Category Archives: Eugenics

Four skiers going downhill on Mount Washburns northern slopes in Yellowstone National Park: this image was the first to depict skiing on the cover of a national American magazine. The illustration ran on an 1877 issue of Harpers Weekly and reflected the excitement around the new national parksand the potential for skiing that lay within.

The governments earliest involvement with skiing in the West dates back to Yellowstone, the nations first national park. Beginning in 1886, the U.S. Army occupied this land and managed Yellowstones development as a park. In winter, cavalry soldiers patrolled on skis to protect the park from poachers and vandals.

Thirty years later, the National Park Service took over the parks management. Inheriting the militarys use of skis, the NPS promoted and subsidized winter use of the parks. Lift-served skiing promoted national parks as recreational winter destinations, but this rubbed up against the mandate of wilderness preservation and ecological management.

So, controversy ensued. Throughout the 20th century, skiings role in the parks was contested. At present, the U.S. Forest Service is the primary agency associated with skiing in the West, and lift-served skiing in national parks is uncommon. Still, many skiers utilize these parks as access points to premiere backcountry skiingand most of these skiers are White.

An NPS diversity report in 2003 found that people of colorand especially Black peoplevisited national parks less frequently than White people. Black people were more than three times as likely as White people to believe that park employees provided poor visitor service and that parks were uncomfortable places for people like them. People of color were also more likely than White people to believe that overall costs, lack of information about parks, and travel distance were significant barriers to visitation.

Five years later, the 2008-2009 NPS Survey acknowledged that the lands set aside as units of the National Park System do not have the same meaning for everyone. So in 2013, the NPS created the Office of Relevancy, Diversity, and Inclusion in an effort to address race-based disparities at the parks. BIPOC activists have also addressed the national parks diversity problem, by creating outdoor groups of color and subsidizing transport and gear.

But what appears as a present-day diversity problem actually stretches back to the 19th century, to the original idea for federally-protected parks. For the NPS centennial, POWDER produced Monumental, a hardbound book, magazine feature, and a film on skiing our national parks. As the introduction notes: It is very possible that had it not been for a handful of visionary conservationists in the early 20th century, the natural heritage of the United States would have been, if not erased, compromised forever.

Maybe thats truebut also true is the fact that the conservationists who architected the national parks idea (and the parks themselves) are inextricable from ideologies of White supremacy, the exclusion of BIPOC, and especially the displacement of Indigenous peoples.

Lets look at Yosemite. In July 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the California-based protection of Yosemite Valley. Many advocates for the protection imagined the park as exemplifying American republicanism; the parks were to be accessible to everyone, regardless of class status.

However, its clear now that everyone was a contingent category. In Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Park, Mark Spence traces how Native Americans were displaced from land thats now called Yosemite and also from land that became our other national parks. Park advocates wanted to protect the uninhabited wilderness. So they also advocated for the forced removal of Native Americans, in order to construct an uninhabited wilderness that did not previously exist.

Thus began a public lands movement heavily rooted in racism and dispossession. Land for parks was obtained using policies like the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the idea of the parks took off. Yosemite made way for a parks bill. On March 1, 1872, the Yellowstone region was set aside as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, creating the first national park and eventually forcing many Indigenous nations off the land.

All the while, park lobbyists espoused ideals of an egalitarian republicanism: Yellowstone was to be a public park. For the people. Legislation, photographs, and newspaper articles constructed Yellowstone as a national glory.

That glory, however, was exclusive. Compounding the forced dispossession linked to the parks creation was the explicit racism of conservationists. An oft-cited example is Madison Grant, who was a eugenicist and a major activist for parks like Yellowstone. He lobbied in Washington D.C. for Yellowstones protections from what would have been a railroad project. To Grant, these natural spaces were symbolic of Americas exceptionalism, and he lobbied often to protect them.

Rooted in Grants natural history writing was a real concern for conservation. Still, early shadows of prejudice were at the root of his methods. For example, he grew angry with Italian immigrants hunting local songbirds and squirrels for food, and he tried introducing a bill in the state legislature to ban non-U.S. citizens from owning or carrying guns.

These propositions can only be understood in the context of citizenships moral weight and the historical context of exclusion. The Naturalization Act of 1790 had functioned for about a century then, limiting naturalization to free White persons and excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, enslaved people, free Black people, and Asian people. In this context, Grants bill operated under the assumption that non-White persons threatened the environment.

Furthermore, Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race, published in 1916, which became a seminal text on eugenics and decades later became one of Adolf Hitlers great influences. Grant argued that the survival of societies, like the survival of ecosystems, was contingent upon preserving the best of its germ plasm.

The germ plasm was to be communally owned: the peoples park, in the environmental context. For human populations, race was the primary determining factor, and Grant saw race as biological and unchangeable. The superior Nordic races needed to be conserved, just as the bison needed to be protected.

In this way, the parks movement and the eugenics movement were literally ideologically linked, they were about preserving the best of nature or human populations. Fears of the environmental degradation that might occur from a profit-motive were paralleled by fears of the moral degeneration that might come from unfit populations.

Certainly, this past isnt acknowledged today in the public narrative around our national parks and especially not by the NPS. Thats a problem, especially since none of this is a revelation (here and especially here). But while acknowledgments of this disturbing history are necessary, they also feel like a kind of trick. The parks problem is also the disturbing racist history itself.

To quote Dina Gilio-Whitaker: The lingering result of the Yellowstone story is that coded within the language of preservation, wilderness landscapesalways already in need of protectionare, or should be, free from human presence. But this logic completely evades the fact of ancient Indigenous habitation and cultural use of such places.

