlighting the beauty and humanity of those with Downs, and contrasting it with the fear and rejection that meet children diagnosed with Downs.

The mother of one family featured in the article runs a charity intended to provide couples with accurate information about Downs. She herself has a grown son with Downs.

In the article, she describes one case where someone sent her a link to a documentary with the heartless title, Dd Over Downs (Death to Down Syndrome). Her son, she said, was peering over her shoulder when she opened the link. When he read the title, his face crumpled. He curled into the corner and refused to look at us. He had understood, obviously, and the distress was plain on his face.

The author concludes, The decisions parents make after prenatal testing are private and individual ones. But when the decisions so overwhelmingly swing one wayto abortit does seem to reflect something more: an entire societys judgment about the lives of people with Down syndrome. Thats what I saw reflected in Karl Emils face.

As a society, we must do better than this.

Every life is precious, without exception. No life should ever be viewed as unworthy or unwelcomed.

We once believed that we destroyed the beast of eugenics on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. But we hadnt killed it; instead, we simply thrust it underground, and then allowed it to creep back into our hospitals, laboratories, and universities. To eradicate eugenics, we must drive a knife into the very heart of its poisonous philosophy. That means that we must reject the core premise of the culture of death that the worth of human beings can be measured by what they do, or some characteristic they have, instead of what they are. Instead of expanding our sense of control, we must expand our hearts. We must help parents of children diagnosed with Downs, and other diseases, to reject fear, and live in hope, the hope that comes of unconditional love.

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Modern-Day Eugenics: Who Lives and Who Dies? | Human Life ...

In a post-Dobbs world, pre-viability abortion might be even more restrictedor not exist at all. So-called eugenic prohibitions will be the first past the constitutional post.

The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, a case that will decide whether restrictions that states place on pre-viability abortions are constitutional. Much commentary has focused on the real possibility the court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Less attention has been paid to another, potentially more likely outcome: The court could uphold Roeand preserve constitutional protection for abortionbut create exceptions for pre-viability bans. Indeed, thats similar to what happened in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, a decision in which the court preserved constitutional abortion rights, yet rejected Roes trimester framework and weakened protections for those rights.

Over the last year, states have enacted numerous pre-viability restrictions: Texas just passed a law banning abortions at six weeks, to take one example. A different law that applies before viability has received less press, but is increasingly popular with anti-abortion legislators. Twenty states have adopted laws that prohibit abortions performed because of the fetuss sex, race or disability. In a post-Dobbs world, where some pre-viability abortion bans are permissible, these so-called eugenic prohibitions will be the first past the constitutional post.

Federal appellate courts are split on the constitutionality of reason-based bans after the Sixth Circuit upheld Ohios law prohibition on abortion because of a Down syndrome diagnosis. Reason-based bans apply throughout pregnancy, but Ohios law responds specifically to innovations in early prenatal genetic testing. With a non-invasive prenatal test, patients can detect a limited number of conditions, including Down syndrome, with a blood test administered during the first trimester of pregnancy.

The new conservative majority Supreme Court is poised to decide the question of whether a state can vet someones reason to end a pregnancy.In a 2019 concurring opinion, Justice Thomas, writing about a race-based ban, opined that to uphold such a law would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement. Essentially, Justice Thomas argued that anti-abortion laws are on the side of equality and justice. And an increasing segment of the public appears to agree. Reason-based bans like Ohios make sense to people as the most recent Gallup poll reports. Almost 50 percent of people responded that abortions because of a Down syndrome diagnosis should be illegal.

That the Supreme Court might allow states to make criminals out of health professionals and possibly patients who choose to end a pre-viability pregnancy is startling. But what is also troubling is how popular opinion favors substituting the states judgment for that of the pregnant person, at least in certain circumstances.Moreover, the polls question, as well as public discourse, doesnt capture the complexity of the issues individuals face when their fetus is diagnosed with a genetic anomaly or another condition. Just asking whether abortion should be legal or illegal ignores how contextwhat support or needs does a pregnant person have or the stage of pregnancyshapes abortion decisions.

Whether or not people feel equipped to raise and the meet the needs of children is something only they can discern. But in the case of prenatal diagnosis and abortion, new technology and states abortion animus are on a collision course. On the one hand, pregnant people are encouraged to learn as much about their pregnancies as early as possible. On the other, states are legislating to bar what people do with that information.

