Category Archives: Eugenics

Mary Rose Somarriba, Opinion contributor Published 7:01 a.m. ET May 13, 2021 | Updated 5:51 p.m. ET May 13, 2021

A magical moment caught on camera during a 4D ultrasound. A tiny fetus waves to his mommy and daddy.

I wondered how many vulnerable moms this doctor had encouraged to remove their supposedly imperfect babies from the gene pool.

Recently, the head of Planned Parenthoodacknowledgedthe racist and eugenic beliefs of its founder, Margaret Sanger, and statedthat the organization is working to undo the damage these views have caused. I applaud Alexis McGill Johnson for openly discussing the ugly origins of Planned Parenthood, but completely disagree that the organization is capable of stopping what Sanger started. Eugenic motives are still alive and well in the abortion- and contraceptive-providing business, of which Planned Parenthood is a leader.

In March, I was lying on an exam table in a local hospital for a 20-week ultrasound, after which an attending doctor was brought in to look over the imaging and answer any questions I had. While the ultrasound tech said my babys physiological specs looked great, the doctor redirected the conversation to my childs possible risk of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), whichcauses damage primarily to the lungs and digestive system.

I am a CF carrier,and we havent tested if my husband is or not, so, the doctor encouraged me to get him tested so we could have a risk percentage for this child.

I told her I dont care to do so; I already have three healthy children with this man, CF risk or not. But she continued to push the issue. Would knowing the chance of CF for my child give us a head start in providing care for her? I asked. No, she said. My ultrasound shows no Down Syndrome risk, but CF cant be seen by ultrasound, she stressed. Id need my husband to be tested to have an estimate.

Children with special needs are a gift: I was pressured to abort my children. For my first baby, I gave in.

I repeatedly tried to wrap up the conversation;she repeatedly tried to focus on how there could be something wrong with my baby.Neither of us used the word "abortion,"but it was obvious she was trying to steer our conversation into a discussion about it. I felt like she was trying to convince me to care about something, a CF diagnosis, thatI didnt care about like she was trying to convince me to un-want my pregnancy.

The entire exchange had less to do with my 20-week-gestated babys development and more about genetic testing data that could render my child defective and disposable in her eyes.

The doctor seemed unable to see my childs humanity. I wondered how many vulnerable moms she had encouraged to remove their supposedly imperfect children from the gene pool. Detectable in utero or not, hardships are a part of life, I thought, and I dont believe they make life not worth living.

Mary Rose Somarriba in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 2017.(Photo: Jonathan Koslen)

I recently learned that my state of Ohio has a law prohibiting doctors from performing abortions if the woman seeking it has informed the doctor her motivation is fear the child has Down Syndrome. In the United States, about 67% of children who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome after genetic screening are aborted. In other countries it is much higher; 90% in the United Kingdom; 95% in Denmark; nearly 100% in Iceland.

Her death was a gift of mercy: I had a later abortion because I couldn't give my baby girl both life and peace

A panel of judges suspended the Ohio law from enforcement in 2019, but last month, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, allowing the law to be enforced once again.Laws like this aim to curb abortions sought for eugenic purposes i.e. for reasons of discrimination due to race, sex, or disability. In my case, the concern for my childs possible disability wasnt coming from me, but from the doctor pushing the CF fear on me.

Ive come to see abortion and eugenic thinking as quite intertwined, and what makes me completely disbelieve that Planned Parenthood cares is that we dont see them lobbying to expose or stop pressured abortions, or notifyingthe state when underage girls are raped and made pregnant by adult men.Despite purporting to exist for womens free choice, they make money from womens abortions, so they are not without incentive. According to the organization's recently released 2019-2020 annual report,although the number of patients seen remained unchanged from the year before,the number of abortions performed actually increased to nearly 355,000.

FILE- In this June 4, 2019, file photo, a Planned Parenthood clinic is photographed in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)(Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP)

Women who have had abortions can experience disenfranchised grief. Many abortion activists assume any question or limit on abortion is motivated by a desire to hold women back; it cant possibly be due to genuine care for the child. Some abortion activists fear any question or limit on abortion, even in cases of eugenics, will be the beginning of the end for their cause. Maybe it will be. Maybe seeing the fetus in utero as someone worth protecting from discrimination based on race, sex, or disability is the beginning of seeing them as having human rights.

An ultrasound photo in January 2018.(Photo: Courtesy Rocio Zuniga)

We can discuss this issue as a culture, but we cannot pretend Planned Parenthood, the United States largest abortion provider, is an impartial party in this conversation.

Former Planned Parenthood employee: Planned Parenthood cares about abortion above all, even patients' health

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black preborn babies were most likely to be abortedof all races in 2018.In some areas of New York City, Black children are more likely to be aborted than born alive.A 2012 study by Protecting Black Life found that79% of Planned Parenthoods surgical abortion facilities are within walking distance of minority neighborhoods. And the International Planned Parenthood Federation continues to push for abortion and contraceptionoverseas.