When White American conservationists advocated for protected public lands, what did they envision? When the military patrolled Yellowstone on skis, what were they protecting? For whom? And from whom?

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The National Parks Are Inviting to Skiers, Less So to BIPOC - Powder Magazine

Home Celebrity Nick Cannon Interviews Rabbi, Blames Everything on Hitler Picking Up Hate from...

So Nick Cannon, dressed as Aladdin, sits down with Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in a highly edited conversation. They decide the common element in hate of Jews and blacks is white supremacy. Rabbi Cooper thinks Nick is being sincere but Im not sure about what.

Nick: You know what that common hate for the black community comes from and the Jewish community comes from? White supremacy. The idea of eugenics. Its still placed on us today in America. And that Hitler adopted from

Rabbi: Thats correct it came from America

Nick: and which caused the Holocaust

Rabbi: And now being used by the Communist party in China against Muslims.

Let me get this straight. The Holocaust the killing of six million Jews was caused by hate that came from America, that Hitler capitalized on?

This is getting worse, not better. And this ability to produce rabbis from the Wiesenthal Center who are ready to forgive celebrities does not sit well with me, nor should it you. Rabbi Cooper, a few days ago, Nick Cannon was discussing his hatred of Jews. And nothing here addresses the very important Farrakhan matter. Let me hear Nick Cannon renounce Farrakhan, then Ill listen. If you brought Cannon into any regular synagogue in this country, with any rabbi not from Hollywood, they would not find him Sincere.

Thank you, next.

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. He wrote the Intelligencer column for NY Magazine in the mid 90s, reporting on the OJ Simpson trial, as well as for the real Parade magazine (when it was owned by Conde Nast), and has written for the New York Observer, Details, Vogue, Spin, the New York Times, NY Post, Washington Post, and NY Daily News among many publications. He is the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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Nick Cannon Interviews Rabbi, Blames Everything on Hitler Picking Up Hate from America and White Supremacy That Caused the Holocaust - Showbiz411

Across the United States, COVID-19 has had unequal impact on different communities. As numerous studies have shown, Black people, immigrants, and low-income people are more likely to contract the disease and more likely to suffer hospitalization and death when they do. Such disparate impacts also extend to the disabled community, which has similarly experienced far higher rates of hospitalization and mortality.

Advocates for social justice and civil rights have repeatedly called for the policy and technology sectors to effectively address COVID-19s unequal impact on marginalized communities. Yet those advocates, as well as policymakers and technologists themselves, first need to understand the specific concerns that disabled people have. As a disabled person who is also queer, trans, and East Asian, I would argue that centering disability justice as a framework is necessary for achieving racial, gender, and economic justice, especially in light of COVID-19.

Nowhere is that framework more necessary than the technology industry. On the one hand, technology holds enormous promise for helping disabled people to cope with, and perhaps even thrive amid the pandemic, such as by enabling consistent access to meaningful social interaction. On the other, however, technology threatens to exacerbate long-standing structural problems, such as widespread medical discrimination resulting in denial of care. For disabled people, the stakes have never been higher, and this requires the tech policy community to make careful, well-designed proposals in collaboration with the most impacted communities.

The unique COVID-19 threats for disabled people

Social justice and civil rights movements will remain incomplete and insufficient as long as they perpetuate ableist practices and ideas and are inaccessible to disabled people. Unfortunately, tech policy often fails to acknowledge, understand, or respond to issues impacting disabled people across different disability experiences, even though disabled people comprise one of the most at-risk groups.

Those with the highest chances of severe symptoms if they contract COVID-19 are people with chronic lung conditions and people with suppressed or compromised immune systemsby definition, disabled people. The people at greatest risk of post-recovery complications after surviving COVID-19 are likewise disabled people. Otherwise non-disabled people who are reporting significantly decreased lung capacity after surviving COVID-19 are now joining the disabled population. We also represent the vast majority of the population living in the congregate settings with the highest rates of transmission. That includes disability-specific locations like group homes, psychiatric hospitals, and nursing homes; and institutions where disabled people are extremely disproportionately overrepresented, like jails and prisons.

Tech policy proposals that do not center disabled people ultimately become dangerous for our continued health, safety, and freedom.

Rationing care for disabled people

Disabled advocates and community members are deeply concerned about a slew of COVID-19 policies, but among the most dangerous are practices relating to care rationing. Public health experts have cautioned us all to do our part in flattening the curve to decrease the strain on the medical system, but even with these efforts, failing health-care systems are having to ration health care, which is dangerous for disabled people. Unthinking technological approaches toward rationing may make this problem worse.

In the event of a shortage of equipment or personnel, many state and hospital policies often deprioritize people with certain disabilities to receive life-saving treatment. Unfortunately, these policies are not hypothetical; they have devastating real-world consequences, like a hospitals choice to withhold COVID-19 treatment from Michael Hickson, a Black man with quadriplegia, because of a doctors belief that he had a low quality of life. Hickson died last month. These decisions on rationing care reveal what many disabled people already know from personal experience: Medical ableism is deadly and pervasive.

To predict the likelihood that patients will recover from COVID-19, some hospitals have adopted algorithmic modeling. For disabled people, this may accelerate practices that cut us off from care or decrease the likelihood that we will be seen as patients worth saving. Algorithmic modeling could be helpful by providing doctors and nurses with information to better serve and treat their patients, but adoption of algorithmic assessments to predict the speed of decline for patients with COVID-19 could also threaten the lives of disabled people already at risk of denial of care. Available tools may not make accurate or reliable predictions, but even if they do, researchers have already documented that doctors are more likely to make riskier decisions about patients with disabilities.

