Category Archives: Eugenics

President Trump has alarmed Jewish leaders and others with remarks that appeared to endorse racehorse theory the idea that selective breeding can improve a countrys performance, which American eugenicists and German Nazis used in the last century to buttress their goals of racial purity.

You have good genes, you know that, right? Trump told a mostly white crowd of supporters in Bemidji, Minn., on Sept. 18. You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isnt it? Dont you believe? The racehorse theory. You think were so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.

Rabbi Mark Diamond, a senior lecturer on Jewish studies at Loyola Marymount University, was stunned.

To hear these remarks said at a rally in an election campaign for the presidency is beyond reprehensible, said Diamond, the former executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

This is at the heart of Nazi ideology This has brought so much tragedy and destruction to the Jewish people and to others. Its actually hard to believe in 2020 we have to revisit these very dangerous theories.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Trumps remark was not the first time that he has spoken favorably about the racehorse analogy, which has been embraced by white supremacists for decades. But these latest comments come as the country has been roiled over racial injustice and the protests against it. Trump has continued to make inflammatory remarks and his campaign has made blatantly racist appeals.

During the presidential debate Tuesday, he touched upon the genetic theory, returning to a frequent sentiment that ones skills are innate.

You could never have done the job we did, Trump said to former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee. You dont have it in your blood.

Trump has long spoken about his beliefs in the superiority of his genes, dating back to his days as a Manhattan developer; hes talked less frequently of his belief in the racehorse theory, which basically calls for using breeding to encourage desirable traits and eliminate undesirable traits.

Initially used for horses, the theory was ultimately used to justify selective breeding of people, including forced sterilization laws that were on the books in 32 states and used in some of them up through the 1970s.

Scientists who study human intelligence and accomplishment generally agree that while genetics may play some role, the success of individuals is heavily shaped by their environment, including their families and neighborhoods, as well as other factors including mentoring some people receive and simple chance.

Trump views the issue differently.

You can absolutely be taught things. Absolutely. You can get a lot better. But there is something. You know, the racehorse theory, there is something to the genes, Trump told Larry King on CNN in 2007. And I mean, when I say something, I mean a lot.

Three years later, he told CNN that his father was successful and it naturally followed that he would be too: I have a certain gene. Im a gene believer. Hey, when you connect two racehorses, you usually end up with a fast horse. And I really was you know, I had a a good gene pool from the standpoint of that.

He used the phrase again at a 2016 campaign rally in Iowa, and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., told his fathers biographer that the family believed in the theory.

Like him, Im a big believer in racehorse theory. Hes an incredibly accomplished guy, my mothers incredibly accomplished, shes an Olympian, so Id like to believe genetically Im predisposed to better-than-average, Trump Jr. told Michael DAntonio in a 2014 interview, according to a transcript provided by the author.

DAntonio, now a Trump critic whose scathing biography Never Enough was published in 2015, vividly recalled the interview.

I happened to have done a book on eugenics so I knew exactly what he was talking about, I knew where it came from, said DAntonio, who had written a nonfiction book about the confinement of learning-disabled orphans in Massachusetts. This was something American pseudo-scientists taught the Nazis. It sent a chill through me.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, some mainstream scientists and elected officials in the United States, particularly in California, urged the improvement of the citizenry through eugenics. The concept was often used against people of color, Jewish people and Native Americans, but it was also used against white people who were deemed feeble-minded, delinquent or otherwise damaged.

Eugenics arose in the U.S. as the gains Black people had made during the Reconstruction era came under attack by white people aiming to maintain power, often by murder and mob violence. It was also used to argue against immigration by Italians and others.

Across the U.S., there were two avenues that eugenicists used to exploit what they thought of as the racehorse theory of human development, DAntonio said.

The first was to encourage people deemed to have superior traits to have large families. These efforts were partly encouraged by fitter family competitions at state fairs, where well-nourished white families would be judged on their height, weight, size of their heads and symmetry of their faces alongside the competitions for the heartiest livestock and largest crops. Winners would frequently be recognized in newspapers.

(Nazi Germany ran the Lebensborn program to cultivate Aryan traits. The state provided support to pregnant women mostly unmarried deemed racially pure; many of the babies were given to German couples, often SS officers and their families.)

The second avenue in the U.S. was institutionalization and sterilization. Children, often minorities, who were deemed troubled or labeled with the term imbeciles were confined to institutions. More than 65,000 people were officially sterilized against their will, said Paul Lombardo, a Georgia State University law professor who specializes in bioethics, though he suspects the actual number is far larger.

He said eugenics theory was used to justify forced sterilization laws, as well as immigration restrictions and miscegenation prohibitions. American eugenicists conversed with German leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, and their policies became part of the Nazi playbook. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote approvingly about the United States immigration restrictions, Lombardo said.

At the Nuremberg trials, after World War II, Nazi defenders noted that Americans had also forcibly sterilized people and quoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from the 1920s that said state laws allowing such procedures did not violate the Constitution, said Lombardo, who has written two books on the history of eugenics in the U.S.

