Category Archives: Eugenics

Filmed over a seven-year period, filmmaker Erika Cohns harrowing documentary Belly of the Beast (2020) is an eye-opening story of injustice at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla, California. Its the largest female correctional facility in the United States and the only such facility in California with a death row for women. Its also a place where inmate Kelli Dillon, serving a 15-year prison sentence, fell victim to a forced (and unnecessary) hysterectomy, a case that led to a fierce legal battle by activist lawyer Cynthia Chandler and her organization, Justice Now. In recounting the story, the documentary reveals the insidious practice of a modern-day eugenics program that primarily targets women of color.

Cohns film delves into the sordid history through archival interviews with female prisoners, newscasts, and more to expose the history and practice of forced sterilization in womens prisons and other crimes, including sexual assaults, and human rights violations. Cohn discusses Belly of the Beast as part of the Center for Contemporary Arts (1050 Old Pecos Trail, 505-982-1338, ccasantafe.org) virtual Living Room Series at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, via Zoom.

Joining Cohn is human rights activist Selinda Guerrero of the advocacy group Millions for Prisoners New Mexico

(facebook.com/MillionsforPrisonersNM), a chapter of Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, whose goal is to unionize prison workers and abolish the exploitation of prisoners. Also participating is Isabella Baker of Forward Together Action (forwardtogetheraction.org), which advocates for the rights of women of color, nonbinary people, and Indigenous communities.

The event is presented by Santa Fe NOW (nowsantafe.org), the local chapter of the National Organization for Women.

The link to register is on CCAs website (ccasantafe.org). The cost is $10 and registrants will receive links via email to join the Zoom meeting and view the documentary.

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Detrimental detentions: "Belly of the Beast" | Movies | santafenewmexican.com - Santa Fe New Mexican

PANDEMICS CAN have unexpected side-effects. One of them, according to a report last year by the New York Federal Reserve, may be a surge in support for extremist ideas. It observed how cities in Germany that suffered the most deaths from influenza by 1920 then voted in unusually large numbers for extreme-right parties, such as the Nazis, by the early 1930s. In the past year, too, according to studies in Britain and America, there has been a spurt in online searches for extremist content. Anger over lockdowns or loss of trust in government could be driving new interest.

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What texts might people be turning to? Researchers study literary habits of the far-right by monitoring reading lists traded on social media, texts promoted on podcasts or recited by enthusiasts as audiobooks on YouTube, output from right-fringe publishing houses and, most extreme, the diatribes that serve as manifestos of those who commit atrocities. Together they suggest several strands of hateful writing. Brian Hughes of American University in Washington, DC says that the sheer availability of online extremist ideology is, in part, responsible for the elevated rates of extremist mobilisation.

French writers have been strikingly influential, including those in the Nouvelle Droite movement. Alain de Benoist, an illiberal thinker, inspired members of Americas alt right such as Richard Spencer, a white supremacist. The works of a philosopher, Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus, also stand out. Ideas drawn from his book The Great Replacement (2011), are often repeated by those who say non-white immigration threatens Western countries. The book has been cited by mass shooters.

The work of another French writer, Jean Raspail, is championed by anti-immigrant activists in America. His dystopian novel from 1973, The Camp of the Saints, imagines the violent overrun of France by brown-skinned migrants. It is a weaponised retelling of an apocalyptic biblical parable, says Chelsea Stieber of Catholic University. The French understand it as literature, she says, whereas in America it gets to be this reality that could happen. Leading Republicans have promoted it, she points out, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, both erstwhile close advisers of Donald Trump, as well as Steve King, a noxious ex-congressman from Iowa.

Apocalyptic writing is especially popular among a strand of the far-right known as accelerationists, meaning those who believe civilisation (or at least liberal democracy) will soon collapse. They hope the end can be hastened by violent acts or even civil war. In this vein an Italian fascist writer, Julius Evola, is also cited by Mr Bannon and Mr Spencer and lauded in far-right circles, along with his call for blowing everything up. He promoted an idea of heroic men who rise above history (Mussolini was a fan). Memes of him in his monocle are shared online by adoring followers.

Extremists turn to such writers because they justify using violence to clear the way for a supposed new golden age to begin. Others tell them how to achieve that. Siege, a book by James Mason of the American Nazi party, purports to be a guide to violent revolution. It had little impact when it was published in 1992, notes Graham Macklin of the Centre for Research on Extremism, in Oslo. But its rediscovery by neo-Nazis roughly five years ago has led to a surge of interest. PDFs of it are now shared widely online; the hashtag readSiege spreads periodically on social media. Now, its everywhere, he says.