In multiple African countries, women havebeen implanted with contraceptive devices even after they were discontinued in the United States due to safety concerns, despite some of those women having less access to health care when they experience side effects and complications.According to Nigerian biomedical scientist and author Obianuju Ekeocha,aggressive contraceptive programs, far from helping African women, "will only make them sterile at the cheapest rate possible."

So consider me unconvinced that Planned Parenthood can undo its founders motives to reduce the number of unfit people born into the world. Abortion providers have a habit of seeing some lives as more worthy than others its ugly, I know but its kind of their thing.

Mary Rose Somarriba is editor of Natural Womanhood andassociate editor of Verily Magazine. She completed a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship on the connections between pornography and sex trafficking.Find her at maryrosesomarriba.com.

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I was pressured for wanting my at-risk baby. Abortion and eugenics can't be separated. - USA TODAY

The Kelly Adirondack Center at Union College has been holding a series of virtual conversations on social justice issues in the Adirondack Park. It culminated Thursday with a discussion on The Color of COVID in the Park: an assessment of vaccine hesitancy among residents of color in the region.

The Kelly Adirondack Center at Union College is renowned for its Adirondack Research Center, which includes historical and scientific data on the Park.

Adirondack Diversity Initiative Director Dr. Nicole Hylton Patterson serves on the New York state Equity Vaccine Task Force and the North Country Health Equity Task Force. She has taught courses on experimentation and exploitation of People of Color and finds current vaccine hesitancy can be traced back to historical medical experimentation and eugenics.

Some significant moments in history were medical exploitation on Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities and well as low income people were very very prevalent and extreme," Hylton Patterson said. "And this has led to and is a large basis for vaccine hesitancy within these communities. All of those ideas about the human body have come out of the pseudoscience of phrenology, eugenics and those ideas become systemic racism when theyre incorporated and turned into policies and laws. And these policies and laws often impact who gets the vaccine, where vaccine is distributed, how vaccine access is communicated etc. And that is what the Health Equity Task Force in the North Country is here to deal with.

Sierra Club past president Aaron Mair notes that the early environmental movement which led to the protection of the Adirondacks is intertwined with the eugenics movement and still impacts how some populations approach the COVID vaccine.

A lot of the modern eugenics movement is anchored in with the naturalist field," Mair said. "We saw one of the consequences when denoting and classifying people, flora and fauna in terms of superior and inferior species. So it is interesting that something as important as the naturalist field and natural movement and the environmental movement in its early 19th and early 20th century antecedents was a core pillar in what would become the classification the pseudoscientific classification of race and racial purity which has led and still drives a lot of the conversations today.

Another factor leading to hesitancy is the political diversity across the region. Dr. Hylton Patterson says voting patterns appear to correlate with unwillingness to get the vaccine.

Theres no solid data but if youre looking anecdotally or at rhetoric I believe it would be fair to say that those on the far right politically are less willing to take the vaccine," said Hylton Patterson.

Dr. Hylton Patterson is working with seven vaccine hubs and the North Country Vaccine Equity Task Force. The goal include ensuring widespread equity, developing a regional plan, and creating a task force to pay special attention to BIPOC and low-income residents of the region. Dr. Patterson outlined their outreach to vulnerable populations, also including the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, Amish, and migrant farmworkers.

My job is to focus on these communities," Hylton Patterson said. "To build relationships. To identify gatekeepers who can then work with the different vaccine hubs to make sure that our approaches are culturally sensitive and are effective at reaching the North Country. Because we know that the North Countrys population is largely rural, largely white, large pockets of poverty, dense poverty. So we have lots of challenges.

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Kelly Adirondack Center Discussion Focuses On Reasons For BIPOC Vaccine Hesitancy In The Adirondacks - WAMC

By George Magakis

Rick Santorum said that there was nothing here to speak of when Europeans arrived on the continent. He said that we birthed a nation, meaning white people, preferably English.

When Europeans arrived on the continent for the first time in the 15th Century, there were 60 million indigenous peoples with rich cultures that have influenced American culture. At the same time, there were 55 million people in Europe. Where did all of these 60 million go? Genocide over the centuries by white colonists & the people who birthed a nation.

Santorums statements are part of the rights attempts to present a white sanitized version of American history. In the 1960s, William F. Buckley in his debate with James Baldwin about racism argued that it was necessary to lie about American history and focus on its exceptionalism and ideals. Nothing would be gained from looking at the ugliness in American history. This was needed to be done for future generations, for the kids. White kids that is.

As a result, myth making has been integral on the right. The genocide of indigenous peoples is downplayed. Andrew Jacksons expulsion of indigenous peoples from the eastern states in the 1830s is hardly ever mentioned. Commentators like Bill OReilly have argued that slaves were treated well. Others on the right claim that the Civil War was not about slavery, but attacks on southern culture by an industrialized north.

White violence against blacks by the KKK & other southerners, the epidemic of lynching , false imprisonment of Back people, segregation, and Jim Crow laws that existed into the late 20th Century are glossed over on the right. Lindsey Graham has argued that there is no systemic racism in America, because we elected a Black president. He fails to mention that Obama never got a majority of the white votes. No wonder Republicans want to suppress minority votes.