When Trump says at a rally in Minnesota, You have good genes, I believe in the racehorse theory of heredity, he has all of the earmarks of a classic eugenicist, Lombardo said. It has been astounding to me as somebody who has studied this stuff for 40 years that any public figure would be willing to use that kind of language that so clearly echoes the kinds of things we heard from the people who were running the eugenics movement back in the 20s and 30s.

Rob Eshman, the former editor of the Jewish Journal who is now the national editor of the influential Jewish American online newspaper the Forward, said Trumps language was a clear signal to his supporters who harbor racist or anti-Semitic views.

Racehorse theory is basically like a forerunner to eugenics theory, which led to the Nazis final solution, Eshman said after Trumps Minnesota comments. Its one of the least coded messages he has sent.

See the rest here:

Jewish leaders alarmed by Trump's support of 'racehorse theory' - Los Angeles Times

Black students have attended the uni since the 1800s!

Did you hear David Hume pretty much got cancelled? Edinburgh Uni even changed the name of their infamous DHT to 40 George Square recently. I mean its pretty awkward when a great thinker and one of the Unis most famous alumnae doesnt think very much of black people. Yikes.

Because, lets face it, Edinburgh is oh-so white. The UKs last census revealed that black people make up a measly 1.4 per cent of the citys population. This context of a majority white space means that black stories and voices can be overlooked when care is not taken.

Beyond Edinburgh, black people are a minority group in the UK. That said, black people are only minorities in specific contexts. Black people around the world deserve respect and acceptance like everyone else. And believe it or not, there are places in the world where we dont have to prove our humanity.

So here are some facts and stories that reveal a history of Edinburgh that dares to look beyond deceased male caucasians. Cheers to all the people who were told to go back to Ahfricah and never did! We see you!

Here we go:

source url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013645427/resource/

Frederick Douglass went from oppressed slave to an abolitionist intellectual. His story is incredible. After escaping his life of slavery in Maryland he fled to the North as a free man.

In 1846, Douglass gave a speech at the Assembly Rooms sharing the story of an escaped slave to an audience of over 2000 people!

Adverts appeared in papers marketing the sale of enslaved people or offering rewards for their capture. In 1727 in the Edinburgh Evening Courant read:

Run away on the 7th instant from Dr Gustavus Browns Lodgings in Glasgow, a Negro Woman, named Ann, being about 18 Years of Age, with a green Gown and a Brass Collar about her Neck, on which are engraved these words [Gustavus Brown in Dalkieth his Negro, 1726.] Whoever apprehends her, so as she may be recovered, shall have two Guineas Reward, and necessary Charges allowed by Laurence Dinwiddie Junior Merchant in Glasgow, or by James Mitchelson Jeweller in Edinburgh.

By 1817, Scots owned about 37 per cent of the slaves on plantations in Jamaica. Edinburgh benefitted massively from these profits. Many of Newtowns residents were involved in the slave trade and the luxury of the area reflected this.

Sir Geoff Palmer OBE became Scotlands first black professor in 1989. Before this achievement, he was rejected from a PhD at The Ministry of Agriculture. Unfazed by this, he accepted a place studying a PhD delivered by Heriot-Watt and The University of Edinburgh.

I spoke to the amazing professor and activist who shared his thoughts on academia in the UK,academic staff representation in our higher education institutions does not reflect the racial demographics of our society.Black and others non-white graduates should be encouraged to to become academics. A diverse society requires diverse management to be fair and prosperous.

Acc 000095, Box 3, Folder 32 Alexander Graham Bell; Photograph of Alexander Graham Bell, an American scientist and inventor of the telephone.

Graham Bell attended The University of Edinburgh and is known best for inventing the telephone. However, he also supported the study of eugenics which insisted on the inferiority of non-white races and often sought to control or sterilise non-white populations.

Between 1756 and 1778 slaves attempted to obtain their freedom in Edinburgh courts. The last of these appeals was successful, the case of Joseph Knight. In 1778, the runaway servant argued that Scots law could not support the status of slavery and won.

The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act freed hundreds of thousands of slaves in the Caribbean and beyond. Although this law ended legal slavery, it was the beginning of hefty payouts to slaveowners for their losses!

The 90s saw organised far-right harrasment and violence against black folk living in the Muirhouse area in Northern Edinburgh. In response, the Muirhouse Anti-Racism Campaign was set up and campaigned for the council to pay for the costs of racism victims moving home and to evict perpetrators of racist crimes. They campaigned against the intimidation perpetrated largely by young men claiming to be a part of the far-right British Nationalist Party.

Jamaican-born William Ferguson is the first known black student to enrol at the uni in 1809. Also, Africanus Horton from Sierra Leone, graduated from The University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1859. This info was revealed by theUncoverED research project. The project is led by students at our uni held an exhibition in 2018 celebrating non-white communities and historic figures linked to the uni.

The Edinburgh Carribean society organises tours from Old town to Newtown that reveal a fresh perspective on the monuments and sights of Edinburgh. All the autumn dates for the tours are sold out unfortunately but Im sure more will pop up at the start of next year.

