Category Archives: Eugenics

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an agreement with the state of Oregon to develop a system to ensure the states child welfare agency does not discriminate against parents with disabilities, a move that could benefit one in ten parents in the United States.

The agreement stems from a case involving Amy Fabbrini and Eric Ziegler. Fabbrini and Ziegler endured a five-yearbattle with the state of Oregon to regain custody of their two sons, who were both taken into foster care after their respective births following concern that Fabbrini and Ziegler would be unable to care for them.

No abuse was alleged against Fabbrini and Ziegler, who say their below-average scores on state-sanctioned IQ tests are why Oregon held the children in foster care until their court-ordered releases in late 2017 and early 2018.

Fabbrini and Zieglers case is not unique. At least 40 percent to 80 percent of parents in the United States with intellectual disabilities will lose custody of their children, according to a 2012 report from the National Council on Disability, on which I was the primary author.

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This discrimination is not only harmful to familiesit is also unlawful. Indeed, both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibit child welfare agencies and courts from discriminating against disabled parents.

These federal laws also require child welfare agencies and courts to provide reasonable modifications in policies, programs, and procedures to ensure disabled parents are offered an equal opportunity. For example, Deaf parents must be provided sign language interpreters, and parents with intellectual disabilities should receive individualized services based on the familys needs.

Yet, nearly 50 years since the Rehabilitation Act was passed and 30 years since the ADA became law, discrimination continues to persist. As a result, families are being torn apart.

Such discrimination is a long-standing issue in U.S. history, rooted in eugenics practices like intelligence tests and other standards that, historically, have resulted in children being removed from families and forced sterilization of those withor those perceived to havedisabilities.

Roughly two-thirds of state child welfare laws still allow for a parents disability to be considered for the purposes of terminating parental rights, according to the National Council on Disability. Tellingly, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that nationally, 19 percent of children in foster care had been removed from their homes at least in part because they had a disabled parent. That same study found parents with disabilities had 22 percent higher odds of having their parental rights terminated, compared to other parents. And, a recent study found that parents with psychiatric disabilities were eight times more likely than other parents to have involvement with the child welfare system.

The belief that disabled people are unfit parents dates back to the eugenics movement in the early 20th century, when people with disabilities and others who were deemed unfit to procreate were forcibly sterilized. This barbaric treatment even gained the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case, which held it was constitutional to sterilize people with disabilities forcibly. This alarming decision led to more than 30 states enacting laws that permitted involuntary sterilization, and an estimated 70,000 Americans, many of whom had disabilities, sterilized against their wishes.

But studies do not indicate that parents with disabilities are more likely than nondisabled parents to abuse or neglect their children. In fact, research has consistently found that most disabled parents and their families fare quite well when provided the chance. Studies have shown that a lower IQ has nothing to do with ones fitness as a parent. IQ scores themselves are rooted in flawed methodology and have been used to justify racist and eugenics practices. Further, some scholars contend that there are ways in which children actually benefit from having a disabled parent, such as exhibiting increased empathy.

Thus, the overrepresentation of parents with disabilities within the child welfare system is most often based on prejudice rather than actual harm. But the federal government largely has been silent about the rights of parents with disabilities, which makes OCRs recent action notableand long overdue.

As a result of the new agreement, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) must now review ten other cases concerning parents with disabilities to discern if each were handled properly. In the voluntary resolution agreement, the state agency promises to make decisions about removing children from their parents based on actual risks that pertain to the individual parent and not on mere speculation, generalizations, or stereotypes about individuals with disabilities. In other words, the state should only remove children if there is actual abuse or neglect, and not simply because their parent is disabled.

Such reasoning led to the removal of Fabbrini and Zieglers first-born son, Christopher, in September 2013. Within days of bringing him home from the hospital, Fabbrinis family contacted DHS, expressing concerns that the couples intellectual disabilities made them unable to care for their infant. DHS agreed and placed Christopher in foster care.

In order to regain custody, DHS required the couple to complete parenting and nutrition classes, and learn CPR and first aid, and they did. They also underwent psychological evaluations and participated in supervised visitation with Christopher.