For disabled people who are also queer, trans, or people of color, the deployment of algorithmic modeling increases the risk of compounded medical discrimination. All marginalized communities have long histories and ongoing legacies of surviving involuntary medical experimentation, coercive treatment, invasive and irreversible procedures, and lower quality of careoften justified by harmful beliefs about the ability to feel pain and quality of life. These health care disparities are exacerbated for people who experience multiple forms of marginalization.

Contact tracing and surveillance can uniquely harm disabled people

Development of contact-tracing apps and apps to surveil students or employees physical proximity to each other threaten disabled people by increasing surveillance of an already hyper-surveilled and criminalized community. These kinds of apps lack the utility necessary for them to be an effective tool in responding to the pandemic, given the actual likelihood of transmission in different interpersonal interactions. As Ashkan Soltani, Ryan Calo, and Carl Bergstrom explained, such apps will lead to both over-identification (flagging too many false positives and creating the likelihood that people will ignore notifications) and under-identification (failing to adequately account for possible transmissions and exposures, even for people who are definitely infected). They introduce highly intrusive and easily abused monitoring and surveillance to create false reassurance that they would actually slow the spread.

In a pandemic, this devaluation of disabled peoples lives has catastrophic consequences. When public health and elected officials say that only elderly and immunocompromised people are at serious risk, theyre saying that people with aging-related disabilities or disabilities that affect immune or respiratory systems are expendable. While everyone is at risk of privacy violations in ill-fated attempts to combat COVID-19, disabled people are afraid of how COVID-19 data could be weaponized to further deny or deprive us of care.

The benefits and harm of online work

For disabled people, the pandemic has created opportunities and challenges as schools, universities, and employers have instituted widespread remote working and learning. Schools and workplaces have denied disabled peoples accommodation requests for telework and remote learning for years. It only took a pandemic for them to realize they could have let us do so all along. Now that millions more people are working and studying virtually every day, more disabled people can participate in previously impossible education and work opportunities. Employers and schools are discovering nifty accessibility features, like captioning, and exploring both synchronous and asynchronous meeting and learning options.

But this increased reliance on technological stopgaps to aid physical distancing also hurts many disabled people in two important ways.

First, as of 2020, a whopping 98 percent of all web content fails to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is the international standard for making web content accessible to people with disabilities. That could mean that content is inaccessible to screen readers, refreshable Braillers, eye tracking, or other adapted technologies. It could also mean that content is inaccessible to people who rely on captioning, need to resize images and text, or have cognitive and language-based disabilities. This means that even basic public health information and news updates in the pandemic are inaccessible to large numbers of disabled peoplelet alone classes, work, unemployment assistance, social media, or games.

Policymakers must listen to disabled people

Now more than ever, we need policymakers to understand that meaningful access and participation of disabled people is not optional. Information about programs designed to provide relief from the devastating economic impacts of COVID-19 must be accessible to disabled users. The design of these programs must take into account the social, environmental, and political factors that have put disabled people, especially multiply marginalized disabled people, in economically precarious positions for decades. Apps designed to track and slow the spread of COVID-19 should be developed and implemented carefully, and local governments should be cautious about deciding to implement new apps for any official purposes.

Disabled people, particularly disabled people of color and disabled queer and trans people, have survived medical experimentation, eugenics-based policies, and the combined effects of economic exploitation and deprivation. Understanding this context will help policymakers devise policies that are actually responsive to both the needs of the moment and the contemporary legacies of historical injustices.

Lydia X.Z. Brown is policy counsel for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. They focus on disability and algorithmic justice.

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How to center disability in the tech response to COVID-19 - Brookings Institution

The city of Seattle, Washington is lecturing its white employees on the evils inherent in their paying obeisance to objectivity, individualism and the seeking of perfection in their work. The stated reason is to atone for the racism such practices have allegedly wrought through underpinning a white dominant society characterized by individual creativity and upward mobility at the expense of blacks. Lets address this policy in light of two motives behind it, the one expressed, the other a more subtle probability.

The express motive lies in the belief gone viral through the actions of Black Lives Matter that blacks are yet being exploited and relegated to a lower standard of living in the US. Implied here is the view that left to their own devices, blacks cannot rise above their station. The deficiencies in this view may be addressed with a review of two remarkable African American Educators who incorporated the three traits of objectivity, individualism and perfection to ignite success in the early twentieth century amidst a white gentry bent not only on segregation but also on eugenics and the sterilization of the African-American. These educators were Samuel W. Houston of Huntsville and David Abner Jr of Conroe.

Both Houston and Abner were leaders of African American Christian colleges in their respective domains. Each of them realized the link of objectivity, individualism and the seeking of perfection to igniting a sense of creativity and enterprise. Theirs was the path marked by Thomas Jefferson himself as he opined that intelligence linked to Christian-backed virtue was the key to securing the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in his authorship of the Declaration of Independence.

Houston and Abner each rejected the eugenics refrain of their time which was accommodated to an extent even by the prominent black leaders of the day, W.E. B. Dubois, Kelly Miller, and in his own way, Booker T. Washington. Houston even attended colleges associated with each of these black leaders: Hampton Institute with Booker T. Washington, Atlanta University with Dubois and Howard University with Kelly Miller; Houston also had personal friendships with all of them. Houston later gained both state and national fame stemming from the high caliber of students produced in his Sam Houston Institute in the environs of Huntsville. Samuel W. Houston, however, gave most credit not to the views of his African American mentors, but to Christianity for igniting a mode of upward mobility in his students.

Like Samuel W. Houston, David Abner Jr. took the reigns of Conroe Normal and Industrial College in Conroe and maneuvered it to heights in its golden years, setting the stage for eventually employing six extensions extending all the way to San Francisco. Like Houston, David Abner Jr. instilled the twin pillars of intelligence and virtue in his students giving them the skills and fortitude for successful lives.