Draconian immigration laws that forbade Chinese from coming here and becoming citizens is swept under the rug even though the ones that were allowed here built the railroads. This country was built on the sweat and labor of slaves and imported labor. Cotton was king in the first half of the 19th Century. Slaves were worked 12-14 hours a day, often beaten, families were broken up, and wives and daughters of slaves were casually raped by white masters.

Slaves were treated as units of labor and mortgaged to buy more slaves. Northerners and Europeans were heavily invested in cotton industry, which was dominant at the time. In the early 20th Century, the eugenics movement became popular and many undesirables were sterilized. And there were the infamous medical experiments on Black people in Tuskegee in 1931.

During WWII, Japanese Americans were interned during the war & their property often stolen by white people. As a result of all this whitewashing of history, many white people have no understanding of what Black Lives Matter is really about for example.

Santorum and others of his ilk want to sweep this ugly history under the rug and talk about American greatness & exceptionalism. The audience that Santorum speaks to do not know much about American history, have little interest in delving deeper, and applaud people like Santorum, because he makes them feel good about themselves in living a lie.

George Magakis Jr. writes from Norristown, Pa.

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Rick Santorum furthers the rights lies about American history | Opinion - pennlive.com

Science is an ever-refining process using long-standing procedures to find truth.

Scientism is a philosophical belief used by macro evolutionists, materialists and atheists (interchangeable terms) to impose the concept that science and belief in an intelligent designer are separated by a chasm impossible to bridge.

Since the later 1800s and the 20th century, the new atheist scientists of all disciplines have tried to replace the belief of most of the earlier scientific revolution geniuses in the Judeo-Christian God hypothesis with a system despising a designing intelligence. They demand that all questions must and can only be answered by natural means (American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feb. 16, 2006).

Science is now becoming a set of politicized, dogmatic principles that cannot be questioned or evaluated, i.e. human-caused climate change, macro evolution and COVID-19. They claim ownership of science. But is it so?

Examples of first publication: Sir Isaac Newton described gravity in his Principia Mathematica (1686) or the photo Earthrise from Apollo 8 on Dec. 24, 1968, and Blue Marble from Apollo 17 on Dec. 7, 1972.

Job 26:7 describes the Earth rotating and orbiting the sun, suspended by nothing (gravity), 2,300 years before Newton and 2,800 years before the Apollos.

The first secular writing of the water cycle of the Earth was by Bernard Palissy in 1580. Job 36:27, 37:11, and Ecclesiastes 1:7 describe water molecules as vapor being uplifted by air currents and then condensing as rain, and returning to the sea. The water cycle is still incompletely understood.

In the 1920s, a Japanese meteorologist, Wasaburo Oishi, using special balloons, detected the jet stream around Mount Fuji.

Ecclesiastes 1:4 The wind whirleth about continually.

Ecclesiastes 11: 5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mothers womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.

Modern atmospheric physics research observed that energy (light) from the sun controls the wind systems of the Earth.

Astrophysicists determined that stars of the Constellation Pleiades (the Seven Sisters), are gravitationally bound together, while the stars of Orion are drifting apart.

An engineering discovery is that electrical currents can transmit radio and TV signals at lightning speed.

Job 38:35 knew that concept.

In the 12th century, the philosopher Moses Maimonides deduced from Genesis that 10 dimensions exist. This has been corroborated by modern physicists.

A warfare argument by materialists was developed in the late 19th century period of historical revisionism. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew D. White (1896) appeared after Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species in 1859.

For years, the subtitle On the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, has been omitted from Darwins title.

This concept of favored races was the basis of the eugenics movement to rid humanity of undesirables and those deemed unfit to live. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was an eugenics movement pioneer.

In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision upheld a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people to promote the health of the patient and the welfare of society. Worldwide forced sterilizations of the unfit and the planned extermination of races in the 1930s and 1940s occurred.

With the continuing widespread acceptance of no accountability for our free will actions to someone greater than us, that planned result happened. Romans 2:11, Mark 12:31, John 13:34, and others speak of loving others above yourself, with everyone being favored in Jesus teachings.

Is it realistic to believe that the 3.6 billion letter-long (3.6 giga-basepairs) human DNA code and the variations of that code in plants and animals repeatedly occurred by chance? If Darwinists wish to believe life exists without initial design, they must believe information originally created itself. The most advanced computer codes, which require a human intelligence to design, are as a baby crawling compared to the DNA code.

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that ... the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, 1981.

Is it reasonable that the following occurred by chance: The 574 amino acid building blocks of the hemoglobin molecule designed to carry oxygen, sequenced and folded in precise order? The random occurrence of the 50-plus fine-tuning requirements from the cosmological to the sub-atomic? The thousands of proteins in the plant and animal kingdoms? Digitized information and error-correcting properties of DNA?

These are only partial, synchronous requirements for life. To believe in such repeated, successful randomness is a leap of faith in chance, and is a new faith religion.

The two biggest questions at the intersection of science and faith are the origin of the universe and the origin of life. Macro evolutionists believe in the impossible mathematical odds of all of the above happening by chance. Even given 13.8 billion years of the universe, there is not enough time. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins states: The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

I observe the same properties and conclude they are exactly what to expect of a transcendent intelligence that has acted periodically and purposefully, with new information. I probably cant convince them, but can leave them with no excuse.