The study of such writing matters, even if one researcher admits he feels like projectile vomiting while tackling some especially violent or cruel texts. Ideas can have deadly consequences, says Joanna Mendelson of the Anti-Defamation League. People are quoting and referencing books as a kind of reassurance that they are validated in their extremist views, she says. Many of the same ones reappear repeatedly among anti-Semitic and other extremist factions. A few, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (an anti-Semitic conspiracy originating from Russia in 1903), or the racist, eugenics-based writing of Lothrop Stoddard in the 1920s, are repeatedly rediscovered or reinterpreted by new writers. What used to be called eugenics, for example, is today dressed up as race realism.

One book is still considered the bible of the far right. The Turner Diaries, a barely readable novel from the 1970s by William Pierce, another American Nazi, imagines an insurrection by a group called Order against a government that promotes egalitarian values and gun control. It has supposedly sold 500,000 copies. One avid reader was Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. (He used a lorry full of fertiliser and explosives, a method depicted in the novel.) Others were inspired to form a real-world paramilitary group, also called the Order.

Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says such books are still powerful. Veteran members of groups pass them on to younger ones. They are used to build ties between adherents, to test new initiates and ease the anxiety of some by giving a sense of purpose to their lives. He notes, too, how younger readers are finding new writing. One rambling, self-published book called Bronze Age Mindset, for example, has won a cult following, reportedly including staffers at Mr Trumps White House. It draws on ideas from Nietzsche and tells readers to prepare for the military rule that will soon begin in America. For some readers such bilious writing is appealing. Finding out why is a first step towards confronting it.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Deadly inspirations"

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Deadly inspirations - What their chosen reading says about America's far-right | United States - The Economist

Allison Siegelman| Erie Times-News

U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been responsible for circulating wacky QAnon conspiracy theories that have dark, satanic themes that are reminiscent of those believed in ancient times. She and those associated with alt-right and QAnon groups target the Jewish people in the same way the Nazi Party did: They spread stump rhetoric, written propaganda and images all weaving the fiction with horrifying false characterizations and conspiracies about how the country is being destroyed by people amongst us.

What is most concerning is that Holocaust revisionism and denial has been embraced by some in academics with an agenda. It is so extreme that the genocide of 6 million Jews (along with many other minorities) throughout Europe is being questioned, especially by the younger generations who did not live through World War II.

We are in times that leaveus with few of those who lived through the WWII period. The elders today are mostly those who were babies to toddlers at the time of the war. Soon, they, too, will be gone. History has recorded in video and text the wars atrocities as they occurred and retrospectives. These archives have been maintained in Holocaust museums in Israeland the U.S., along with the U.N., and many other government archives, museums and archival organizations.

Todays conspiracists who wish to diminish or discredit the history preserved through videos, publications and testimonials of the millions who lived through that time are attempting to erase the Holocaust, and for what purpose? It appears to be a radical political agendaor delusions from mental illness that are responsible.

The hatemongers are attracted to provincialism. They are willing to use any tactic to keep America from being a diverse democratized nation that today offers humans of all races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual persuasions freedom from persecution and oppression.

However, the U.S. has a jaded past that is filled with slavery, racism and segregation. It is no surprise that our nation birthed a movement in the late 1800s, known as eugenics, that led to the sterilization of over 64,000 disabled or impoverished (mostly of dark-skinned) Americans. Hitler and the Nazi Party subscribed to this ideology disguised at the time as science. The desire to propagate a superior race lead to the insanity of the 20th century Holocaust which is still recorded as the worst genocide in history it eliminated two-thirds (67%) of the worlds Jewish population, or 6 million Jews.

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a people with the intent of eliminating them from existence.

The Jewish people had endured many battles and oppression since their tribal identity was created by the father of monotheism (the belief in one God), Abraham. It was Hitlers Nazi fascism that targeted death to all Jews throughout the world not just to drive them out of a land. The Nazi Party was able to formulate conspiracy theories that relied on demonizing Jews bycirculating tales of Jews plotting to deceive and destroy the non-Jewish population. They played on arousing fear in a demographic group who were provincial, gullibleand eager to find a scapegoat for the ills of their nation.

Today, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and those like her are doing exactly the same thing. These extremists are looking to instill fear and anger in Americans who see anyone other than white and Christian as a threat to the U.S. They wrap their falsehoods with patriotism and glorify the quest to attack the Jews as if Jews are not trustworthy and upstanding citizens.

Ironically, those who participate in such defamation can be seen as the real enemy of a democratized nation. Those who remain indifferent or dismissive of the trend in radicalized American patriotism and the militia cells that we today call domestic terrorism are as much to blame for the threat to our nation.

If we are to survive as a democracy, we must put party politics aside and look to history for an understanding of what gave rise to democracy. George Santayanas iconic words spoken in 1905 could not be more relevant, Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. It was in 1948 before the British House of Commons upon the end of WWII that Winston Churchill revised the quote as, Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I ask that we, as Americans, embrace the most basic tenet of democracy to avoid a horrific slide into fascism and worse: immorality.