Read the original here:

Here's an accurate Black history of Edinburgh, from eugenics to reparations - The Tab

Good Genes, Amy Coney Barretts Nomination, and the Pastand Presentof Eugenics

This article features Government Accountability Project and our client Dawn Wooten and was originally published here.

Good genes, President Trump remarked as he gazed over at Amy Coney Barrett and her seven children, whilenominating her to fill the seatformerly occupied by Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg. It was a phrase he echoed at a nearly all-white rally last week in Bemidji, Minn., and for decades before.

In interviews throughout his fraught real estate career, Trump often mentioned his good genes, touting eugenics, a pseudoscientific theory of genetic superiority that took root in America, shaped Hitlers race laws and led to Nazi Germanys forced sterilization of undesirablesJews to lesbians to epileptics.

I thought ofeugenics two weeks agowhen nurse Dawn Wooten filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging immigrant women at an ICE detention center in Irwin County, Ga., weresubjected to coercive hysterectomieswithfirsthand accounts from detaineescontinuing to emerge.

Among them, Pauline Binam, a Cameroon native, said Dr. Mahendra Amin was meant to excise ovarian cysts, but removed her Fallopian tube against her will. Amindubbed the uterus collectordenied the allegations, as did ICE. The ACLU and other groups are investigating the allegations.

The New York Times reported Tuesdaythat 16 more women came forward, alleging unnecessary and non-consensual surgeries that some say were painful or felt coerced into, brought to Dr. Amin in shackles, never understanding what was being done or why. The Irwin County correctional facility also reported an alarmingly high number of gynecological procedures for a facility of its size.

These horrifying reports take on extra urgency with Ginsburgs passing andthe nomination of Barretta woman who has pledged her loyalty to People of Praise, an authoritarian religious group that promotes faith healing, speaking in tongues and prophecies over medicine, and where women, called handmaidens (until the success of the Netflix series based on Margaret Atwoods book The Handmaids Tale), submit to the will of their male leads, who make decisions concerning their careers, marriage and, yes, their wombs.

In the early 1970s,Ginsburg challenged a North Carolina eugenics programwhich she argued was unconstitutional. Her client, Nial Ruth Cox, an unwed black teenage mom, was coerced into a tubal ligation or else her familys welfare benefits would be terminated.

Why do you keep worrying, keep asking questions? her surgeon asked her, assuring her the procedure was reversible, while secretly listing her an 18-year-old mentally deficient Negro girl, and therefore worthy of permanent sterilization.

Why do you keep asking questions?

I had heard that throughout my life when I pressed my late mother about her elusive youth, and more recently, when I uncovered she was imprisoned in a Nazi womens slave labor camp and began finding survivors. A woman named Fela spoke of beatings, hunger, humiliating sexual abuse and then something I wasnt prepared to hear.

She got such a shot! she said referring to my mother. They injected us all. We didnt know what it was. Then we all stopped getting our periods.

The words hit me like a bullet. Its not that I didnt know about Nazi experiments, but because my mom could have kids, I hadnt gone there. I figured Fela hadnt heard of amenorrhea or was ashamed of her infertility.

Those who survived the Holocaust were committed to regenerating the Jewish nation, which meant those who were unable to get pregnant suffered great shame, says Cooper Union history professor Atina Grossmann, author of Reforming Sex.

Nazi policies of sterilization have been well documented at state health offices under the Department of Gene and Race Care, Grossmann notes.

The sterilization law went into effect in 1934, resulting in some 320,000 Germans sterilized from 1934-1939 at some 1,100 state clinics. These barbaric procedures were carried out at 1,100 state clinics and later at Auschwitz and Ravensbrck, where Polish gentile women were designated rabbits.

But at a small womens camp in a remote Sudeten town,why would the Nazis bother to sterilize Jewish girls smuggled in from Poland?Then I thought of the ICE detention center in sleepy Irwin County, Ga., where invisible hands decided the fates and fertilities of incarcerated young women, and proof was in short supply.

Those who courageously came forward were met with retaliation. Wooten claims she was demoted after speaking out and that most of her witnesses vanished without a trace. DHS tried to deport Pauline Binam, but Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas)had her plane halted at OHare Airportand had her to testify at a Congressional subcommittee last week.

Others werent as lucky. A witness in a sexual abuse case at an ICE detention center in El Paso, Texas, was deported,reported The Texas TribuneandProPublica.

There is a pattern of burying the evidence, says Naomi Steinberg, VP of policy and advocacy for HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). Medical records are being destroyed, there is an alleged refusal to test people for COVID at these centers, which point to medical neglect, violence and cruelty.

My attempts to corroborate Felas allegations didnt yield site specific proof, but led me to a cache of Nazi correspondence presented as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.

In a letter to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, dated June 23, 1942, SS-Oberfuehrer Brack writes:

According to my impression there are at least 2-3 million men and women well fit for work among the approx. 10 million European Jews. In consideration of the exceptional difficulties posed for us by the question of labor, I am of the opinion that these 2-3 million should in any case be taken out and kept alive. Of course this can only be done if they are in the same time rendered incapable of reproduction. I reported to you about a year ago that persons under my instruction have completed the necessary experiments for this purpose.

Further correspondence detailed X-rays done on men and injections given to women.