Suggested sources for information are: The Bible, The Language of God, Francis S. Collins, director, Human Genome Project; Return of the God Hypothesis and Signature in the Cell, Stephen C. Meyer; The Cost, Russell Miller; Canceled Science, Eric Hedin: Purpose and Desire, J. Scott Turner; Cosmic Codes, Chuck Missler; Science and the Mind of the Maker, Melissa Cain Travis; The Miracle of the Cell, Michael Denton; and Foresight, Marcos Eberlin.

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Commentary: What is possible to believe and what is not - Lewiston Morning Tribune

Bethenia Owens-Adair overcame a wave of hardships early in her life to earn a medical degree and become one of Oregons first practicing women doctors. She was a heroine of the states womens-rights movement as well, with one newspaper in 1906 calling her a central figure in the making of Oregon history.

In the years that followed that effusive praise, she would extend her influence into public-health policymaking.

Thats where her legacy takes a dark turn.

Owens-Adair, who died in 1926 at 86, led the charge for a state sterilization law, based on her belief in eugenics, a scientific theory about heredity that is now considered racially biased and unethical.

She produced a widely distributed campaign pamphlet that heralded her as Author of The Famous HUMAN STERILIZATION BILL of Oregon.

Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair.

Owens-Adair called human sterilization simply a remedy for degeneracy. Heredity, to my belief, is the directing force of all life. The purity of this source makes for good; impurity makes for evil.

The well-known doctor, whose life The Oregon Journal insisted was a tale of heroic courage, admitted that she faced many rebukes for her views on eugenics. She said, without acknowledging any irony, that these scoldings came from men who called on her to embrace intellectual modesty as something every woman should wear.

But she would not keep quiet on such an important issue, she declared.

More than eighteen hundred years ago we were told that The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, aye, even to the third and fourth generation, she wrote, quoting the Bible. Had we but heeded that warning, and studied the solution of the problem, we should not today require the use of jails, penitentiaries and insane asylums.

Theodore Roosevelt, seen here during his Rough Rider days, held some beliefs that tracked with eugenics thought.

Owens-Adair trumpeted the thousands of scientific men and women in the field devoting their earnest and faithful lives to the great work of elevating and purifying the race.

And there were indeed thousands.

Eugenics had been born in the late 1800s from a sloppy reading of the work of pioneering evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, The New Yorker magazine has pointed out. It became a prevalent sloppiness.

President Theodore Roosevelt, industrialist John D. Rockefeller Jr., Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and many other prominent early 20th-century Americans embraced aspects of eugenics -- as did, later, the Nazi regime in Germany.

Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce, Roosevelt once stated.

Dr. Owens-Adair was a prolific eugenics pamphleteer.

Eugenics had the makings of science, but it truly thrived in the political realm. The natural expression of traits could be used to justify colonialism, segregation, even low wages. It explained, some proponents said, why wealthy white Americans were successful and recent immigrants remained poor.

In the early 1900s, more than two dozen U.S. states saw significant eugenics-driven legislation. A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., upheld a states right to prevent the manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

Oregon, thanks to Owens-Adairs efforts, was one of the leaders in this push. After some setbacks, due to the states referendum system and the courts, a sterilization law passed the legislature in 1917. The bills title: To Prevent Procreation of Certain Classes in Oregon.

During the next 60 years, the state would force sterilization on more than 2,600 Oregonians.

The policy targeted the feebleminded -- with diagnoses sometimes achieved through faulty intelligence tests and the identification of supposed symptoms such as an overactive sex drive and drug addiction. Sterilizations were performed on the mentally ill, convicted criminals, people suffering from epilepsy, orphans and others.

The Oregon law established a Board of Eugenics -- comprised of the superintendents of the state correctional and psychiatric institutions, along with state Board of Health members -- which oversaw the process that could end with a person being sterilized.

After World War II, eugenics fell into disrepute -- and periodic encomiums to the late Dr. Owens-Adair began to leave out the work for which she had been best known.

In 1950, when The Oregonian produced a photo essay celebrating the foremost women in Oregon history, the caption for Owens-Adairs image said only that she learned ABCs over washboard, went on to teaching, medical degree, local fame as temperance, suffrage leader.

The birth-control proponent Margaret Sanger.

Oregons state policy that had been inspired by her now-controversial beliefs quietly continued, however.

In 1967, the Board of Eugenics was renamed the Board of Social Protection. With the name change came professionalization and expansion of the board, and as a result there were some snarls with state hospital administrators who wanted us to sort of rubber-stamp their list of people to be sterilized, longtime board member Jean Schreiber said in a 1980 interview.

Schreiber added:

Before, the superintendents of the institutions just met and agreed among themselves. The prisoners often did not even know the proceedings were taking place. For some, sterilization was a condition of release or parole, or was even used as a punitive measure for acting out.

Now, those who faced sterilization would come before the board to answer questions and offer their views on the procedure. Most of the prisoners and patients who agreed to be sterilized gave the same reason: they wanted to go home.