Allison Siegelman of York Township is a member of Central PA American Israel Public Affairs.

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QAnon and the alt-right draw from the Nazi playbook - GoErie.com

By Sally Kim, Lisbeth Martine, Alex Morgan, Esha Kher

CALIFORNIA Belly of the Beast, a groundbreaking film by Ericka Cohn, was virtually screened by If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice this past week, exposing patterns of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

This was filmed over the course of 10 years and put together within seven. The film covers the story of a woman who was involuntarily sterilized at a facility, who then teamed up with a lawyer to stop the reproductive and human rights violations occurring in California.

A statewide investigation to uncover the crimes targeted against women of color and the inadequate healthcare provided to sexual assault and illegal sterilization causes was conducted. The film includes intimate accounts from formerly incarcerated women in one of the largest womens prisons in the world.

In speaking to the difficulties of gaining access to prison staff and people in the prison system who were able to come forward to expose sterilizations, Cohn recounts an instance where a nurse at an immigration detention center trying to expose illegal mass hysterectomies faced retaliation every step of the way and had a fear of losing pensions or facing retaliation for coming forward.

Cohn was overwhelmed by the reach and impact the film had among prisons. She knew that it had to reach people in California womens prisons across the country, but we had no idea that it would be reaching people in mens prisons, in federal prisons.

She said it took a lot of people to shine a light on this issue and coalition building was of the utmost importanceyou have the journalism reporting aspect, the legal advocates, the survivors who are doing the peer to peer human rights documentation work inside prison.

(C)ross collaboration pushes this momentum forward so that there is accountability so that these human rights abuses dont continue to happen, added Cohn. We have the CA Latinos for reproductive justice collaborating with the CA coalition for women prisons collaborating with the disability rights and education defense fund collaborating with our filmmaking team.

Cohn touches on the relationship between lack of educational resources and informed consent among prisoners, explaining when someone is in prison, they dont have access to Google like we do, and their only sources of information are doctors.

And since in prison, the doctors are employed by the prison theres no separation, you dont get access to someone who is unaffiliated with the prison. Its near impossible to obtain informed consent, she said.

The doctors do not ethically or morally question all of this, and allow the procedure to take place. Although these procedures did not take place at the prison, sterilization procedures need a lot of approval to have women go to an outside contracted facility, Cohn noted, and these hospitals and medical care are complicit in it.

Kate Panze, hosting the virtual screening, noted that this film depicts how illegal it is, as well as an ongoing issue. After the screening, the films director joined to answer a Q&A regarding the content of the documentary.

This film will be both difficult to watch and inspiring, Panze stressed.

Kelli Dillon, a main protagonist in the documentary, was given 15 years in prison at the age of 19 for shooting and killing her husband. Dillon shares that the hardest part when taken into custody was being separated from her children, even though she was acting out of protection as a victim of domestic violence.

The worst was yet to come when she was imprisoned at the worlds largest womens prison located in Central California.

A few years after being imprisoned, Dillon began to experience symptoms like abdominal pain. Dillon asserts that she was told she had an abnormal pap smear, resulting in her needing a cone biopsy in order to see if there are signs of cancer.

Do you want any more children? doctors asked her. Dillon responded yes because she was looking forward to forming part of a healthy relationship and raising more children, because she felt that her sentence had robbed her from having that chance.

Doctors proceeded to get Dillons consent to have a hysterectomy only if cancer was found.

When I came out I felt like something was wrong, she said, and added she asked her doctor if she could still have children and he responded, Yeah, I dont see why not.

Cynthia Chandler, justice attorney and founder of Justice Now, says that she was receiving letters from an overwhelming number of prisoners every month about the horrible medical abuses taking place with prison. At Justice Now, they had received a letter from Kelli Dillon that they deemed very troubling.

Nine months after surgery, Dillon had begun to feel surgical menopause symptoms, such as late periods, heart palpitations, and severe weight loss.

After being advised to ask for her medical records, Chandler and Dillon found out that she was lied to and intentionally sterilized after agreeing to have a hysterectomy only if she had cancer. And Dillon did not have cancer.

According to Chandler, women prisons in California have had a horrific track record of medical care. For instance, Dillon began noticing while she was imprisoned that other women were having the same symptoms as herself after having the same surgery she was told to have. Many women were given different diagnoses, and all of them were sterilized without their consent.

Dillon became the first sterilization victim to sue for damages, holding the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) accountable. The trial hearing was in front of a predominantly white jury, and they believed the doctors versions of events.

I was looking at these documents that were confirming that as a black woman, my lifedidnt mean anything, it had no purpose, Kelli exclaimed.