David Abner Jr and Samuel W. Houston, then, demonstrated that blacks could rise on their own, without the thinly veiled racism inherent in Seattles drive to shame the whites into lowering themselves to accommodate them.

Which brings us to the more subtle motive probably endemic to the Seattle project, an embrace of the Malthusian policy of the worlds global elite as indicated recently at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. This is the view that man, like the animals, is limited in his creative abilities. Given this premise, many globalists seek to reduce the expectations of world progress to a realistic level via de- legitimizing objectivity, individualism and perfection. This is the Rest of the Story.

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Seattle, Huntsville, Conroe and the rest of the story - Huntsville Item

Silvia Moreno-Garcias Mexican Gothic reinvents the horror novel with a fresh, feminist take

Classic Gothic novels contain easy-to-identify hallmarks. There will be creepy old isolated houses, a woman in distress and spooky moments.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia gives us all that and so much more in Mexican Gothic, the freakiest novel youll read all summer. I promise you will never look at mushrooms the same way.

Moreno-Garcia knows the genre shes reinventing, as well as its links to domestic noir bestsellers like The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. Mexican Gothic is her sixth novel and the first to hit the New York Times bestseller list, just days after publication.

Instead of the English moors, Moreno-Garcias fearsome crumbling manse is outside El Triunfo, a train ride from Mexico City. Its the mid-1950s, and young Noem Taboada travels to El Triunfo after a worrisome letter arrives from her cousin. Catalina married the dashing Virgil in haste, but sends a missive back to her family that sounds positively unhinged:

I bar my door but still they come, they whisper at night and I am so afraid of these restless dead, these ghosts, fleshless things. The snake eating its tail, the foul ground beneath our feet, the false faces and false tongues, the web upon which the spider walks making the strings vibrate.

Clearly things are going to go bump in the night once Noem arrives, but Moreno-Garcia takes delicious time building the fear factor inside High Place, Virgils family mansion. Virgil and Catalina live there with Virgils mild-mannered cousin Francis, Francis perpetually sour mother Florence, and decrepit patriarch Howard.

Moreno-Garcia includes callbacks to the British roots that traditionally underpin Gothic literature, with an English cemetery on site that holds the dead workers who mined silver from the mountains that surround High Place. A devoted Anglophile, the elder Mr. Doyle even imported British soil to Mexico and insists on speaking only English in the house, an affectation that later serves Noem when she can secretly communicate in Spanish.

Weird nightmares and a listless Catalina greet Noem upon her arrival to High Place. By the time shes scouting out herbal remedies in the nearby village and getting scolded for smoking in her room, the contours of the evils at High Place are taking shape. The unabashedly racist paterfamilias is a fan of eugenics, and there are dead wives in the family history along with colonial plundering.

Noem is a wonderfully complex heroine who subverts the helpless-lady trope. Shes smart enough to trade being volun-told to go to High Place for her fathers permission to enroll in Mexico Citys National University. Shes stylish. The book-club kit for Mexican Gothic features divine paper dolls complete with the nipped-waist day suits and calotte hats that a 1950s socialite would favor. And she has appetites. She finds herself simultaneously shocked and entranced by the houses power to awaken her sensual desires.

Back to those mushrooms. Moreno-Garcia is fascinated with fungi. Shes studied mycology and even edited a small-press anthology on the plants and their different properties, many of which play a role in Mexican Gothic.

There are several types of mushrooms that have these parasitic qualities, and are kind of terrifying when you think about it, she told Bookselling This Week. One of them is an insect I name in the book, and when I talk about those, Im not making it up. The mushrooms do take over an organism and change its behavior. Whenever you have an organism that can take over another organism to change its behavior, I think its kind of freaky.

I wont spoil the novels slow burn and say more. But know this. Moreno-Garcias story scares on multiple levels, and this novel marks a welcome reinvention of a classic genre for modern readers.

(Del Rey, June 30, 2020)

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The Walls Have Ears - Book and Film Globe

A ledger about eugenics surgery, which was found in a cabinet of the Miyagi Prefectural Government's childrearing support division, is seen at the prefectural government building. (Mainichi/Hiroshi Endo)

The Japanese Medical Science Federation is set to admit the responsibility of medical scientists and academic associations over forced sterilization surgeries that were carried out in Japan based on the now-defunct eugenics protection law (1948-1996), and is poised to apologize to victims, it has been learned.

It is the first move of its kind by the federation comprising 136 medical associations in Japan. The federation's panel of outside experts investigated the matter and concluded that medical scientists and health care professionals played a role in enacting and administering the law and left the problems of the controversial law unaddressed for many years. The federation is planning to release the investigation report on June 25. It will also look into setting up a permanent ethics committee, among other measures.

In Japan, several academic societies in psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology and other medicine, as well as medical practitioners' organizations were involved in the promotion of forced sterilization. However, only some of those academic groups have begun to self-investigate their own roles in forced sterilization, leaving much of what actually happened under the ill-guided national policy unrevealed. The decision by the Japanese Medical Science Federation, the presiding body in Japan's medical world, to admit its responsibility and offer an apology to victims is likely to have an influence on its member associations.

The federation set up the expert panel comprising its directors and external experts in April 2019 and interviewed victims of compulsory sterilization and individuals associated with medical societies that were involved in such operations, among others. Among the things that the panel examined are situations surrounding the enactment and operation of the eugenics law and the process where damage from the law continued to spread without any measures being taken in the 1970s and onward, when other countries abolished their eugenics policies.