The increased oversight -- and changing societal attitudes -- ultimately led to a dramatic drop in state sterilization requests. The board didnt meet for more than four years in the 1970s, until a lawsuit forced it to take up a case. The last state sterilization took place in 1981; the panel disbanded two years later.

In 2002, then-Gov. John Kitzhaber publicly apologized for Oregons defunct eugenics-related practices, declaring that this official expression of remorse was the right thing to do, the just thing to do.

-- Douglas Perry

dperry@oregonian.com

@douglasmperry

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Eugenics beliefs led to 60 years of forced sterilizations in Oregon; Social Protection board finally disbande - OregonLive

We look behind the troubling origin of the century-old photos in the exhibit (Re)Generations: Challenging Scientific Racism at Bishop Museum.

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Mathais and Lucy Hamauku Akona with their four youngest children (counterclockwise from top): Elfreida, 5 (held by her father); Lawrence (Awa), 12; Dorothy, 6; and Louise, 14; in 1921 in Kloa, Kauai. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

Mathais and Lucy Hamauku Akona with their four youngest children (counterclockwise from top): Elfreida, 5 (held by her father); Lawrence (Awa), 12; Dorothy, 6; and Louise, 14; in 1921 in Kloa, Kauai. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

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Lucy Hamauku Akona, the great-great grandmother of Sharnelle and Marleah Renti Cruz. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

Lucy Hamauku Akona, the great-great grandmother of Sharnelle and Marleah Renti Cruz. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

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Annemarie Paikais great-great-great grandfather, David Hoolapa. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

Annemarie Paikais great-great-great grandfather, David Hoolapa. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

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David Hoolapa's son, Lameka Hoolapa. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

David Hoolapa's son, Lameka Hoolapa. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

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Lamekas second wife, Martha Kuwale Kaneao (Kele), wearing what appears to be a brooch with a likeness of Princess Kaiulani. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

Lamekas second wife, Martha Kuwale Kaneao (Kele), wearing what appears to be a brooch with a likeness of Princess Kaiulani. Photographed by Louis R. Sullivan, Bishop Museum Archives.

When Annemarie Aweau Paikai looks into the eyes of her kpuna in their photographs, she feels a deep connection. But its complicated by the troubling reason that these treasured century-old portraits even exist.

Just to see their faces so huge, to be able to look at them, its really powerful, Paikai says, as she stares at the 3-foot-tall prints of her ancestors hanging on the wall at Bishop Museums J.M. Long Gallery. Photos are just so meaningful.

Thats her great-great-grandfather, Lameka Hoolapa, with a clear, compelling gaze and a wiry mustache; and his father, David Hoolapa, his white beard grazing the collar of his buttoned shirtboth farmersphotographed on a single day in Kona. They peer out from the black-and-white images taken by anthropologist Louis Sullivan for Bishop Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Now both are part of a striking new exhibit titled (Re)Generations: Challenging Scientific Racism in Hawaii at Bishop Museum that explores a 100-year-old collection of photos and plaster busts.

Sullivan traveled the Islands between 1920 and 1925, enlisting the help of community and school leaders to introduce him to primarily Native Hawaiian families so he could take their photographs. Bishop Museum tasked him with probing the origins of the Hawaiian race as part of the Bayard Dominick Expedition, even while knowing Sullivan was a proponent of eugenics, which advocates selective breeding of humans to improve the genetic composition. Eugenics gained its most infamous backers in Nazi Germanys systemic persecution and killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

SEE ALSO:Will These 4 Hawaiian Traditions Disappear Forever? Meet the Teachers Who Are Fighting to Keep Them Alive

Annemarie Aweau Paikai, descendant and academic librarian. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

Paikai, 33, works as an academic librarian at Leeward Community College. She knows a lot about historic suppression of indigenous people here and across the globe. But this time she feels the impact personally as she looks at the photos of her ancestors on the gallery wall. As far as she knows, theyre the only two photographs that exist of the pair. Its incredibly sobering to know that my familys photos were involved in a study in any way associated with the gross misconceptions of eugenics.

The exhibit focuses on the larger-than-life portraits of five ohana from Oahu and the Big Island. Here, the serious historical imagesSullivan discouraged smilingare joined by modern family photos, full of joy, with descriptions of their lives and the promise of chapters yet to be written by generations to follow. Still, the exhibit presents an unflinching account of its roots in scientific racism.

Jillian Swift joined the museum as curator of archaeology in March 2019 when the discussion was already underway to base an exhibit on the 952 images in the Sullivan collection. The museum had shared the photos publicly for decadeseven touring the Neighbor Islands in the 1980s to spread the word to people tracing their family historieswithout discussing their origins.

SEE ALSO:The History of Hawaii From Our Files: One Warriors Journey to Save the Hawaiian Language

But it didnt take too much digging to recognize that there is this really problematic context around the photographs and the research that led to the photographs being created and this now-discredited, very racist idea, Swift says. [Sullivan] was interested in hybridization, so he was not necessarily a proponent of racial purity per se, but eugenics from the angle of how do we mix and match to create the super person.