According to Chandler, federal and state laws prohibit sterilizing people in prison for the purpose of birth control. However, the prison system was still doing it anyway, especially after women inmates go into labor and delivery during their imprisonment.

In California, the state was in a league of its own when it comes to eugenics during modern-day. A report documents that 20,000 people were sterilized in the state, more than any other state in the country.

It became evident that sterilization was used as a form of birth control on women of color in order to drop the number of minority populations.

Women inmates share that doctors were very unprofessional and unsanitary when it came to treating pregnant patients. In addition, there were doctors that would become insistent on women using sterilization as a form of birth control if they had returned to prison pregnant for a second time.

Between 2006 and 2010, about 150 women were illegally sterilized by being pressured by doctors into tubal ligations while being heavily sedated on the operating table.

The fact that we are in the 21st century and we have to ask our state auditor to see if women in California are being coercively sterilized is revolting, exclaimed Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson.

The Department of Corrections and the Receivers (appointed and responsible for managing all medical programs and their related costs) claimed that usually there was very little personal knowledge on the part of prison administrators of what was going on.

Its my understanding that many of these did have some kind of consent at the outside doctor because these procedures are performed in a community facility just so that its clear. They are not performed at the institution, said Kathleen Allison of CDCR.

Joyce Hayhoe of the California Prison Health Care Services explained how doctors statewide felt for whatever reason that it was being sanctioned by the department.

Clark Kelso, a federal Receiver, said there may be doctors who arent aware of the policy or the federal law issue, noting, I can well imagine an outside physician in good faith thinking that this is a matter of reproductive autonomy, not knowing about the conversation that has been going on about the inability to give valid consent in prison.

For inmates to sign consent is a really big deal because they are seen as a ward of the court and not really being allowed to enter into contracts.

There shouldve been a red flag when the billing department received those bills but, Kelso continued, explaining that when he entered the Receivership in 2008 they did not use standard medical billing codes so there was no easy way for them to know they were paying for these surgeries.

This explanation was not believable, because all the documents and paperwork that go into medical procedures are expansive, as a former OB nurse attested to the fact that everything went through a committee and was documented as to why it was necessary.

By the time Dr. Heinrich was hired, sterilization practices had been going on for years at multiple prisons. He strongly believed that there were women who were gaming the system and needed to be stopped.

This attitude tracked precisely to the historical attitude of the California leaders of the eugenics movementthey had always used cost benefit as justification for why they were doing what they were doing.

Senator Jackson attended Dillons hearing even though she wasnt even on the committee.

She explained how sterilization has been illegal since 1979 and many assumed it had ended at that time. Her new bill, SB 1135, was to make it very clear that doctors cannot perform these procedures in prison because even nurses were not aware they were illegal.

At the time Dillon was imprisoned, she had less than a year left to obtain her Associates Degree for Social Studies. She wanted to work with battered women and troubled young teen girls.

Dillon appeared on a radio show called The Dialogue, where it was revealed that 92 percent of women are in prison for domestic violence.

Kelli explained on the show that she had already been sexually assaulted and held hostage at home for three days and beaten. Yet, when she called the police, their response was, You dont look like a victim.

The American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the bill because they believed by completely taking away sterilization, they are taking away womens right to consent to a procedure.

This was a surprise because very few of their members, let alone their leadership, work in prisons. Their opposition created a tremendous obstacle for this bill.

Prisoners have said that asking people in prison to make a decision like Dillons is not the best idea because people have total control over them and if they dont follow the rule or anybody simply says they didnt, they can have time added to their sentence.

Dillon testified in front of the Assembly Health Committee after the bill had stalled. If it passed the committee, it would go to the Assembly floor and, if it passed that, to the governors desk.

Dillon delivered an emotional and deeply touching testimony, pleading, I trusted the surgeons to respect and to acknowledge that I still had a future and that I wanted one.

She further asked, Did this happen to me because I was African American? Because I was a woman? Because I was an inmate? Or did it happen to me because I was all three?

She said that this bill will help to protect other women who have the opportunity to be rehabilitated and to actually restore the quality of their lives and to enjoy the gift that life has to offer, which includes motherhood and having children.

The film ends as every committee member said aye in support of the bill. Governor Jerry Brown signed and passed SB 1135 with bipartisan support, bringing an end to forced prison sterilization.

Sally Kim is a senior at UCLA, majoring in Sociology. She is from the East Bay Area.

Lisbeth Martinez is a third year at UC Davis, double majoring in Communication and Political Science. She currently lives in Shafter, California.

Alex Morgan is a 3rd year Political Science Major at Westmont College. She is originally from Santa Barbara, California

Esha Kher is an undergraduate student at UC Davis studying Political Science and Computer Science, hoping to pursue a career in corporate law. She is passionate about legal journalism and political advocacy that provokes new perspectives and sparks conversation among the public. When she is not reporting for The Davis Vanguard, Esha is either trying out a new YouTube workout or reading a book on late modern philosophy.