In the investigation report, the panel states, "It is deeply regrettable that medical scientists and health professionals were involved in the institution of the former eugenics law, played a role in its operation and left the problems of the law unaddressed even after medical ethics and human rights ideology prevailed." While the former eugenics law was revised in 1996 into the Maternal Health Act by removing the provision for forcible sterilization, the report states, "Deep remorse over not taking immediate action to provide relief to the victims of forced sterilization even after the legal amendment, and an expression of heartfelt apology to the victims and other parties concerned are called for."

The report attributed part of the cause of delays in legal revision and relief measures for victims to its own analysis that "Even while there were suggestions pointing to the problems (of the law) in some parts of the medical world, such voices remained within the realm of academia and were not large enough to reach out to society as a whole." The report also refers to issues including present-day prenatal diagnosis and genome editing, which are often associated with the concept of eugenics, and stresses, "It is important to examine them from various perspectives so they won't go in an unethical direction."

The panel's report proposes launching a new organization that examines medical and medicinal decisions across academic societies in order to prevent cases similar to forced sterilization from ever happening again in the future.

Established in 1902, the Japanese Medical Science Federation has a total of 1.03 million researchers and doctors belonging to its member organizations.

(Japanese original by Norikazu Chiba, Kyoto Bureau)

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Japan's top medical group to admit responsibility, apologize over forced sterilization - The Mainichi

Once, it was perfectly acceptable to believe that people of certain ethnicities were better or worse than others, and that white people were on top of the pile as the smartest, the best, even the most evolved. To justify these beliefs, people could turn to race science to find evidence of their inherent superiority.

Though our modern understanding of genetics and evolution has since refuted the claims made by race science and eugenics throughout science history, the views they supported have not yet disappeared from our societys understanding of race.

Subhadra Das is a writer, historian, and sometimes a comedian. She specialises in the history and philosophy of science in the 18th and 19th Centuries, particularly the science of race and eugenics.She is one of the curators of the science collections at University College London, whilst currently working on her own nonfiction book about the history of eugenics.

Subhadra has chosen her top 5 science books on race that will clear up misconceptions and replace pseudoscience with scientific evidence.

Angela Saini

8.99, Fourth Estate

Im actually in this book, which meant reading it was a really interesting experience.

Superior is an absolutely phenomenal book. Angela is a hero. Its not simply that she has created a really forensic and detailed deconstruction of racism as its being carried out today, by some really horrendous practitioners.

But shes also revealed how insidious ideas to do with race are in our society today. So, if people havent read it, I really couldnt recommend the book more, even with the caveat that I am in it.

Adam Rutherford

12.99, Weidenfeld and Nicolson

One of the people who writes about this habitually, and well, is Adam Rutherford. His latest book is called How to Argue with a Racist I dont necessarily agree with Adam on this, I think the best thing to do with racists is to not talk to them but, credit to him, he is willing to do that and hes willing to do that work.

And so his book is the basis of that argument and how you build that argument from the point of view of the geneticist, which I think is really very important.

Stephen Jay Gould

13.99, W. W. Norton & Company

The science writer that is an absolute hero to me is the late, great Stephen Jay Gould.

His 1981 book, The Mismeasure of Man, was him as a scientist attacking race science using science as a tool. It goes to demonstrate that science can be anti-racist. And I think that is an encouraging thing for a lot of people.

Sven Lindqvist

The New Press

Im a historian and I dont think science is the only way in which we can combat racism. So, one of my particular favourite books is by a writer called Sven Lindqvist, and its The Skull Measurers Mistake.

Its a brilliant book that outlines in each individual chapter people who spoke up against racism. And I think thats a really important bit of the history that often gets left out.

See more reading lists of science books:

Akala

8.99, Hachette

I realise Ive mentioned a fair few science books by white men. Because guess what? Theres not a huge number of scientists of colour who have had books published.

But now we see books by people of colour working their way to the top of the non-fiction charts which is, in ways, both depressing but also kind of hopeful and in order to redress the balance of my list Im choosing a book by Akala called Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire.

So, if you really wanted to know about this history and just how it affects real people, then that is a phenomenal book to read. Its not a science book. But science is still part of society, and we need to get better at acknowledging that, too.

Link:

5 of the best race science books you must read - BBC Focus Magazine

The Origin of species by natural selection, Charles Darwins (1809-1882) masterpiece, was published in Nov 1859- all twelve hundred and fifty copies were sold out on the first day. Since then Darwins ideas have revolutionised the entire premise of evolutionary biology and superseded the concept of naturalism as an explanation of human evolution.

In this article, however, we will discuss the social, economic and cultural impact of Darwins theory. Social Darwinism, as it is called, has an impact in shaping the current geopolitical environment of the world. The current riots in the Unites States and the United Kingdom motivated by racial inequality have deep seated roots. There is no denying the fact that racism has existed since time immemorial, but in this article, we will review the history and impact of social Darwinism on modern day racism.

Definition:

Thomas H Huxley (1825-1895) also known as Darwins bulldog, coined the phrase Social Darwinism in 1861. However, the first use of the term Social Darwinism in Europe is attributed to a French journalist called Emile Gautier (1853-1937). The concept of social Darwinism borrowed the idea of survival of the fittest and natural selection from Darwins biological theory of evolution and applied this to economics, sociology and politics. It is a mishmash of ideologies that was and still is used to justify colonisation, imperialism, racism, social inequality and eugenics.

Darwin and the survival of the fittest:

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English economist and an influential scholar. Malthusianism is a theory of exponential population growth in comparison to the linear growth of food supply and other resources. In his book An essay on the Principle of population Malthus describes this apparent disparity between population growth and food supply. Malthus believed that through preventative and positive checks, the population could be controlled to balance the food supply with the population level. The Malthusian catastrophe is described as a population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio, so that population soon exceeds its food supply.