Sullivan noted the racial/ethnic backgrounds of those he met, their ages, locations, measurements and other physical characteristics, and their names, sometimes misspelled. The museum researched and added a timeline to this dehumanizing effort to classify people by such characteristics.

The museum also recognized that the Sullivan collection had evolved into a resource for people looking into Hawaiis pasta trove of photographs of hundreds of people caught on a day in their lives, created at a time when photos were pretty rare. The exhibit was able to come together now, Swift says, because of the help of the descendants who have been able to visit it and have been able to add their own stories and memories and histories and experiences with the collection that we now can share those things.

Sharnelle and Marleah Renti Cruz first saw their great-grandparents photos reprinted on a banner at a family reunion but at the time they were focused on connecting with their extended ohana and didnt think about how the photos came to be.

From left, Sharnelle and Marleah Renti Cruz get their first look at the exhibit. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

The twin sisters, 29, trace their family roots to Kloa, Kauai. They grew up in Kekaha but eventually moved to Oahu for school and both earned degrees in library science from UH Mnoa last year. They found the photos had come from Bishop Museum, so they used a university assignment as an opportunity to learn more. When they saw the black-and-white portraits of great-grandparents Mathais and Lucy Hamauku Akona, something bothered them. You know, these photographs sort of look like mug shots, Sharnelle recalls saying to her sister.

Finding out about the eugenics study raised more questions. Did they know what was happening? Marleah wonders. What language did they ask them in, because our great-great-grandparents spoke Hawaiian. What happened to all the information that they got from this study? Did they receive compensation?

Swift says that the exhibits timing felt more poignant, prepared during the pandemic as the nation reeled over the murder of George Floyd and the widespread protests of systemic violence against Black Americans that followed. All of the research that weve done, all the stories that weve collected, everything that we have from this is now going to be entered into the archives connected to these photographs, Swift says.

SEE ALSO:The History of Hawaii From Our Files: A Young Familys Attitudes About Growing Up Half-Japanese After World War II

The twin sisters welcome the chance to contribute. They know that Mathais Akona worked for the county as well as for McBryde Plantation, that Lucy Akona was with the Red Cross. We really want to convey that there is more about our kpuna that are not conveyed in these photographs, how they were well-connected in their community, Sharnelle says. We found out that they were a part of different Hawaiian benevolent societies; our great-grandmother was a part of the Queen Kaahumanu society, our great-grandfather was a member of the RoyalOrder of Kamehameha. The family connection inspired the twins to look into joining the Kaahumanu society as well. Sharnelle now works as an archive specialist for the Hula Preservation Society. Both hope the exhibit encourages people to learn more about their ancestors. And, says Marleah, it also empowers us to call out these kinds of situations.

In the Sullivan photos, the sisters see an uncanny family resemblance across the generations. We looked at our great-great-grandfather and then we look at our uncle and its really striking, the resemblance that they have, Marleah says.

Swift co-curated the exhibit with museum archive collections manager Leah Caldeira and Keolu Fox, a genome scientist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. Fox, who is Native Hawaiian, marveled that the exhibit delves into topics that hed never imagined would be explored during his many childhood visits to the museum. Were repatriating peoples identities, he says. And Swift says Fox illuminated how a modern trendthe use of DNA kits that use our genetic makeup to categorize uscould lead to future exploitation. We talk about genetic research and DNA analysis as sort of the new frontier of how we study human variation today, its advantages and disadvantages, Swift says. In the exhibit, the point is made with humor: Part of the display includes a fictional DNA company with dubious motives called Bio Colonialism Trust, complete with inviting graphics, a mottoTrust Us to Tell You Who You Areand a fake collection kit labeled as a satirical exhibit prop.

Bishop Museum archaeologist Jillian Swift, who co-curated the exhibit. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

This is actually just the start of a conversation and of being more open of thinking harder about how we serve our Native Hawaiian communities. Jillian Swift

Swift says the curators highlighted families who knew about the photos and wanted to participate. There are three busts in the exhibit, all identified but whose descendants could not be reached. They are plaster casts of students from Kamehameha Schools, which at the time shared a campus with the museum. Swift hopes even more families will come forward: This is actually just the start of a conversation and of being more open of thinking harder about how we serve our Native Hawaiian communities, how we repair those relationships.

Paikai credits the museum with being honest. Museums have caused a lot of harm for a lot of communities that arent white, often leaving indigenous people out of the narrative or representing them in problematic ways, she says.

SEE ALSO:4 We Tried: We Search for the Best Ways to Learn Hawaiian Online for Free

Paikai talked with me in a courtyard just steps away from where the museum team worked to complete the display. At the museum gates, her and her great-great-grandfathers faces appear on the banner that welcomes visitors to the campus. Although she says seeing her oversized image feels surreal, Paikai views the powerful exhibit as an opportunity to reclaim some of what was lost by Hawaiians forced to suppress hula, cultural practices and even the Hawaiian language.