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'Belly of the Beast' Film Highlights Ongoing Issue of Illegal Sterilization in CA State Prisons - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

media release: The Aldo Leopold Foundation is pleased to present a series of free, virtual events for Leopold Week 2021: Building an Ethic of Care! The events in this series are free, but spots are limited. Dont miss your chance to join the celebrationsand register to secure your spot today.

March 10:

An ongoing reckoning with race in American history has drawn attention to racism in the environmental movement. Critiques have focused on themes such as forced removal of Indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, early conservationists support for eugenics, and the chronic lack of diversity in environmental organizations. Today, as people around the world struggle to address complex and interconnected social and environmental crises, our shared future depends on forging an ethic that integrates diverse voices, belief systems, and ways of knowing.

Dr. Curt Meine joins a panel of guests (to be announced soon) to examine the broad arc of Western conservation history, the evolution of a shared land ethic, and the progress and work ahead of us in realizing an ethic of responsibility and reciprocity among people, and between people and land.

Land Ethics, Social Justice, and Aldo Leopold is part of the Building an Ethic of Care speaker series hosted by the Aldo Leopold Foundation in celebration of Leopold Week 2021 (March 5-14). Discover more ways to participate in the celebrations and view the full line up of events in the Building an Ethic of Care speaker series by visiting our website: http://www.aldoleopold.org/leopoldweek

Dr. Curt Meine

Senior Fellow, Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature

curtmeine.com/

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer based in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature; as Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation; and as Adjunct Associate Professor at the UW-Madison. Meine has authored and edited several books, and served as on-screen guide in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film Green Fire.

Dr. Eduardo Santana Castelln

Coordinator, Environmental Sciences Museum, University of Guadalajara, Mexico

Presenter information coming soon

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ONLINE: Land Ethics, Social Justice and Aldo Leopold - Isthmus

A 23andMe study from 2015 revealed that close to 4 percent of the companys customers who identified as white Americans had at least 1 percent African ancestry, consistent with an African ancestor within the last 11 generations or so. About 12 percent of whites from Southern states like South Carolina and Louisiana had 1 percent or more of African ancestry.

The Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has calculated that there are millions of contemporary whites who, according to the old, notorious one- drop rule of the Jim Crow era, would have been considered legally black proof not only of the absurdity of that definition of difference, he writes, but of the power of modern science to blow up false narratives about race and about American history. If modern DNA tests had existed during the heyday of mainstream eugenics in the early 20th century, Dr. Gates and others have suggested, they might have served as direct repudiation of that pseudoscience.

So, what happens when Americans learn about the diversity within themselves? The jury is still out on whether direct-to-consumer genetic testing reinforces our sense of immutable racial categories or breaks them down.

Research by Wendy Roth, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has found that customers basic knowledge of genetics going into testing may play a role in whether tests accentuate or reduce their racial essentialism. Besides, we are not our ethnicity estimates: For a variety of reasons, including the ways in which were shaped by community, family and personal experience, DNA and identity are not the same.

But whats clear from research and from my conversations with hundreds of consumers is that genetic revelations can inspire journeys of self-discovery, helping people rewrite their understandings not only of their families but of their orientations as Americans.

Some people I spoke with recounted how theyre thinking long and hard, for the first time, about what boxes to check on medical forms asking for race. Some have legally changed their names to reflect their forebears. Others are using research to illuminate the lives of ancestors in Africa before the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

One man I interviewed discovered through DNA and genealogy that his grandfather was Black, and that his mother claimed fictional Sicilian heritage to protect her family from the discrimination shed experienced growing up. He has spent the years since researching the Vermont community where his mom grew up, meeting his Black relatives, and rethinking his place in America. The truth about the past is so important, he told me without it, We cant evolve.

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Opinion | DNA and Race: What Ancestry and 23andMe Reveal - The New York Times

Photo: African pygmy Ota Benga was displayed at the Bronx Zoo in 1906, in support of Darwinian theory, via Wikimedia Commons.

February is Black History Month, and this week, Friday, February 12, is Darwin Day the birthday of Charles Darwin. It is, therefore, quite appropriate to probe and ask, What exactly did Charles Darwin evolutions leading light believe about race? Was he a racist? Most of Darwins apologists say emphatically, No! Adrian Desmond and James Moore, for example, suggest that opposition to slavery was indeed Darwins sacred cause, and that his conviction that all humankind was linked together through common descent led to that fervent belief. Adam Gopnik inAngels and Ages(2009) states emphatically, Racism, in any form that would have been familiar in his time or would be familiar in ours, had no place either in Darwins life or in Darwins logic. But is this true? A careful examination of the facts suggests that when it comes to Darwin and race its, Three strikes, youre out!