Despite the parents resolve, the then-1-year-old remained in foster care. In 2015, the couples lawyer filed a motion to return him to his parents, arguing there was no current threat of serious loss or injury to the child. It was denied.

Four years later, in February 2017, the couple gave birth to their second child, Hunter. This time, DHS immediately put him in foster care while Fabbrini was still in the hospital. Meanwhile, the parents battle for custody of their children persisted.

In court, the states arguments centered on the parents cognitive and executive functioning skills. The average IQ scoreis between 90 and 110; Zieglers IQ tested at 66, Fabbrinis at 72.DHS focused in court proceedings on the parents cognitive skills and executive functioning, citing, among other things, the parents failure to read to their sons or use sunscreen on the boys, and feeding them chicken nuggets as a snack. The state also accused the parents of asking both too many and too few questions about parenting matters.

In the agreement, OCR says it found systemic deficiencies related to how DHS works with parents with disabilities, emphasizing that removing children from parents with disabilities based on IQ scores, and similar arbitrary measures, is not acceptable.

According to the settlement, DHS promises to give parents with disabilities the same opportunities to reunify their families as nondisabled parents, such as ensuring they have access to family supports. DHS will also update its nondiscrimination policy, designate an employee to oversee compliance with the ADA, provide training about working with disabled parents to all staff, establish a grievance procedure for complaints alleging disability discrimination, and provide regular progress reports on its efforts to OCR.

While this is not the first time the federal government has investigated a case involving discrimination by the child welfare system against parents with disabilities, it is the first time they have done so in three years.

In November 2012, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) placed a newborn baby in foster care after Sara Gordon, a mother with an intellectual disability, experienced trouble with feeding and diapering. While many new parents have similar challenges, state officials determined that Gordon was not able to comprehend how to handle or care for the child due to the mothers mental retardation.

Such actions were discriminatory and unlawful, according to a January 2015 joint letter of findings issued by the OCR and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Specifically, the departments investigated Gordons case and found DCF violated both the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA by discriminating against Gordon based on her disability and denying her support and services to assist her in caring for her daughter.

Two months later, Gordon and her daughter were reunited.

In August 2015, DOJ and OCR issued technical assistance to child welfare agencies and courts detailing the legal obligations of the child welfare system when working with disabled parents and their families. According to the guidance, both federal agencies had received several complaints of discrimination by the child welfare system, and that the frequency of such complaints was rising. Further, the guidance noted that child welfare agencies and courts greatly varied in how they support disabled parents and their families.

By the end of the year, OCR entered into a voluntary agreement with the Georgia Department of Human Services related to foster parents with disabilities.

Groups such as the Arc and the National Council on Disability have praised OCR for its recent agreement with Oregon. We are glad to see federal regulators reject stereotypical and discriminatory beliefs about the abilities of parents with [intellectual and developmental disabilites] to care for their children, particularly when considering the history of discrimination, including involuntary sterilization, said Peter Berns, CEO of the Arc.

While efforts like the agreement are important, however, questions remain about how much change it can really effectuate.

Attention to the rights of parents with disabilities is, of course, significant. And involvement by the federal government should hold some weight. Nonetheless, the Oregon agreement is voluntary and does not establish any sort of legal precedent. So far, its unclear if there are penalties if Oregon were to fail to adhere.

Further, unlike the letter of findings issued in the Gordon case, this agreement explicitly states it should not be construed as an admission that the state violated federal disability rights laws.

What happened to Fabbrini and Ziegler, as well as Gordon and countless other couples, must end. Families shouldnt be torn apart because of antiquated beliefs about the fitness of disabled people to raise children. Further, states must be held accountable when they break federal law.

But under the Trump administration, disability rights have been under constant siege. And, by not explicitly stating that Oregon violated both the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA, the federal governments silence in this case may be just another example of the administration not doing enough.

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An Oregon Couple Can Get Their Kids Back From Foster Care. But Many Disabled Parents Don't Get That Chance. - Rewire.News

Campus and Community

ByVictor Rogers | December 9, 2019 Atlanta, GA

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Book jackets of What to Read recommendations.

The guests are gone, the dishes have been cleared, and you have some quiet time to yourself. So, wheres a good book when you need one?