In a letter to Himmler, dated June 7, 1943, Professor Clauberg wrote:

One adequately trained physician with perhaps 10 assistants will most likely be able to deal with several hundred, if not even 1,000 per day.

One thousand sterilizations a daythat was the goal. These letters provided the basis of the definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Brack, a defendant at the Nuremberg tribunal, was subsequently hanged.

We dont have to turn everything into Nazi Germany to warrant shock and a response, says Grossmann. We have our own history of eugenics in the U.S., which inspired Nazi racial policy.

The first American eugenics case that made it to the Supreme Court,Buck v. Bellin 1927, deemed the involuntary tubal ligation of a feeble minded unwed mother in Virginia beneficial to the welfare of society. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously wrote: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

The ruling paved the way for 30,000 sterilizations to occur in 39 states, as well as the Immigration Act of 1924, which prevented Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany from settling here.

Involuntary sterilization was so pervasive among Black women in the South, it was dubbed the Mississippi appendectomy,according to the Boston Womens Collectives Our Bodies, Ourselves.

From the 1930s to the 70s, a third of Puerto Rican women had been subjected to la operacin, as they called the procedure, brought to light by Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trias, a Puerto-Rican New Yorker who founded the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA) and the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA).

In 1970, Puerto Rico had the highest sterilization rate of anywhere in the world. That was also the year the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act passed, which targeted 25-50 percent ofNative American women.

North Carolina revoked its eugenics program in time to declare RBGs suit moot, but not every state has.Buck v. Belllives on in Virginia. California, which rendered 200,000 of its citizens infertile, authorized the forced sterilization of 150 women inmates from 2006 to 2010.

It may be premature to refer to the cases in Irwin County as mass sterilization, says John Whitty, staff attorney with the Government Accountability Project representing Wooten. Estimates range from 10 to 100, based on limited access to a small number of those in a position to discuss these matters. Already, the number is frightening enough.

Or as HIASs Steinberg says: I have a feeling this is the tip of the iceberg.

In his closing statement at the Nuremberg Trials, prosecutor Telford Taylor referred to involuntary sterilization as a violation of the most fundamental tenet of medical ethics and human decency.

That moral imperative guided Ginsburg, who spoke of sterilization at her SCOTUS Senate confirmation hearing,stating the importance of procreation to an individuals autonomy.

And thats why we must oppose Barretts appointment to the highest court. A judge who believes in authoritarianism over autonomy, appointed by a president who shamelessly shouts good genes, invoking the darkest chapters in our history and known to silence witnesses and be less than forthcoming with the truth, is an affront to our values.

Read more:

Ms. Magazine: "Good Genes," Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination, and the Pastand Presentof Eugenics - Government Accountability Project

You didnt see it in the movie about her, or in most of the innumerable tributes (all well-deserved) recently, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg also fought an injustice in North Carolina.

In 1973, the Supreme Court justice-to-be took on the sordid legacy of eugenics in this state. As director of the ACLU Womens Rights Project, Ginsburg and Womens Rights Project co-founder Brenda Feigen filed a federal lawsuit in North Carolina on behalf of Nial Ruth Cox, a Black woman who had been forcibly sterilized by the state in 1965.

When Cox became pregnant at age 18, county officials gave her mother a choice: to have Cox sterilized, or to lose welfare benefits for her children. Cox and her mother also were told by a doctor that the process was reversible when it wasnt. Those officials saw the pregnancy as proof of Coxs immorality.

The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).

A panel of judges reversed the decision in 1975, Ria Tabacco Mar, the current director of the ACLUs Womens Rights Project, wrote last week in a Washington Post op-ed.

But by that point it didnt matter, the three-judge panel ruled. The sterilization program had been ended and so whether it was unconstitutional became moot.

In the end, the state did compensate forced-sterilization victims. And Ginsburgs memories of it were vivid and her opinions obviously strong.

When Mar hosted a discussion with Ginsburg about her career in February, she wrote on her op-ed, she didnt get to a planned question about the North Carolina eugenics case for lack of time.

Ginsburg said to her afterward, You didnt ask me about forced sterilization!

Now Mar writes that she wishes she had.

Sad to say, the issue has resurfaced. Some immigrant women in a privately operated detention center in Georgia allege that they underwent hysterectomies without their consent.

The more things change ?

Greensboro News & Record

The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).

See the original post:

An issue that has resurfaced - Laurinburg Exchange

October 5, 2020 | :

Indiana University is removing the name of former President David Starr Jordan from places on its Bloomington campus because of his support for eugenics, the Kokomo Tribune reported.

David Starr Jordan

IUs Board of Trustees voted 8-1 Friday to strip Jordans name from a classroom building, a garage and a creek. The Jordan River will be Campus River temporarily; Jordan Hall will be Biology Building and Jordan Parking Garage will be East Parking Garage.

The move came as a recommendation from IU President Dr. Michael McRobbie.

Jordan was an IU zoology professor before becoming president from 1885 to 1891.

Eugenics is the practice of controlled selective breeding of humans often carried out through forced sterilization, and Jordan wrote about his belief that humanity would thrive only if the fittest were promoted, reportedThe Tribune.