First, although Darwin may indeed have opposed slavery, he did not believe in racial equality. In theDescent of Man(1871) he cited the work of his generations leading ethnologists J. Barnard Davis and Paul Broca in linking cranial capacity with racial and ethnic hierarchies. Darwin was quite clear on the matter; science demonstrated that craniometrics allowed for the ranking of intellect accordingly:

The belief that there exists in man some close relationship between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of skulls of savage and civilized races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. Dr. J. Barnard Davis hasproved[emphasis added], by many careful measurements, that the mean internal capacity of the skull in Europeans is 92.3 cubic inches; in Americans 87.5; in Asians 87.1; and in Australians only 81.9 cubic inches.

Should there be any surprise, then, that Darwin would tell the Reverend Charles Kingsley in aletterdated February 6, 1862, It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank. Or that he wouldwriteto William Graham on July 3, 1881, Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world. For Darwin, humans could be placed into definite racial categories with an Anglo-centric eye. Did Darwin really believe in the equality of all humankind: no. Strike one.

Did common descent translate for Darwin into racial equality the so-called brotherhood of man? Quite the contrary. For him, common descent also meant struggle for existence and so survival of the fittest could easily translate into racial superiority, national expansion, extermination of inferior peoples, and a view of human progress that was unmistakably racialized. Even his apologists, Desmond and Moore, are forced to admit inDarwins Sacred Cause(2009), Darwin ended up calibrating human rank no differently than the rest of his generation. After shunning talk of high and low in his youthful evolution notebooks, he had ceased to be unique or interesting on the subject. For Darwin common descent meant the evolutionary ascent of superior ethnic and racial groups over inferior ones. Strike two.

Finally, there is Darwins contribution to eugenics, a horrific abuse in the name of science that sought to improve humanity by selective breeding of societys best and the forced sterilization of societys worst people. One of Darwins most persistent defenders, historian Peter Bowler, insists inDarwin Deleted(2013), that eugenics was spawned by middle class fears of a rising tide of the unfit in later 19th- and early 20th-century society. Furthermore, he argues, It was eugenics that encouraged scientists to focus on heredity and recognize the potential of artificial selection, and they could have done this without the inspiration of Darwinism. It is true that eugenics certainly had a class-based element to it, but it is also true that eugenics was also seen as a form of racial hygiene leading toward a better society. Bowlers claim that eugenics could have been pursued without Darwin is doubtful. After all, it was Darwins own fascination with the domestic breeding of pigeons and livestock that formed the first chapter of hisOrigin of Species(1859) and this domestic breeding analogy he took to be the essence of natural selections creative power. Jean Gayon has argued convincingly inDarwins Struggle for Survival(1998)that his domestic breeding analogy was not merely a pedagogical tool or heuristic device but essential to the theory itself. But despite what Bowler argues, the link between Darwin and eugenics was made by leading eugenicists themselves, as when Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson write inApplied Eugenics(1918):

The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwins workThe Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859. It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed sequence of events can be described in formulas which are called natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the question logically arose, Is not man himself subject to those same laws? Can he not use his knowledge of them to improve his own species, as he has been more or less consciously improving the plants and animals that were of most value to him, for many centuries?

So it would appear that efforts to distance Darwin from the odious designs of eugenics are contradicted by the statements of eugenicists themselves. Whatever Bowler may think of the matter, it is clear that Darwins theory was uppermost in these social manipulators minds when they contemplated the wonders to which eugenic principles could be applied. Strike three.

By any measure, when racial equality is being discussed, Darwin is clearlyoutof the running.

Editors note: Darwinism and its legacy for racial thinking are examined in John Wests multiple award-winning documentary Human Zoos:

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Darwin and Race: Three Strikes, He's Out - Discovery Institute

It's an issue that is forefront on the minds of many healthcare workers as the state works to vaccinate Georgians against COVID-19.

ATLANTA On Wednesday, Gov. Brian Kemp and Dr. Toomey partnered with Morehouse School of Medicine for a roundtable discussion focusing on "vaccine hesitancy and equity among minority communities" across the state.

It's an issue that is forefront on the minds of many healthcare workers as the state works to vaccinate Georgians against COVID-19. The event was held at 8:30 a.m.

Watch the roundtable on 11Alive's YouTube page.

There has been some hesitancy with the vaccine across the board, with just about half of Americans under 65 reporting in a December CDC survey that they would get the COVID-19 shots when they become eligible. While that's still considered low, that's up from 39% back in September.

The CDC says the groups most hesitant to get the shots are young adults, women and - especially - Black Americans.

There is a history of distrust amongst Blacks and the US medical field, after documented medical mistreatment. That's because America has a dark past of experimenting with unethical medical practices in Black communities.