We asked several avid readers for recommendations. The books range from a story of the reflections and adventures of a failed novelist to a how-to on bullet journaling.

By Andrew Sean Greer, Little, Brown and Company (2017)

This national bestseller and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is the story of Arthur Less, a failed novelist about to turn 50, who responds to an ex-lover's wedding invitation by embarking on a trip around the world for a series of literary events. Regrets and reminiscences of past loves are interspersed with new adventures both endearingly awkward and deeply graceful. This was the perfect novel to read in my 49th summer. I recommend it for anyone who has ever been in love, or who wonders what a year of saying yes could be.

Marlee Givens, librarian for Modern Languages and Psychology

By Charles King, Doubleday Publishers (2019)

An inspiring group biography told within the context of the social, cultural, and political events of the 20th century. Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ruth Benedict developed revolutionary methods and theories that challenged eugenics, the prevailing scientific theory at that time. The scientific community considered them a group of misfits but later they were recognized as the founders of cultural anthropology. Their courageous explorations of disparate cultures debunked absolutist ideas that there is a superior people. Interwoven in the chronicle of their professional lives, the author also shares personal tales of romance, friendships, and rivalries within the group of anthropologists.

Cathy Carpenter, head of Campus Engagement and Scholarly Outreach, Georgia Tech Library

By Bill Courtney, Weinstein Books (2014)

The author is the high school football coach featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated as well as Esquire magazines 2012 Coach of the Year. Bill Courtney coached the downtrodden Manassas High School football team in North Memphis to success after everyone else had given up on them. Not only were his coaching skills imperative to the teams success, but they also made a deep impact on the individual lives of his players, including overcoming drug addiction, earning college acceptances at places such as West Point, and lifting up their communities. His core values of service, civility, leadership, character, commitment, and forgiveness are an example for all of us.

Jamison Keller, Assistant Dean of Students and director of Fraternity and Sorority Life

Engineering and Chemistry Librarian Isabel Altamirano recommended two books:

By Ryder Carroll, Fourth Estate Publishers (2018)

I was looking for a new method to keep track of my work and personal activities and decided to do it by the 21st-century learning method, YouTube. I found videos on bullet journaling, but they were too complicated too many decorations and drawings.

Then I found the original source. Carroll's book shows that you just need a blank journal, a writing instrument, and a ruler.

His method involves yearly, monthly, and daily planning with simple setups for repetitive tasks (like exercising or eating fruit), and a reflection section. By keeping up with the index, you can plan and execute different activities with just one journal.

By Eric M. Scott and David R. Modler, North Light Books (2012)

Start 2020 by doing creative work that does not require extensive training. This paperback book shows how to be artistic with collage, simple stencils, watercolors, and markers.

Each activity has a writing prompt, recommended page layouts, and step-by-step instruction on how to achieve a cohesive look. And you don't need to start on New Years Day; the work can happen at any time.

Its also perfect to have this book on hand if the electricity goes out during an ice storm. If children complain that theyre bored you can entertain them with the techniques found in this book.

Some of these books are available by searching the Librarys online catalog. Visit library.gatech.edu. You can also search other libraries, using Techs interlibrary loan system. Visit library.gatech.edu/borrow-other-libraries. Or visit your local book store.

Happy reading!

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What to Read During the Holiday Break - Georgia Tech News Center

I am 24, which is roughly 12 in New York years. No one expects me to have a kid or own a home. The same cannot be said for the small town I grew up in. There, Times up! is less of a #MeToo rallying cry and more of something a friends father tells his oldest daughter upon learning shes still single.

There comes a time in young womanhood where people who once really didnt want you to get pregnant suddenly start to care a lot about the babies you must have, right now. I cannot fathom why anyone at my familys Christmas dinner table would want to talk about freezing my eggs in between bites of mashed potatoes. And yet.

Despite what her poreless skin and dumb lyrics like spelling is fun might make you believe, Taylor Swift will turn 30 this week. The milestone means next to nothing, except that I hope she has a very nice birthday party. But of course, that means peoplenamely, menare falling over themselves to remind her she should spawn at once, or else shell almost certainly die alone and unloved.