Jordan promoted a branch of eugenic thought known as negative eugenics, which later sought, through marriage laws, forced sterilization practices, and immigration controls, to prevent breeding among those deemed to be of unfit stock, McRobbie told the board.

Jordan later became president of Stanford University.

Read the original:

Indiana University Removes Name of Former President From Campus Sites - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

President Donald Trump recently made a reference to the controversial "racehorse theory" of human breeding, which has become a subject of scrutiny by critics as many wonder whether the Republican actually endorses it. The "racehorse theory" is an offensive and dangerous notion that selective breeding can boost a particular nation in certain ways. The controversial "racehorse theory," infamously practiced by the Nazis when they massacred millions of Jews, involves selective breeding and eugenics. The theory, which was initially used for horses and breeding, was later used to justify the selective breeding of humans. The unfounded theory espouses that human race can be made better by selective breeding, a claim which has been widely discredited.

Trump, on September 18, the night Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, made a campaign appearance in Bemidji, Minnesota, and made an alarming reference to eugenics and the racehorse theory. "You have good genes, you know that right? the president said to a nearly all-white crowd. A lot of it is about the genes, isnt it? Dont you believe? The racehorse theory, Trump said. You think were so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."

Author of 'NeuroTribes', Steve Silberman, also slammed Trump's reference to the theory, likening it to the Nazis. Silberman tweeted: "As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us."

As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us. https://t.co/CHMLg804mp

President Trump also appeared to make a reference to eugenics during the first 2020 presidential debate against his political rival, Democratic nominee Joe Biden on September 29. Trump told Biden: "You could never have done the job we did. You dont have it in your blood."

The Republican has also referred to the "racehorse theory" before he won the presidency. Trump, while talking to CNN's Larry King in 2007, had said: "You can absolutely be taught things. Absolutely. You can get a lot better. But there is something. You know, the racehorse theory, there is something to the genes. And I mean, when I say something, I mean a lot."

This is not the first time Trump's reference to eugenics has come under the scanner and has been analyzed. The Republican's biographer, Michael D'Antonio, the author of 'The Truth About Trump', had previously stated that the Trump family has a "very deep attraction" to eugenics. D'Antonio, while talking to Rolling Stone, had said: "The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development, that they believe that there are superior people, and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get superior offspring."

President Trump, who contracted the novel coronavirus last week, came back to the White House from the Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday, October 5. However, he is still believed to be infectious and received widespread backlash for removing his mask when he returned to the White House, and urged Americans to not to fear the COVID-19 disease that has killed over 209,000 people in the country.

Read the original:

Has Trump endorsed 'racehorse theory'? POTUS likely a believer in controversial notion about 'superior people' - MEAWW

[Editors Note: This is Part 1 in a four-part series on disability and horror.]

Watching horror films is a disabling experience, Angela M. Smith, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies for the University of Utah and author of the book Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema, said. Its a controlled encounter with discomfort, with the vulnerability of our minds and bodies to images and suggestions that opens us to unwilled transformations.

The horror film revels in the world of deformity and grotesqueness and, to a disabled viewer, that can be confusing in how relatable it is. For many, to be disabled is also to look different, so how does a person with a disability approach the horror genre when the presented thing to fear is themselves?

Smith said people werent ready for Freaks in the 1930s, and shes absolutely correct. Freaks, for better and worse, remains one of the only U.S. features to have a predominately disabled cast despite being released 88 years ago. Directed by Dracula helmer Tod Browning, Freaks tells the story of a circus troupe and what happens when they discover that little person Hans (Harry Earles) is being poisoned and duped by the able-bodied Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova).

RelatedRelated

Freaks, weirdly enough, feels like an authentic horror feature. Even now, the majority of films see able-bodied actors portraying disability that, coupled with able-bodied screenwriters and directors, presents a tableau of disability an imitation. Freaks is the story of a close-knit family, a group of outcasts who support and love each other.

I want to be part of that community, Salome Chasnoff, director of the documentary on disability in horror, Code of the Freaks said to IndieWire. I love the affection and commitment they have to each other. I want to live in a world where people are that committed to me.

Much of this comes from the fact that Browning himself was a part of a traveling circus in his youth. He saw the disabled people that commonly populated what were then called freak shows and wanted to find a way to pay tribute to them. So when star Earles brought up to Browning that he should adapt the short story Spurs by Tod Robbins, the director made MGM buy it for Browning to direct. The basic tenets of the story in Spurs remain, namely the relationship between Hans and Cleopatra, but Browning and a series of directors worked to create a depiction that, at the time, presented the circus performers as people.

Everett Collection (freaks1932-fsct08)

And that warmth is found in snatches throughout Freaks. Outside of the community Chasnoff refers to, there are various storylines showing the day-to-day world of these performers. Frances OConner, who has no arms, is seen casually eating with her feet while performer Prince Randian, known as The Living Torso, rolls a cigarette with his mouth. These scenes, presented so matter-of-factly, display disability as normal. What looks unconventional to an able-bodied person is basic and unspectacular. In these scenes Browning tries to destigmatize the disabled and remind them, in 1932, that theyre people.