Hitler justified the policies of sterilization of defectives, involuntary euthanasia and the holocaust based on racial hygiene, a term that gained tremendous popularity in the Nazi Germany

Darwin was familiar with Malthuss concepts and was influenced by his ideas. He made the Malthusian struggle for existence the basis of his natural selection. He saw a similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding, and a Malthusian philosophy. The very extended wording on the title page of his book, by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, are suggestive of his views on race superiority. In The Descent of Man, he wrote We civilised men. do our utmost to check the process of elimination, we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus, the weak members of society propagate their kind.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) an English polymath and a sociologist was the first one to describe the term survival of the fittest. A very big proponent of utilitarian philosophy, Spenser believed that a social system that provides for the poor and needy is eventually detrimental to the overall growth of the society as it promotes the survival of the weak and the infirm leading to an overall retardation of growth. His concept of survival of the fittest implied that nature eliminates inefficiency- any efforts to slow this process will impair the overall benefits to the strong races. In his work, Social Statics (1850), he argued that imperialism had served civilization by clearing the inferior races off the earth.

The Rise of Social Darwinism and the Eugenics movement:

Francis Galton (1822-1911) was an English polymath and Darwins half cousin, fascinated by Darwins work, he made it his lifes mission to study variations in human population and its implication. Galton published his book the Hereditary Genius in 1869- he extensively studied the physical traits of eminent men and the inheritance of physical as well as intellectual attributes. Galton wrote in this book: Let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent, and conform to, a high and generous civilisation, and not, out of mistaken instinct of giving support to the weak, prevent the incoming of strong and hearty individuals.

It was Galton who championed the concept of eugenics (meaning well born). Eugenics promotes the exclusion or elimination of human races deemed to be inferior with the preservation of superior races eventually leading to the overall improvement in genetic quality. Eugenics gained momentum in the early 1900s with the formation of British and American Eugenics societies. Winston Churchill supported the British Eugenics Society and was an honorary vice president for the organization. Churchill believed that eugenics could solve race deterioration and reduce crime and poverty. Eugenics promoted practices such as genetic screening, birth control, marriage restrictions, both racial segregation and sequestering the mentally ill, compulsory sterilization, forced abortions and pregnancies. Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and many other prominent citizens were outspoken supporters. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote: The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man. He proposed that the state should issue colour-coded procreation tickets to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by inferior human beings. Those who decided to have children with holders of a different-coloured ticket would be punished with a heavy fine. In the United States, scientific racism was used to justify African slavery. Samuel Cartwright (1793-1863) coined the term drapetomania which was descried as a mental disorder of slaves who had tried to run away from their captives- the condition was deemed treatable. Negroes, with their smaller brains and blood vessels, and their tendency toward indolence and barbarism, had only to be kept benevolently in the state of submission, awe and reverence that God had ordained. The Negro is [then] spellbound, and cannot run away, he said.

The ethos of eugenics was incorporated into Nazi Germanys racial policies. Hitler justified the policies of sterilization of defectives, involuntary euthanasia and the holocaust based on racial hygiene, a term that gained tremendous popularity in the Nazi Germany. After the second world war, due to Hitlers adaptation of eugenics, there has been a sharp decline in the popularity of this policy, at least at a state level.

Conclusions:

The roots of the idea that the white races are superior, more intelligent, stronger and higher on the evolutionary ladder, are varied and multifactorial. The age of European enlightenment, followed by imperialism compounded by social Darwinism, has reinforced the concept over centuries. In Sweden, the practice of forced sterilisation was continued till 1970. In the US, involuntary sterilisation of female prisoners occurred as late as 2010.

Modern day evolutionary scientists and molecular biologists dismiss the idea of race superiority based on hereditary genetics. The superiority of a human over another, based on race, colour, creed and sex are morally and ethically wrong. A better world would be world without prejudice and racism.

Suhail Anwar is a surgeon with an interest in theology and history

Read more:

Social Darwinism and the origins of scientific racism - Daily Times

Graphic by Jacquelyne Germain / North by Northwestern

As Weinberg freshman Shira Nash waited in line at her local public high school to check in for her first SAT, she felt intimidated seeing students she knew, subconsciously comparing herself to them. The line grew shorter and shorter, and she thought her test anxiety couldnt get any worse.

Then, it did. When Nash entered the testing room, she was immediately struck by the lack of diversity among the students seated around her.

I often was the only person of color in my [SAT] testing room, definitely the only Black woman, said Nash. It was definitely an overwhelming experience.

Along with 40,594 applicants around the world, Nash submitted her standardized test scores as part of her application to Northwestern University. The middle 50% of Northwesterns Class of 2023 had SAT scores ranging from 1450-1550, some of the highest in the nation. In comparison, the 2019 national average score was 1059. Today, Northwesterns Class of 2023, along with the rest of the undergraduate population, reap the benefits of their test scores and other exemplary academic and nonacademic factors, attending one of the top institutions in the country. However, though the SAT is framed as an objective calculation in the college admissions process, the test can be used to foster socioeconomic inequality that is then reflected in the student populations of elite institutions like Northwestern.

A History of Inequality

The origins of the SAT lie within Americas eugenics movement in the early 1900s, which aimed to uphold white supremacy by removing undesirable traits from the human race. Such traits were often associated with lower income minority populations who were victims of forced sterilizations and other oppressive practices of the eugenics movement, according to Scitable.