While shes closely connected to her Native Hawaiian ancestry, Paikai was born and raised in California after better economic opportunities there prompted her father to leave the Islands long ago. She moved to Hilo at 18 to major in Hawaiian studies and plans to remain here in the Islands to raise her own family. She and her husband provided a family portrait to include in the exhibit and shes excited to think that one day generations yet to come may return to the museum to find out more about them.

I dont know how to explain it other than its just this sense within yourself that this is where I belong, Paikai says. This has been a quest for me to find my family, to find out more about who we are.

Visit the exhibit through Oct. 24 in a new timed admission procedure that began March 1.

Bishop Museum, 1525 Bernice St., (808) 847-3511, 9 a.m.5 p.m. daily, bishopmuseum.org

The team at Bishop Museum puts the finishing touches on the new exhibit shortly before it opened Feb. 20. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

Bishop Museum offers online help for those looking for information in the Sullivan collection of photos as well as many other resources. bishopmuseum.org/library-and-archives

If you already know what you want, have specific collections questions, need access or want to order reproductions, email archives@bishopmuseum.org

The Sullivan collection can also be accessed online as part of the extensive collections and records available through the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs Papakilo Database. papakilodatabase.com

Continued here:

Native Hawaiian Families Connect with their Ancestors as Bishop Museum Confronts a Controversial Part of its - HONOLULU Magazine

Imagine a society of only women. This is the premise of playwright Paco Jos Madden's Herlandia, a loose adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1915 novel about the adventures of a group of male explorers who stumble upon an isolated society composed entirely of women. The play produced by B3 Theater, which concentrates on new and underperformed works, opens Friday, May 21st.

"One of the key differences between Herland and Herlandia is that I make one of the explorers a woman disguised as a man," says Madden. "Vanessa, the character in question, becomes a stand-in for Gilman, who in life felt constrained by society's expectations for women." Gilman was a noted author, lecturer, and advocate for women's rights in the early twentieth century. She also wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, a classic of feminist literature.

When the explorers arrive at this "woman's world," they encounter a place based on principles of cooperation and caring for one another. Gilman strongly believed in living for others and wrote that life should be "collective, common, or it isn't life at all," which makes the play particularly relevant today, especially regarding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which requires collective action.

"It's great to work on a play that combines the historical with the contemporary," says director Ilana Lydia. "The play examines what the world should be, rather than what it is."

Gilman led a tumultuous life. She was placed under the care of physician Silas Wier Mitchel after suffering from what we today call postpartum depression. Mitchel's "rest cure" for women involved weeks of isolation, bed rest, and electrotherapy. "This comes though in the play when Vanessa has a mental breakdown and struggles with what it means to be a woman," says Madden.

The author or Herland also held strong ethnic and racial prejudices, a belief in Anglo-Saxon supremacy, and embraced eugenics as the solution to the "Negro problem." "Though I admire what Gilman did for women and society, I also recognize her bigoted convictions," continues Madden. "The Herlandian society I imagined is filled with people of different races, sexualities, and abilities and has no hierarchical order."

The crisis in the play is brought about by one of the male explorers who Vanessa characterizes as "a brute." Terry has traditional notions on the role of men and women and is offended that women would dare challenge male authority. He decides to launch a rebellion.

"In our present age, we are uniquely positioned to evaluate the legitimacy of long established convictions concerning race and gender as our world becomes increasingly divided and increasingly diverse. Whose voices are heard and whose stories are told are fraught questions," says Juliet Rachel Wilkins who plays the gender switching Vanessa. "Herlandia, and particularly our modern retelling, seeks answers to how we can move forward together as a society, even when we seem more fractured than ever."

Herlandia has been adapted to a Zoom environment and will include a "guide" and live chat. "The play is part theater, part exhibit, and part guided tour," says Cherylandria Banks who plays The Guide.

The cast includes Jesse Abrahams as Vandyck, Cherylandria Banks as The Guide, Will Blankenmeier as Terry, Valerie German as Alima, Erin Natseway as Ellador, Angelica Saario as Cellis, Lorraine Taylor as Great Mother, and Juliet Rachel Wilkins as Vanessa/Jeff. The stage manager is Kayla Caviedes.

Costumes are by Eliana Burns, hair and makeup by Sabrina Rose Bivens, lights and props by Ric Alpers, set/virtual background by JPaoul C Clemente, and sound by Chris Piraino.

Performances of Herlandia are May 21st through May 30 (Fridays and Saturdays @ 8:00 p.m. and Sundays @ 4 p.m.) via Zoom. For more information and tickets, go to https://www.onthestage.com/show/b3-theater/herlandia-by-paco-jose-madden-41803

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MADDEN'S HERLANDIA to be Presented by B3 Theater - Broadway World

The 11th Annual Zcalo Book Prize Lecture

Moderated by Toms Jimnez, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and author of The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life

The year 1924 was a watershed in American immigration. A victory for the eugenics movement, the Johnson-Reed Act established race-based quotas that succeeded in limiting the entry of Jews and Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as strengthening restrictions already in place barring the entry of Asians and Africans. It would take an extraordinary political window following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to overhaul the quota system through the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. By giving preference to family reunification and skilled workers, the legislation changed the demographics of the country, making it less European and less white. At the same time, it imposed the first numerical cap on Western Hemisphere immigration, making the U.S. less accessible for people coming from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

What lessons can we draw from these two historic shifts in American immigration? Has the United States ever been the nation of immigrants that it purports to be? And in our polarized times, can we fashion a new national identity that embraces immigrants and their families?