Its one of the few films where we can see our disabled ancestors before they were excised from the movies, Carrie Sandhal, Associate Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago said. We got to see them as actors as well as people.

For many disabled people who grew up without others like them, Freaks became a gateway feature to champion. The shooting process was difficult, unaided by the fact that the circus performers were forced to eat outside the MGM commissary, due to complaints from the studios stars about seeing them. And once the film was finished, head of production Irving Thalberg was not happy with what he saw. Test screenings were rumored to have audiences fleeing the theater. One woman allegedly threatened to sue MGM because the sight of the disabled actors on-screen caused her to have a miscarriage. Its unclear whether much of this was created by MGM itself in order to better sell Freaks as a horror feature.

Regardless, the studio immediately excised 30 minutes out of the movie, much of which were scenes showing the circus performers in a positive light. Its a classic film tragedy that still stings today, especially for disabled performers like Adam Pearson who believe Freaks is a masterpiece.

Its so unfortunate that half of it is on the cutting room floor, he said. It got completely bastardized and diluted by the studio.

After further cuts, many of which are now lost, the feature was transformed into a horror movie aimed at able-bodied audiences. Reviews were negative and Freaks was a box office bomb. Not only did it effectively end Brownings career as a director, many of the able-bodied actors were blacklisted. The actors with disabilities, like the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, were left purely making features that treated them as the freaks MGM wanted them to be.

Courtesy Everett Collection

As Smith lays out, the way Freaks turned out was par for the course in 1930s cinema. As she explained, eugenics was a huge element of not just horror films at the time but within society.

There wasa [belief] in external appearance as something thatcould reveal inner pathology, she said. So visible disability or difference was interpreted as a sign of this inner deviance, which was also interpreted in terms of immorality and criminality.

That theme is seen in 1930s features such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but its not so clear-cut in Freaks.

In the 1930s, audiences didnt want to confront difference and accept human variability, and so they condemned Freaks, Smith said.

The characters arent aesthetically conventional, but for over half the movie we see them as kind-hearted, normal people. In fact, the irony Browning presents is that for all of Cleopatras beauty she is so cold-hearted that shes willing to kill Hans for his money. The film languished for several decades until the 1960s when it was embraced by the counterculture as an example of oppression, injustice, and rebellion. And within the last few decades the movie has been the subject of fierce discussion by disabled advocates, critics, and movie lovers about whether its genius or exploitative.

It definitely exploits the sensationalistic thrills of the freak show, presenting these bodies as deviant and threatening, but only after it shows us that these performers are quite ordinary people, driven to defend themselves against supposedly normal individuals who prey on and harm them, Smith said.

But it also forces the viewer, more able-bodied than not, to confront the nature of difference and realize how we view those who are different, and disability by extension, has more to do with societal norms and our prejudices than the person themselves.

[Tod Browning] was a huckster. He had come from exploitation, Tommy Heffron, film and video artist and an Assistant Professorin the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University, said. But for all of Brownings hucksterism, Heffron said the director still created empathy in his characters while simultaneously making a film so shocking it was banned in England for 32 years. More importantly, for Heffron especially, the fact that audiences are still talking about it 88 years later speaks volumes. Its something Pearson seconds, especially factoring in that it remains the only U.S. film to have a predominately disabled cast.

Freaks is divisive, its dated, but its also groundbreaking, entertaining, and frustrating. Have we necessarily improved when it comes to disability in horror? The answer is uncertain. But this Halloween season it might be worth diving deeper into the world of horror to find out the disability narratives underneath.

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

See the rest here:

Freaks Is the Granddaddy of Disabled Horror, for Better and Worse - IndieWire

News broke last week of an official complaint filed against immigration officials alleging a pattern of hysterectomies without informed consent on women from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Georgia. Dawn Wooten, the nurse who blew the whistle on the allegations of abuse, and who legal advocacy groups filed the complaint on her behalf, had worked at the privately-operated Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, for three years. During that time, she alleged multiple hysterectomies were performed on Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of whom said they did not understand the procedure. ICE has denied the claims, the doctor accused of performing the procedures has denied the claims through attorneys, and the hospital where the procedures would have taken place, said it only has records showing that two hysterectomies were performed on those in immigration custody since 2017, according to the Washington Post.

While the cruelty of the allegations came as a shock to many, coerced sterilization is not unprecedented in the broader history of reproductive injustice and violence against people considered "undesirable" in the United Statesoften disabled and indigenous people, people of color, and immigrants.

Racism has been part and parcel of American reproductive healthcare from its beginning. J. Marion Sims, the man known as the "father of modern gynecology," exemplifies this. Sims garnered acclaim for groundbreaking gynecological surgical techniques that he perfected after performing dozens of experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women in Montgomery, Alabama, beginning in 1845. Sims operated on Black women without anesthesia, even though he used it during surgeries on white patients during the period. Sims's decision to operate on Black women without anesthesia went beyond a lack of care for the women; it was tied to pernicious assumptions that Black people were not susceptible to pain. "There was a belief at the time that Black people did not feel pain in the same way," explained Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and professor of medical humanities, in an interview with NPR in 2018. "Their pain was ignored," Gamble says. Baseless theories like these continue to inform modern medicine in measurable ways. Racial biases and false beliefs are associated with Black patients receiving less pain medication for broken bones and cancer than white patients, according to research published in 2016 by the National Academy of Sciences.