In the eugenics movement, there is this inherent belief that Black people, African-descended people [and] people from the global south are intellectually inferior to the descendants of Western Europe, said David Stovall, an African-American studies professor who investigates education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Princeton University psychology professor and devout eugenicist Carl Brigham designed the SAT in the 1920s. It originated from Brighams Army Alpha Test, an intelligence test administered to millions of World War I army recruits, according to PBS. In 1923, based on the analysis of the results from the Army Alpha Test by race, he published A Study of American Intelligence. In the books conclusion, Brigham wrote that American intelligence was declining as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive. Brigham further stated that this sharp decline in intelligence owed itself to the presence of the negro in America. Brigham would eventually modify the Army Alpha Test to be used in the college admissions process, renaming it the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In 1926, the SAT was administered to high school students for the first time.

The Impacts of Racist Roots

The tests racist history continues to be reflected today, shown through massive racial scoring gaps.

I feel like [racial scoring gaps] are a reflection of systemic racism and how in Black and Hispanic communities the schools are underfunded and have less resources for students than more affluent schools, said Weinberg freshman Rebecca Covington.

Broken down by race, white and Asian students had the highest average SAT scores in the nation in 2019: 1114 and 1223, respectively, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). The average scores for Black and Hispanic students were lower: 933 and 978, respectively. These disparities are reflective of larger inequities within Americas long history of racial oppression.

Data provided by the College Board (These averages are from 2019 and are based on the new SAT scoring system: scale of 400-1600)

When you start to think about something like the SAT, you also have to think about how racism operates structurally, meaning that as a system, there are strategies that are used to justify the means by which to declare African-descended people inferior, Stovall said.

A 2003 study by national admissions test expert Jay Rosner revealed that experimental SAT test questions that resulted in better scores for Black students compared to white students were discarded by test authors in favor of those that white students answered correctly. Although test developers did not explicitly consider race when selecting questions, racial scoring disparities drove question selection. These experimental questions were then used on future versions of the SAT, giving an upper hand to white students and contributing to a cycle of racial inequality.

Some students, like Nash, found the language of the SAT to be restrictive in this way.

You have to know everything the question is asking and you have to know the answer, and thats not always fair because some words are not in peoples vernacular, Nash said.

These inequities operate not just in relation to race but also to class and students socio-economic situations. Poor students of all races perform worse on standardized tests compared to more-affluent students, according to Education Week.

By requiring students to submit standardized test scores, predominantly white institutions like Northwestern are stifling socioeconomic diversity.

Black, Hispanic and Native American students are more likely to be poor compared to white and Asian students. They also make up the lowest percentages of students at every top 10 institution in the nation, including Northwestern.

In 2014, students with annual family incomes over $200,000 averaged a composite score of 1714, whereas students from families earning less than $20,000 annually averaged a composite score of 1326, according to the Washington Post.

Data provided by the Washington Post (These averages are from 2014 and are based on the old SAT scoring system: scale of 600-2400)

At Northwestern, students coming from households earning $20,000 or less annually only make up about 4% of the student body, whereas 66% of students come from the top 20%, according to a 2017 report from The New York Times The Upshot.

SAT preparation gaps are reflective of such economic inequities as well. Communication freshman Caleb Whittaker recalls an SAT test-prep program called Test Masters in his Texas hometown that cost $700-$800 for its duration. He said that students who did not perform particularly well in school academically could get the high scores needed for admission into elite institutions simply because of their ability to afford these programs.

They learned how to take these tests rather than learning the material, Whittaker said.

In contrast, Whittaker said he himself didnt have many resources to study from for the SAT. He primarily relied on general knowledge from school and some free online test prep materials.

Medill freshman Jordan Mangi had a similar experience preparing for the SAT. She was able to take the test for the first time because it was offered for free at her high school during her junior year.

I didnt have a prep book or anything. I didnt go to an SAT test prep class. That wasnt really an option for me, Mangi said.

Resources like SAT test prep classes and private tutors are more accessible to affluent students. According to CostHelper, instructor-led SAT preparatory courses can range from $75-$1000, while private tutoring can cost $75-$250 per hour on average.

Although low-income students are often eligible for fee waivers to mitigate costs associated with the SAT, the College Board, the non-profit organization that develops and administers the test, charges students every step of the way.

The SAT costs $52 without the essay and $68 with the essay. If a student registers after the initial deadline or needs to change test dates, they are charged an extra $30. Sending a score report to colleges costs $12 per institution. If a student is crunched for time and needs to rush order these score reports, there is an additional $31 fee. If the website crashes when scores come out due to increased website traffic and a student is anxious to view their score, for $15, they can call and get it over the phone.

[The SAT] makes rich communities where students are able to pay for tutoring or take it a bunch of times look smarter, but in reality its just about how much money you have, said Medill freshman Onyekaorise Chigbogwu.

Medill freshman Ellisya Lindsey was able to afford a private SAT tutor and said tutoring was helpful as she navigated the test-taking process. Her tutor provided her with an SAT study book containing practice questions and was able to walk her through the layout of the test, what the questions would look like and how to go about answering them.

Without a tutor or without any sort of resources whatsoever, you would not know what youre getting yourself into and youd definitely be underprepared, Lindsey said.

Moving Forward

To combat these issues, in August 2019, the College Board introduced an adversity index called Landscape that provides colleges and universities with background information to use in conjunction with a students application. The information includes basic high school data including locale, senior class size and the percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch. It also includes test score comparisons within each high school, as well as high school and neighborhood indicators such as median family income, education levels and crime rates.

But Stovall said that Landscape is not enough, referring to it as a Band-Aid on the initial concerns of the test. He advocates for a more holistic portfolio review of students and their achievements by colleges and universities that doesnt revolve around standardized test scores.