Perhaps more saliently, criminalizing choice does not create the conditions for racial, gender and disability equality. And policing pregnant peoples decisions does not result in deeper inclusivity or greater acceptance of and support for people with Down syndrome, for instance. To the contrary, reason-based bans do nothing to assist potential parents and ignore the many considerations that drive peoples decisions to raise a child.

Instead, these laws incrementally advance an agenda of ending legal abortion for all reasons. Equating decisions to terminate a pregnancy with the state-sponsored eugenics gives cold comfort to anyone who receives a diagnosis of fetal impairment and further stigmatizes their choices. And make no mistake, there will be more reason-based bans: not being able to afford another child or the interruption of other life plans will be next on the chopping block, denounced as frivolous in comparison to an alleged state interest in protecting potential life or the health of the pregnant person.

Drawing the line for abortion restrictions at viability always has been a constitutional compromise; one that protected early abortion in exchange for recognizing that states could limit patients decision-making at some point in a pregnancy. Post-Dobbs, pre-viability abortion might be even more restrictedor not exist at all. In either scenario, nationwide rights to abortion could be established by federal law.

One such proposal is the Womens Health Protection Act, which soon will be introduced in Congress. The legislation would preempt state laws that ban abortion before viability and prohibit reason-based bans specifically. We may not be able to count on the Supreme Court to protect abortion rights. But we should demand laws more in step with peoples lived realities from our legislators.

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What the Public Gets Wrong About "Reason-Based" Abortion Bans - Ms. Magazine

Audrey Clare Farley's new book "The Unfit Heiress" explores eugenics, the history of women's ... [+] reproductive rights, and high-society scandal.

There are bad mothers, and then there is Maryon Cooper Hewitt.

In Audrey Clare Farleys new book, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt, the author tells the story of a young heiress who was sterilized without her knowledge. The culprit? Her own mother, Maryon.

Hewitts tale shows a snapshot of America in the early 1900s, when women began to challenge old standards of Victorian propriety. It also follows the development and popularization of eugenics, a movement that encouraged sterilization of certain women to stop them from passing on their defects to others.

Farley, a historian who specializes in early 20th-century culture, religion and science, actually found her topic when she was doing research unrelated to work.

My daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I was researching about the history of insulin. I read a few books that mentioned one of the first people to receive insulin, Elizabeth Hughes, whose father was a statesman, so he got to cut the line to get insulin, says Farley.

She discovered that Hughes father supported selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits in the hopes of getting rid of disabilities and disease and elevating white supremacy. Farley wondered how someone whose daughter had a disease could support a movement to get rid of people with disabilities. She then took a deep dive into the world of eugenics, where she discovered Hewitt.

Farley pitched a story on Hewitt to Narrativelys Hidden History section. It became an instant hit, racking up more than 100,000 views within hours of publishing and becoming one of the sites most popular articles of 2019 despite being published halfway through the year.

Several agents reached out to Farley about turning the article into a book, and she signed with one and sold the book to a publisher just a few months later.

I think the book has two things going for it. No. 1 is what I call the Jerry Springer factorhere are these two wealthy women both accusing the other one of being oversexed. And two, it also has an intellectual component, which is exploring this hidden history of eugenics that few people know about, Farley says.

In addition to Unfit Heiress, here are 11 other must-read nonfiction books out right now.

Abdurraqib, known for his playful, intelligent sense of humor on Twitter, highlights amazing performances that shed light on societal constructions and moments of sheer joy his book about Black culture in America. Writing about joy is challenging; falling back on cliche is a constant temptation that Abdurraqib avoids in this insightful tome.

How do you form an identity? The answer to that question is never easy, but when you grow up in an infamous cult (and are a lesbian who later joins the armed forces), it is perhaps even harder. Hough explores the formation of her identity in a series of essays touching on her past and future.

In 1927, the Barbizon opened in New York City. The women-only hotel hosted many of the era's most luminous talents over the years, including Sylvia Plath (who included a fictionalized account of the hotel in The Bell Jar), Joan Didion, Joan Crawford and more. Brens book serves as a portrait of ambitious and motivated women and a reminder of how much things have changed since they needed a hotel of owns own.

Who shaped the leaders who shaped large parts of the civil rights movement? Tubbs tells the often-overlooked stories of the mothers of three influential leaders, adding a fantastic resource to the still-distressingly thin canon of Black motherhood reflections and showing her incredible research chops.

Did you know that the first woman admitted to an American medical school was let in only because the male students who voted on accepting her did so as a joke? Campbell covers the many difficult aspects of becoming a doctor in a male-dominated world, including how the women's families supported (or didn't support) them.