New York Times national editor Jia Lynn Yang, winner of the 11th annual Zcalo Public Square Book Prize for her debut book, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, visits Zcalo to discuss how immigration laws have changed the American population, our communities, and the countrys sense of itself.

Angelica Esquivel, winner of the 10th Annual Zcalo Poetry Prize, will deliver a reading of her poem, La Mujer, prior to lecture. Read more about Esquivel and her winning poem here.

The 2021 Zcalo Book and Poetry Prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

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Does America Really Want to Be a Nation of Immigrants? - The Eastsider LA

To the editor:

What kills the most Blacks in America? Besides what we hear in the news from the Black Lives Matter protest movement, examine what some other Blacks are saying before big tech silences them for having differing views.

Robert Woodson Sr., Black civil right activist and founder of the Woodson Center, stated the number one killer of Black people is not the police its abortion. Others agree with him, stating its not gang-violence, gun violence, heart attack, stroke, HIV, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Its abortion and Black women are targeted 3-5 times more than white women. Why?

One-third of all abortions occur in the Black community. According to CDC, 13.4% of the entire U.S. population is Black, yet 36.9% of all abortions are Black. The protectingblacklifeorg census states that 79% of surgical abortion clinics are located within walking distance of African American or Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods. Why?

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is one of 149 national affiliates of the gigantic International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) which works in 19 nations on every continent. It joins the United Nations Population Fund and the Population Council founded and supported by eugenicists.

Planned Parenthood is the largest U.S. abortion provider. Their 2019 annual report stated 345,672 abortions were done. Consider other facts 96.1% of pregnant PP clients get abortions, 1.2% (4,279) get adoption referrals, and 2.7% get prenatal care. In 2019, then PP President Leana Wen, explained that abortion was PP core mission.

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It is no longer hidden that Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement in America, that later became Planned Parenthood, adhered to the deeply inhuman and exploitative theory of eugenics and its deep ties to racism. Critics today say the organization continues to perpetuate her legacy by supporting the programs she inaugurated. PP has terminated by abortion at least 62 million males and females, 22 million of which were Black. An entire generation of Americans of all ethnicities gone. in an 2019 radio interview by Dr. George Grant with Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King jJ. and Priests for Life, Dr King stated, Thats a baby in the womb who should have human rights, and I believe if my uncle were here today, he would have to agree that abortion is a crime against humanity.

Question: In the fight for social justice why is there silence about the violence of abortion done to all babies and their mothers?

Lastly, CDC reports 143 infants have been left to die after being born alive from botched abortions. The Born Alive Survivors Protection Act, which simply requires life saving medical care be given to infants who survive abortions, failed to pass in the Feb. 2021 Democratic run Senate. Unconscionable.

Valerie Byrnes

Providence

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Abortion the No. 1 killer of Blacks in America - The Herald Journal

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Family Research Council released today an issue analysis,"Prenatal Nondiscrimination Acts: Why They Are Essential." Prenatal Nondiscrimination Acts (PRENDAs) seek to prevent abortion being used as a tool of eugenics. These laws prohibit anyone from knowingly aborting an unborn child solely on the basis of his or her sex or disability. FRC's new issue analysis explains how these laws address the long shared history of abortion and eugenics in America; which states have passed legislation to ensure unborn children are not aborted on account of their race, sex, or disability; and the challenges these laws have faced in court.

Sixteen states have enacted some form of a PRENDA law, and more are in the pipeline. Yesterday, the North Carolina House Health committee approved such a bill, H 453, and last week Arizona's Governor Ducey signed SB 1457 into law, banning abortion based on genetics. Recently, the federal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Ohio's Down syndrome abortion ban.

Katherine Beck Johnson, FRC's Research Fellow for Legal and Policy Studies and one of the authors of the issue brief, made the following comments:

"Weapplaud states working to protect the most vulnerable through PRENDAs. These laws remind society that each and every child has inherent dignity. They end the atrocious act of targeting the littlest members of our society and put us one step closer to ending Roe v. Wade.

"Reality is quickly settling in that the Biden administration is the most pro-abortion administration in history. However, it's greatly encouraging that we are seeing a wave of pro-life momentum on the state level in response to President Biden's radical abortion agenda.

"These laws powerfully undercut the rationale for Roe v. Wade, as they hold promise to end the viability standard set forth in Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In May 2019, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a lengthy opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood, in which he cited abortion's eugenic roots and its continued eugenic potential. This opinion has emboldened even more states and lower courts to protect the unborn from discriminatory abortions," concluded Johnson.

To download the issue brief, visit: https://frc.org/prenda

SOURCE Family Research Council

http://www.frc.org

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FRC Celebrates Growing Momentum for Protection of the Unborn from Discrimination on the Basis of Race, Sex, or Disability - PRNewswire