Among those events is the Tuskegee Experiment, when, from 1932 to 1972, 600 Black men from Macon County, Alabama were unknowingly infected with syphilis. Doctors purposely did not tell the men the correct diagnosis, and instead withheld treatment so they could study the full progression of Syphilis.

Another example is the North Carolinas eugenics program. Between 1929 to the late 1970s, under the Eugenics Law, the state sterilized close to 7,600 poor men and women, most of whom were Black. That process made it impossible for them to have children.

The medical field is now working to re-build that trust with Black patients, tapping visible members of the Black community to demonstrate the safety of the COVID vaccine.

Excerpt from:

Gov. Kemp, Toomey participate in Morehouse School of Medicine roundtable on vaccine hesitancy - 11Alive.com WXIA

A year later, the Jewish peace group Never Again Action highlighted a difficult history not taught in most schools, while linking Amazons practices directly to the tech industrys record of supporting human rights abuses. In a 2019 protest of the companys actions, the group organized a march from a Holocaust memorial in Boston to the Amazon offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[W]eve seen this before, said protester Ben Lorber, I had ancestors killed in the Holocaust.

As a relatively new tech company, Amazon is at a crossroads. Will the company travel down a familiar road taken by other tech behemoths who turned a blind eye to human rights and workers rights? Or will it opt for the unfamiliar path, refusing to sell its technology and services in support of human rights abuses while also taking a strong, affirmative stance for better workplace conditions and greater diversity within its ranks? In large measure, this decision will fall to the incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Lorber and many others are pleading and protesting for the road less travelled.

In the spring of 2020, bowing to pressure from its rivals IBM and Microsoft, Amazon announced it would cease selling Rekognition to law enforcement agencies, but only for one year. The end of that year is coming up. In December, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, a large institutional shareholder, along with the Vermont State Treasurers Office, jointly filed a proposal calling on the worlds largest online retailer to curtail surveillance technologies like Rekognition.

But that investor proposal went further, asking Amazon to curb hate speech, increase diversity and improve workplace conditions. It was eerily prescient. Only several weeks later, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol showed Amazon had provided a safe haven for white nationalists to spew hate, organize and even plan their attack. By the time the social media platform Parler, used by many white nationalist groups, was taken down from the Amazon Web Services cloud, the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile, workers at the company's warehouses continue to endure unjust labor practices. During a pandemic, when so many have turned to Amazon, these workers bear the brunt of increased demand without adequate protective equipment and working conditions to shield them from the virus. Many Amazon factory workers come from communities of color already ravaged by COVID-19.

Amazon has said it stands with the nationwide movement to identify and bring an end to systemic racism, yet it continues to face claims of racial discrimination, said a disappointed Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York state comptroller and trustee of the New York retirement fund.

Instead of welcoming this opportunity, Amazon appealed to the Securities and Exchange Commission to block these proposals from being voted on at its upcoming shareholder meeting. Its a strategic blunder and a tone-deaf response to attempts aimed at preventing the company from tragically following in the footsteps of another high-tech giant.

In the late 1920s, IBM, a newly minted company, and its audacious president, Thomas J. Watson Sr., threw its technological prowess behind the eugenics movement. Eugenics sought to further reproduction of blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned individuals the so-called Nordic stock while eliminating the bloodlines of undesirables such as Blacks, Jews, Native Americans, Hispanics, the Irish, Italians, mixed-race individuals, LGBTQ+ people and the mentally and physically ill.

A major 1926 study by the Eugenics Record Organization on the island of Jamaica was at risk because eugenicists had no way of tabulating and reporting on so-called pure blood Europeans and their mixed-race offspring, whom together numbered in the millions.

But IBM did.

IBM engineers worked with the Eugenics Record Organization, headquartered in Cold Springs Harbor, New York, to design punch card formats for collecting, sorting, tabulating, printing and storing information on racial characteristics, allowing the organization to declare the Jamaica study a success in 1929 and announce plans for another, similar global project.

Four years later, Watson and IBM brought automated racial classification to Hitler and the Third Reich. Nearly every aspect of the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine was supported by punch card technology, courtesy of IBM. Each concentration camp had an IBM room, where punch cards held prisoners fates, down to the means of their extermination firing squad, gas chamber, oven or being worked to death.

With Germanys defeat, IBM turned next to South Africa, automating most aspects of apartheid. The company even designed specialized equipment to print the Book of Life passbook,carried by white and Colored South Africans,and the dreaded national identification card, which Black South Africans were forced to show on penalty of arrest. Then, after apartheid, IBMs use of technology to circumvent human rights returned to American soil. In 2005, the company used secret CCTV footage of unwitting New Yorkers collected by the New York City Police Department to improve facial recognition technology in order to discriminate based on skin color.