One of those men happens to be Stefan Molyneux, an alt-right personality who boasts over 900,000 YouTube subscribers. He regularly spouts social Darwinist bullshit to his followers, and the Southern Poverty Law Center added him to its Extremist Files. Leave it to this guy to have thoughts on Taylor Swifts uterus.

I cant believe Taylor Swift is about to turn 30 - she looks so young! Molyneux began. Its strange to think that 90% of her eggs are already gone - 97% by the time she turns 40 - so I hope she thinks about having kids before its too late! Shed be a fun mom. 🙂

Yes, Stefan, it is strange, for you or anyone who is not Taylor Swift to spend even a moment thinking about her reproductive system. Please log off and factory reset your invasive man mind.

Swift has not responded to Molyneuxs tweet, and representatives for parties did not respond to my request for comment. But the singer addressed a similar topic last week.

In what she surely hoped would be a nice sound bite for an interview with People magazine, Swift said, The more women are able to voice their discomfort in social situations, the more it becomes the social norm that people who ask the questions at parties like When are you going to start a family to someone as soon as they turn 25 are a little bit rude.

Its good that were allowed to say, Hey, just so you know, were more than incubators. You dont have to ask that of someone just because theyre in their mid-20s and theyre a female, she added.

Molyneuxs trolling of Swift is less troubling than his enthusiastic promotion of scientific racism and eugenics. But its still concerning that many meneven otherwise lovely, well-intended menview a womans fertility as a point of friendly chatter.

Molyneux punctuated his tweet with a smile emoji, in what looks like an attempt at congeniality. Hes posed his unwarranted and unwanted message to Swift as a public service announcement, even beginning it with a complimentalbeit a seriously creepy one. (She looks so young! Seriously, my dude, close the tab on your computer thats just Google images of Taylor Swift and go take a walk.)

It brings me no joy to imagine Molyneux at his desk, stroking his chin, deep in thought imagining Taylor Swifts parenting abilities. Though, I guess it is probably one of his better thoughts, considering all the other abhorrent things hes said.

Still, when Youd be such a fun mom comes from the mouth not of a total stranger and internet conspiracy theorist, but a loved one, it seems innocuous, almost kind and caring.

But what if the man saying this is talking to one of the 6 million women in the United States struggling with infertility? They probably already know theyd be excellent mothers; after all, theyre trying. The women in my life who are struggling to get pregnant think about their situation nearly every day; why dont we give them some time off this holiday.

Maybe a woman just plain doesnt want to have a kid, now or ever. Thats her right, even as patriarchal laws attempting to control her sexual everything continue to arise.

So if you find yourself unable to control opening your mouth this holiday season to demand why a female family member is still childless, I beg you: find the nearest forkful of Christmas ham, and shove it there instead.

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Even Taylor Swift Can't Escape 'When Will You Have Kids?' - The Daily Beast

Perhaps the most famous statement in the American history of eugenics is Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmess one-liner upholding forced sterilization in Buck v. Bell, Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Carrie Buck was sterilized against her will because she, her mother, and her baby daughter were judged feeble-mindedthough theres no clear evidence that any woman of the Buck family was actually mentally-disabled, and some evidence that Carrie and her daughter were completely normal in mental abilityand because Carrie and her mother, who gave birth out of wedlock, were labeled promiscuous. (Carries child was the result of rape.) Bucks own lawyer had ties to the institution which sterilized her and the man who ordered it. The judgments pronounced against the Buck family were based on their class position, their behavior, and their helplessness, not on some kind of new science of genetics. The word imbecile derives from Latin and its roots literally mean without a staff for support. This is the only sense in which the Buck women could be considered imbecile: They had no help.

A century ago, people like the Bucks faced a movement which seemed destined for unstoppable success. Eugenics promised social improvement through higher birth rates for the fitand sterilization for those deemed unfit. Although the eugenics movement reached out to Catholic leaders to try to neutralize Catholic opposition, they made little headway. (The lone dissenter in Buck was the only Catholic Justice.) American Catholics were reliable votes against sterilization measures and other forms of negative eugenics, and argued that positive eugenics, the promotion of marriage and family life, should not be restricted solely to those whom elites considered deserving.