A generation after Sims built his career on the backs of Black women, the eugenics movement was growing popular in the United States. With it, States began to pass laws mandating compulsory sterilization for specific populations. The state of Indiana is widely considered to have adopted the world's first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and similar laws were later adopted in 31 other states across the country during the 20th century. The target populations of these laws were defined in legal or pseudo-medical terms"imbeciles," the "feeble-minded"but the laws were deployed in ways that disproportionately victimized poor women and women of color.

Rather than pushing back on eugenic policies during the progressive era that ensued, physicians, legislators, and social reformers further legitimized their prejudiced pseudo-medical norms. American magnates like the Carnegie Foundation and John D. Rockefeller shelled out to fund projects at the Eugenics Record Office, a private research institute that openly supported sterilization as a solution to what it called "defective and delinquent classes of the community." In 1927, when the constitutional legality of compulsory sterilization was questioned in Buck v Bell, the Supreme Court also affirmed that permitting compulsory sterilization of "those who are manifestly unfit" did not violate the constitutional rights of those persons, by a vote of eight to one. Carrie Buck, the plaintiff, was classified at the time as "feeble-minded," but as has been noted, it was actually societal prejudice that earned her this unclear label. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who authored the majority opinion in Buck v Bell, went so far as to claim that compulsory sterilization policies were "better for all the world." Rhetoric like this that framed eugenic sterilization as a positive public health strategy helped ensure the longevity and widespread impact of shameful coerced sterilization policies across the country.

Read more here:

History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States - Teen Vogue

Post Views: 385

Are we Nazi Germany? This is the incredulous response when people hear that an American detention facility has been accused of performing nonconsensual hysterectomies the surgical removal of the uterus on women. Because of the terror associated with Hitlers reign, people tend to connect any extreme systemic violence to that period of history. While it is certainly true that the human rights violations of Nazi Germany were abhorrent, there is just as much violent oppression throughout American history. In fact, the sterilization of women of color has been a huge problem in the United States since the 19th century. The sterilizations that took place at Irwin County Detention Center do not constitute a terrible exception; instead, such occurrences are the norm.

America is a country with a deeply racist past, built through the labor of slaves. While chattel slavery is the most obviously violent form that racism has taken throughout Americas history, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) have faced oppression in a multitude of ways throughout the decades.

Often undergirding the rationale for racist oppression is eugenics, the belief that reproduction should be encouraged in certain desirable groups and discouraged in other undesirable groups. Of course, desirable, in most cases, refers to white, particularly white upper-class people. On the other hand, undesirable generally refers to people of color. Essentially, eugenics calls for the population of people of color to be reduced or at the very least not increased by any means necessary.

Even before the term eugenics was commonly known, plantation owners during American slavery controlled the reproductive lives of their female slaves. Enslaved women were often beaten to the point of infertility, and those who did carry out successful pregnancies were often separated from their children. As the field of eugenics became more popular, doctors and scientists tried different methods to discourage certain groups from reproducing while encouraging others.

In the early to mid 1900s, they frequently blocked upper-class white women from accessing birth control or voluntary hysterectomies, due to their desirable genetics. Around the same time, large numbers of Black women who visited hospitals left without their reproductive organs intact. These women almost never gave consent to the procedure, and were often not even notified that it was happening. After coming to the hospital for routine checkups or minor emergencies, hundreds of women left confused and irreparably harmed by doctors who were supposed to care for them.

According to the whistleblowers report, the women at the Irwin County Detention Center reacted in much the same way when asked about what had happened to them: confused and hurt. Many of the women at the facility visited an outside gynecologist who performed hysterectomies even when the womens medical issues did not call for the surgery. One woman explained that she went into the gynecologists office to have a cyst removed, but he performed a hysterectomy and she left without her uterus.

The gynecologist sterilized women at the facility in other ways as well. One section of the report describes the predicament of a woman who was scheduled to have her left ovary removed, but the gynecologist removed the right one mistakenly. He then went back in to correct the mistake by removing the left one. By the end of her time in the gynecologists office, she was infertile. Whether by medical incompetence or intentional harm, the gynecologist destroyed her reproductive future. At the time of the report, he had become so notorious among the women of the detention center for his sterilizations that he had been nicknamed the uterus collector.

In the world of medicine, patients must be fully informed about what a procedure entails before they can consent to it. As written in the report, the women who visited the gynecologist often expressed that they did not understand why they needed a hysterectomy. In the case of the first woman described above, she went in for a cyst removal and yet received a hysterectomy. Her doctors were not clear with regard to what procedure she needed and why. These women did not and could not have given proper informed consent.