So when protesters in Boston said they had seen this before, they were deliberately connecting Amazons present to IBMs past, pleading that Amazon not repeat the mistakes of a previous generation. Some shareholders understood this and took up that call as well.

Workers rights within high-tech firms bear a similar dark history. In 1970, Black employees organized the National Black Workers Alliance of IBM (BWA) to demand the company hire more Black people, promote Blacks workers more equitably, provide Black employees equal pay and withdraw from apartheid issues similar to those being demanded by Amazon shareholders today.

BWA leaders were targeted with poor performance evaluations, denial of pay raises, accusations of violating company policy by disclosing pay and promotion data and, in one case, false allegations of sexual abuse. Many were fired, demoted or forced to resign.

BWA was fighting systemic racism that still exists at Amazon and other high-tech firms, where a majority of board and senior decision-making positions are held by white men. Less than 3% of high-level positions at high-tech firms are held by people of color. And this is not a pipeline problem. Qualified candidates can be found, if high-tech firms can find the will.

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against Amazon, allowing workers at a Bessemer, Alabama warehouse to vote on unionizing. The SEC should follow suit and insist that shareholder proposals are also brought to a vote.

Jeff Bezos may be stepping down as Amazons CEO, but the problems identified by workers, protesters and shareholders remain. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the time is always right to do right. Yet companies like Amazon seem to operate as though that time never arrives; that profits are always more important than people, even in the wake of George Floyds death and calls for racial equity, synagogue attacks, four years of official lies supporting racial hatred and division and an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. King said it best. Now is the right time for Amazon to do right.

Read more here:

Opinion | On human rights, Amazon is at a crossroads - Crosscut

From the right: Open Our Schools

Many liberals continually ignore the science that shows students can safely return to school, notes Wisconsin ex-Gov. Scott Walker at The Washington Times. The CDC confirmed that vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools, and plenty of teachers . . . are eager to be in the classroom, yet their union is blocking the way. Soaring enrollment at Catholic and private schools proves that parents understand that their children perform better with in-person instruction. Instead of letting the big government union bosses or liberal school administrators decide whats best for individual families, we should put the power in the hands of parents to make the right choice for their daughters and sons. It is time to open our schools.

At his Weekly Dish blog, Andrew Sullivan takes on the rising claims that the classics are inherently racist. He points to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s syllabus for a 1962 Morehouse College seminar, with Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine all the way up to John Stuart Mill. King grasped . . . the core meaning of a liberal education, the faith that ideas can transcend space and time and culture and race. But now comes a broadening movement in the academy to abolish or dismantle the classics because of their iniquitous whiteness. The main claim: Since racist and imperialist societies drew on these ideas, the classics are therefore fatally tainted. But: Thats like saying that science should no longer exist because some scientists once practiced eugenics.

With the impeachment of ex-President Donald Trump and a focus on Republican infighting, the propaganda media and the Democrats . . . want to keep the GOP crouched in a circular firing squad shooting at itself, warns former Speaker Newt Gingrich at Newsweek. Yet Republicans have every reason to be optimistic, with a much stronger position in state governments and excellent opportunities in 2022. And the party will remain largely unified and focused on creating more jobs, lowering taxes, increasing take-home pay, defending Americas interests around the world and developing solutions in health, learning, space and other areas that matter to our future. In the end, the Republican Party of entrepreneurship and hard work will defeat the Democratic Party of unemployment and redistribution.

As Jane Austen wryly wrote, a good memory is unpardonable and a bad memory is going to be absolutely crucial in the new administration, snarks Roger Kimball at Spectator USA. Perhaps the Big Tech wardens in charge of what we can see and hear and think will start censoring items such as the clip from a Democratic debate where Kamala Harris lit into her now-boss on the issue of busing. As California attorney general, she was not above concealing exculpatory evidence that might exonerate people on death row, but you wont see that in the Vogue cover stories of the new VP or in rapturous interviews with her on CNN. But the biggest challenge will be keeping which acts of violence are OK, indeed commendable, separate from those which are not OK and must be regarded as totally reprehensible.

At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, retired cop Kim Voss recalls the firebombing of her Third Precinct office during the George Floyd riots: While our leadership held us back and we remained unsupported by our state, our city and our police administration, our neighborhoods burned. We felt helpless. The department has now seen almost one-third of its sworn personnel leave due to PTSD both diagnosed and undiagnosed. This is what happens when those in leadership disregard warning flags and stick their heads in the sand, leaving cops on the front lines to pay the price. Its tragic: If someone, anyone, in leadership from the city or the Police Department had reached out to us and talked to us as if they really cared about us, you would not be seeing one-third of our department leaving. That is a lot of experience walking away.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Open Our Schools and other commentary - New York Post