Earlier this year I read Sharon M. Leons careful history, An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics. Its a fascinating book which Ive thought about a lot since I finished it. Both the philosophical and the structural elements which allowed Catholics to be surprisingly effective opponents of eugenics may offer some lessons for our own far more divided, and politically practically toothless, church. Some notes:

# The Buck case was more representative than unusual. One of the central Catholic arguments against forced sterilization and other negative eugenics practices was simply that the science didnt prove what eugenics proponents said it proved. On one level this was an argument about how much evidence there really was for eugenic theory. On a deeper level, though, Catholic scientists and theologians gave a pointed critique of eugenic science as fundamentally shaped by bias against poor and struggling people. They opposed the idea that this kind of science was somehow neutral, pristinely cordoned off from prejudice or power relations. Im gonna go ahead and say that they were mostly right on the science and completely correct on the philosophy of science.

# Catholic opposition to eugenics united several different strands of Catholic thought, which later political and scientific developments would unweave. One of the central figures of Leons book is Fr. John Ryan, nicknamed the Right Reverend New Dealer; a cartoon summary of his views on this subject might be, Instead of birth control, have you tried a living wage? Or, as Leon put it when I interviewed her, We have the obligation to support and care for one another in ways that dont cause bodily harm.

Opposition to eugenics, for Catholics, meant support for material aid to poor familiesboth private and government aid. It meant protecting institutionalized people, and helping the people targeted by eugenicists support their families and (when moral issues were involved) improve their behavior and parenting. Catholics generally argued that family history wasnt destiny and that people could be taught to be better parents. Catholic opposition to eugenics also meant firm statements that forced sterilization violated an individuals right to bodily integrity. (This leg of the stool might have been the weakest, both because it can be stated in terms which make it sound like a liberal case for bodily autonomy or ownership, and because it exposed Catholics uncertainties about the rights of prisoners. This specific argument against forced sterilization sometimes received the qualifier that it applied only to those who had not been convicted of a crime.) And opposing eugenics expressed Catholic reverence for motherhood, childbearing, and fertility, as well as Catholic opposition to anything which would intervene in the link between sex and reproduction.

# This may be partly because Catholics had a large number of organizations designed to educate and unite them. Leon details the ways that parish study groups educated Catholics about eugenics, and broad-based organizations like the National Council of Catholic Men and the N.C. of Catholic Women gave voice to a constituency politicians realized they needed to consider. Some of the major Catholic organizations were based on common ethnic heritage, but in general they were based on Catholic identity or parish membership rather than forming around specific issues. Our current pro-life groups, Pax Christi, and other groups based around one issue or a collection of related issues have their benefits, perhaps including more obvious paths to ecumenism, but they may also contribute to political divisions in the Churchand to political powerlessness. You only have to listen to Pax Christi if you care what peaceniks think. Politicians in areas with substantial Catholic minorities had to listen to the National Councils regardless of their own politics.

# Catholics at this time were perfectly happy to fight on whatever grounds their opponents chose. You think youre doing science? Lets talk science. You think youre good liberals? Lets talk rights. But what fascinates me about the Catholic arguments is that Leon chose, as her book title, not a Rawlsian neutral-public-square type phrase, but the phrase, an image of God. This was always at the heart. It comes from the America editorial after Buck v. Bell: Fundamentally, our objection is based on the fact that every man, even a lunatic, is an image of God, not a mere animal, that he is a human being, and not a mere social factor.

And this phrase, an image of God, is what resonates today. Explicitly theological arguments often engage with our deepest longings and needs (to be beloved and to learn to love others, to be seen and to see others as in some way beautiful) because they themselves bear a beauty and poetry which carefully liberal and neutral arguments rarely attain. We should use them more often, not less.

# An argument which doesnt appear in the Catholic rhetoric of this time is the idea that the weak show us Christ in an especial way. I asked Leon about this and she pointed out that, as in Buck, the arguments were rarely about people who are actually developmentally disabled. So much of this conversation is about behavioral markers. Its about alcoholism, its about poverty, its about uncleanliness, illegitimacy, promiscuity. Not congenital differences. So the theological point that the mentally disabled can show us Christ not in spite of but through their relative weakness and helplessness didnt come up. I suspect that argument is more necessary now, as the science has improved and we can detect more forms of disability in the womb.