Brina writes that she "grew up not knowing my mother or myself," referring to the 30 years she spent between moving from Okinawa to the United States and asking her mother about her history. As an adult, Brina revisited her memories of a brief childhood in Okinawa, spoke to her mom about her memories, and traced the critical history of Okinawa after World War II.

Utter candor has become Febos' trademark in books such as Whip Smart and Abandon Me, and she uses the same honest storytelling in Girlhood, in which she deconstructs the sexism associated with coming of age. As a girl whose body developed early, Febos has a unique perspective on the male gaze and voices the critical need to set her own boundaries, which many girls can relate to.

Though this book was written before so much changed about our work relationship to technology during the pandemic, the focus is perhaps even more relevant. Newport creates a case for reimagining work to eliminate the communication overloads that seem (but are they?) unavoidable.

This memoir is like nothing written before. It melds memoir and imagination into an intensive look at how America treats little queer and fat and feminine and neurodivergent child of color and how different it is from how white kids are treated. Gonsalez works through his brothers death as well by exploring the fate of all the Pedros, real and imaginary, who inhabit our world.

The book, built off a viral essay of the same name in The New Yorker, explores Zauner's struggle with her Korean American identity in the face of her mother's terminal cancer diagnosis. She has a raw and vibrant voice that makes her story pulse.

Owusu describes grief as "slow internal bleeding," and her honest, unflinching memoir delivers many such perfect observations. From the death of her father at 13 to her mother's refusal to take in Owusu and her sister afterward, the author navigates hardships and searches for identity, eventually pulling herself back together following a breakdown that threatens to unmoor her.

Continue reading here:

12 Must-Read Nonfiction Books Out Right Now - Forbes

YORK DISPATCH EDITORIAL BOARD Published 1:00 a.m. ET June 9, 2021

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell(Photo: Luis M. Alvarez, AP)

The National Football League has finally seen the light.

Its just too bad that it took an avalanche of bad publicity for Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league to finally reverse course on race-norming.

For those who missed it, the NFL has promised to end the controversial practice, which assumed Black players started out with a lower level of cognitive function. That assumption made it harder for Black NFL retirees to prove that they qualified for payouts in the 2017 $1 billion-plus concussion settlement.

The NFL only made the decision after a pair of Black players filed a civil rights lawsuit over the practice, medical experts raised concerns and a group of NFL families last month dropped 50,000 petitions at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia where the lawsuit had been thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement.

Race-norming sounds like something from the long-disgraced eugenics movement that aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior, while promoting those judged to be superior.

The NFL said in a statement that no actual discrimination took place in the administration of the settlement and that the race-norming practice was never mandatory, but left to the discretion of doctors taking part in the settlement program.

That sounds very much like double talk.

How the NFL couldve considered the use of race-norming under any circumstances in a league that is 74% Black is almost mind boggling.

Harry Edwards(Photo: Josie Lepe, AP)

Edwards weighs in: Harry Edwards, a noted sociologist and a longtime staff consultant for the San Francisco 49ers, has spent 50 years studying the intersection of sports and society.

He rightly called the race-norming practice by the NFL ridiculous, asinine and almost comedic. He added that its morally unconscionable, politically unsustainable and legally indefensible.

Thats quite a condemnation from a man who has long ties to the NFL.

Checkered history: Of course, the NFLs history with race relations is checkered at best.

Heres just a recent example.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick led the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl, but still cant even get a tryout for an NFL job. Tim Tebow, meanwhile, was a first-round bust, but is still getting an NFL opportunity with the Jacksonville Jaguars at age 33 despite not playing in the league for more than six years.

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Kaepernick is Black and well known for social activism, especially his decision to kneel for the national anthem. Tebow is white and a beloved figure in Florida, where he starred for the Florida Gators.

History of foot-dragging: Then theres the NFLs foot-dragging when it came to the concussion issue in the first place.

The NFL spent years denying any link between head injuries suffered while playing football with long-term brain disorders.

Finally, in the 2017 concussion settlement, the league caved in to the obvious football is a violent, collision sport that will lead to concussions, which can leave permanent brain damage.

The NFL likes to bill itself as an organization that is ahead of the curve on the issue of social justice. But when given the opportunity to act on those supposed beliefs, the league has repeatedly failed to act in an appropriate and timely manner.

At least the NFL has finally come to the realization that race-norming has no place in the concussion settlement.

Its just unfortunate that it took the league so long to see the light.

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EDITORIAL: NFL, at last, comes to realization that 'race-norming' should be discontinued - York Dispatch