If such gross negligence occurred at a hospital in a predominantly white, upper-class neighborhood, there would be severe and swift consequences for the doctors involved. Yet the Irwin County Detention Centers gynecologist was permitted to continue practicing. Presumably, he was allowed to mistreat these women and perform these sterilizations because, as immigrants and women of color, they are undesirable. Essentially, the Irwin County Detention Center facilitated the practice of eugenics by preventing women of color from reproducing.

There is no doubt that the information coming from the Irwin County Detention Center is disturbing and horrifying. However, it is important to note that none of the atrocities detailed in the report are new or different from what has been happening all over America for centuries. In the last 100 years alone, tens of thousands of Black, Latina and Indigenous women have endured forcible sterilizations because people in power do not believe that they should be able to reproduce. The actions of the gynecologist at the Irwin County facility are not a blip, or an exception; they are part of a long pattern in the history of eugenics. Yet, perhaps the outrage that people are demonstrating in reaction to the whistleblowers report of the detention center sterilizations is exactly what is needed; it is, above all, vital that those fighting for justice never become numb to the racist atrocities of America.

Go here to read the rest:

The ICE Detention Facility Sterilizations Are Nothing New in US History - Study Breaks

Patrick Henry, Times columnist Published 5:01 p.m. CT Oct. 2, 2020

On Sept. 18, Donald Trump was in Bemidji,153 miles from here, but we were on his mind.

"From St. Paul to St. Cloud, from Rochester to Duluth, and from Minneapolis, thank God we still have Minneapolis, to right here, right here with all of you great people, this state was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their families. They were tough and they were strong."

Standard political oratory salute the audience with the narrative they like to tell about themselves (though thank God we still have Minneapolis refers back to his preposterous claim, earlier in the speech,that if Joe Biden wins, people will be saying of that city, It used to be over there. Its all ashes now).

Patrick Henry(Photo: Times photo)

But Trump didnt stop there. What he said next was not just a dog whistle, but as one commentator has noted, a train whistle.

You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of its about the genes, isnt it? Dont you believe? The racehorse theory you think was so different? You have good genes in Minnesota. (The voice recognition software at rev.com, where the transcription of the speech can be found, misheard and produced resource theory. In the video of the speech its perfectly clear: racehorse.)

The audience at Bemidji Aviation Services was overwhelmingly white. Standing right behind Trump were people who are looking for our votes: Rep. Tom Emmer, for CD6;Michelle Fischbach, for CD7;Jason Lewis, for U.S. Senate. When the president made his genes remark, all three of them smiled approvingly and Fischbach applauded while grinning.

Earlier in the speech Trump had detonated his usual blast at recent arrivals to Minnesota. Dripping with sarcasm, he said, Lots of luck. Youre having a good time with the refugees. He then, of course, singled out Somalis.

By the time he got to genes, his meaning couldnt have been more evident. Its white people who are tough and strong, who deserve to build a better life for themselves and for their families. People of color are a threat.

Do we believe in the gene thing? I mean, I do, Trump is on tape saying on another occasion. And he also said this: "All men are created equal. Well, it's not true. Because some are smart; some aren't."

Youd think that conservative Americans, who pledge allegiance to the Founders, would recoil from such a blatant contradiction of a central theme of the Declaration of Independence.

Of course some people are smarter than others, but Thomas Jeffersons point is that in all matters of public policy, everyone is on an equal footing. IQ has nothing nothing to do with it.

Donald Trumps adherence to eugenics the racehorse theory of breeding for people is among the scariest of his authoritarian inclinations. We need to be wary of it the way Germans needed to be wary in the early 1930s. Its not just that You [white Minnesotans] have good genes. Its the clear implication that other peoples genes are bad, which easily slips over into dangerous meaning such people must be kept out, deported, eliminated one way or another.

Trumps gene theory, which grounds his admiration for the pioneers who braved the wilderness and the winters, spills over into his convictions about education.

He has recently condemned the New York Times 1619 Project, which brings into focus the central role of slavery in American history. He proposes withholding federal funding from California until it jettisons the 1619 Project from school curricula. He has decried what he calls ideological poison, that if not removed will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together,and has said that under his plan, Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

To say that the only way youth will love America with all of their heart and all of their soul is to be taught exclusively about the good things the good genes did to be Minnesota specific: overlooking the decimation of Native peoples; forgetting the Duluth lynching; disregarding the research of St. Cloud State professor Christopher Lehman in Slaverys Reach: Southern Slaveholders and the North Star State is to treat youth (and those of us no longer young, too) with condescension and contempt. The civic bonds that tie us together are threatened far more by Trumps 20,000+ documented lies than by the truth about our history.

Recent Times interviews with local candidates were instructive, but the questions thrown were mostly Wiffle Balls. Given Trumps total takeover of the GOP, every Republican candidate at every level, state and federal, must be asked on the record Do you endorse or repudiate Donald Trumps racehorse theory? There is no middle ground.

This is the opinion of Patrick Henry, retired executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research and author of the forthcoming Flashes of Grace: 33 Encounters with God. His column is published the first Sunday of the month.

Read or Share this story: https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2020/10/02/trumps-racehorse-theory-divisive-and-dangerous/5886373002/

Continue reading here:

Trump's 'racehorse theory' is divisive and dangerous - SC Times