Northwestern ranks standardized test scores as a very important academic factor in its admissions decisions, according to its 2019-2020 Common Data Set. Standardized test scores take precedence over other factors such as a students essay, recommendations and extracurriculars, ranked lower as important factors.

Though in response to COVID-19, a day after seven of the eight Ivy League institutions went test optional for the 2020-2021 application cycle, Northwestern also decided to go temporarily test optional for the Class of 2025. Other schools have chosen to permanently ditch the requirement, recently the University of Chicago and the University of California system. Other test-optional universities include DePaul University, New York University, American University, George Washington University and more.

I feel like who you are as a person and your work ethic and things you really believe in and are passionate [about] are very good things to focus on, said Medill freshman Kacee Haslett in reference to factors that should be valued more in the admissions process.

Stovall emphasized the need for the college admissions system to reconsider how it evaluates socioeconomic scoring disparities, referencing Gloria Ladson-Billings, a School of Education professor at the University of WisconsinMadison who studies critical race theory.

Instead of looking at gaps between test scores for certain racial, ethnic and economic groups, she says we can consider a debt, Stovall said. What debt is owed to folks who have been historically isolated and marginalized and what would the payment of that debt look like? When we start to think about that, now how do we construct admissions policies and how do we construct access for historically marginalized groups?

Northwesterns Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion refers to access as one of its defining strands along with equity, enrichment and wellbeing. Though these values guide its framework and operation, standardized tests with discriminatory origins, practices and outcomes continue to be used as an objective measure of student aptitude in the admissions process. To some, the SAT is far from an unbiased calculation.

While youre in the test, sure, its the same for everyone, everyones going to do the same questions, Nash said. But we have to think about what happens before the test and after the test, that I think is not equal at all.

Read more:

Race, class and SAT scores: The connection between testing and NU's student body - North by Northwestern

One strip from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's "Oshiete! Moyawin" manga series featuring a Charles Darwin-like character arguing for the need to revise Japan's Constitution based in evolutionary theory. (Image from the Liberal Democratic Party website)

TOKYO -- The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s debut of a manga featuring a Charles Darwin-like character tying the push to revise Japan's pacifist Constitution to evolutionary theory is drawing a torrent of accusations that the party understands neither evolution nor the danger of applying the theory to politics.

In the four-panel manga "Oshiete! Moyawin" (Please teach me, Moyawin), a character resembling Charles Darwin but called "Moyawin" states, "This is what the theory of evolution says. ... It is not the strongest who survive, nor the cleverest. The only people who can survive are people who can change." Moyawin adds, "I think that to develop Japan yet more going forward, constitutional revision is needed now."

Three of the strips were tweeted by the LDP's public relations account on the evening of June 19, and also appear as an ongoing series in a new section of the party's website.

However, these passages do not appear anywhere in Darwin's revolutionary work "On the Origin of Species" (1859). Rather, they are drawn from a U.S. economist's own interpretation of "Origin" included in a paper penned in the 1960s, and widely considered an "abuse" of Darwin's ideas.

The manga triggered a quick pushback on Twitter, with users posting comments including, "This is an incorrect usage based on a failure to understand the theory of evolution," and "It's twisted to use this for politics." One tweet pointed out that "Darwin never said any of this" and demanded the LDP retract the strips, while another said that "connecting (evolution) to the Constitution, which is completely unrelated, is nothing but a distortion." Yet another user quipped, "Maybe it's the LDP that needs to change."

Psychiatrist and Mainichi Shimbun columnist Rika Kayama also voiced her opposition. In the 19th and 20th centuries, evolutionary theory was applied to human societies in what came to be known as "social Darwinism," and natural selection based on "survival of the fittest" was used to justify racism and eugenics. Kayama tweeted, "The Nazis based their massacre of Jews and disabled people on eugenics, and ever since then, everyone has understood that the simplistic application (of evolutionary theory) to politics is dangerous. I wonder if the LDP PR section did this as a premeditated crime, or just out of ignorance."

Meanwhile, the official account of publisher Iwanami Shoten tweeted, "It's a common misconception about the theory of evolution, but 'evolution' does not equal 'improvement.' Evolution is the source of (biological) diversity."

Satoshi Chiba, a professor at Tohoku University's Graduate School of Life Sciences who has also penned a book on evolution, told the Mainichi Shimbun, "Evolution is change without direction, and that change is neither for good nor bad. Just as the water of a river slowly created a valley by wearing away the land, (evolution) is change in properties occurring on a group level; the simple result of natural selection and other phenomena. Even regression is a kind of evolution."

"I have to say it is quite shoddy of the PR section of the ruling party to do this with something everyone learns in high school biology," he added.

This is not the first time the LDP has tried to rope Darwin's work into promotion of its political program. In 2001, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi referred to the theory of evolution in connection with structural reform during his general policy speech to the Diet.

Chiba noted that "while Koizumi said, 'Living things that can respond to change are the ones that survive,' the use this time of the phrase 'people who can change' is more pernicious." He continued, "Adaptation is nothing more than a result. It is not change through intention. To bring biological thinking into politics is itself a serious problem, and quite dangerous."

Hokkaido University professor emeritus and constitutional scholar Katsutoshi Takami told the Mainichi Shimbun, "If we're going to talk about adaptation, then the Constitution has responded to and survived 73 years of change, in the form of new laws, judicial precedent and government reinterpretations, since its implementation. For some to say that 'it must be changed' because they desire to change it seems to me a logical sidestep. If they're going to say that it (the Constitution) cannot adapt to present-day society, then they must clearly present their reasons."

(Japanese original by Fusayo Nomura, Integrated Digital News Center)

Read more from the original source:

Japan ruling party manga using evolutionary theory to push constitutional change slammed - The Mainichi