# A final caution: Although the American eugenics movement lost its momentum after World War II, Catholics didnt defeat it. The American eugenics movement was closely intertwined with the German one, and after the exposure of Nazi horrors, it was hard for eugenics to recover its once near-universal respectability. Still, women of color were forcibly sterilized here into the 1970s. American Catholic opposition to eugenics was surprisingly successful, given that Catholics were a mistrusted minority; Catholics held off the advance of eugenics in a number of states. But we werent surprisingly successful enough.

Phrenology chart (Know Thyself) via Wikimedia Commons.

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An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle Against Eugenics and Its Lessons for Today - Patheos

The political scientist Charles Kings new book, Gods of the Upper Air, chronicles how a circle of anthropologists battled scientific racism, eugenics, and ethnocentrism in the first half of the twentieth century. Kings book, written as a kind of collective biography, weaves together the life and work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Deloria, all students and disciples of Franz Boas.

Boas, a German Jewish immigrant with scars from duels, was the volatile center of this circle. As the founder of cultural anthropology, Papa Franz challenged the reigning notions of race and culture. His students did the same, adding sex and gender to the mix. This made all of them plenty of enemies, including the administration of Columbia University, where, beginning in 1897, Boas was based.

Boas evidently still has enemies, and not just among the resurgent forces of nationalism. Starting in the 1960s, Boass scientific anti-racism came under attack from postmodernist and postcolonialist scholars. These criticisms are summarized by the anthropologist Herbert S. Lewis in his defense of Boass legacy:

His life was lived in the service of precisely the values professed by many of his critics, and he achieved positive results that few scholars have ever matched. While it is certainly true that anyones best efforts may go wrong, and ones scholarship may be misused and perverted by others, I believe that Boass critics have so far failed to demonstrate that this has been the case.

Once a giant in the field, subsequently whittled down to size, then heaped with calumny, Boass work is worth inspecting again in our own fraught time.

Key to this retrospective is an understanding of the United States Boas lived in. It was a place closely studied by the Nazis, who used the American system of racial apartheid as a model for their Final Solution. The U.S. court system declared who was and wasnt white, for example: Chinese were not (1878), but Syrians were (1910). States had morons sterilized, a eugenic practice validated by the Supreme Court in 1927. Interracial marriage was illegaland this was still law in sixteen states until 1967. American women who married non-white foreign men had their citizenship stripped from them by the Married Womens Act of 1922.

One of Hitlers favorite books was the popular American pseudo-history, The Passing of a Great Race (1916), by the patrician Madison Grant, who had once exhibited an African in the Bronx zoo. Grant believed the Teutons were being replaced by lesser races. The First World War made Grant change the name of the supposedly top-tier race (Boas would put the word in quotations) to Nordics. He also took personal credit for helping to stop immigration from Asia and severely limiting non-Nordic peoples from Europe in the Immigration Act of 1924.

Much of the American racial hierarchy was based on science that turned out to be flimsy at best, outright faked at worst. The combative Boas opposed the bogus rationalizations of racism, as well as the allegedly evolutionary classification of races this pseudoscience fostered. As an anthropologist, his biggest point was also his simplest: the assumption that ones own culture or race was superior to others was not just wrong but harmful.

Judging the past by todays standards is always a losing game. But in his own context, Boas fought against American colonialism and the rise of fascism, and for civil liberties and free immigration. As Lews puts it: He was as farsighted and clear-eyed as anyone in his time, an opponent of racism, ethnocentrism, inequality, chauvinism, imperialism, war, censorship, and political cant and mind-fogging sloganeering.

As Kings book reveals, Boas, the gruff old professor, was also unusually welcoming to women in the field. The field is here both figurativeacademic anthropologyand literal. Mead famously went to Samoa. The less well-known Deloria to the Great Plains. The now-better-known Hurston went to rural Florida, not long after an anti-black pogrom in Ocoee forced hundreds of African American families into becoming refugees in their own country. Hurston packed a gunfor she was venturing into the savage territory of American racism.

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By: Herbert S. Lewis

American Anthropologist, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 447-467

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The Life and Times of Franz Boas - JSTOR Daily

Canby Then is brought to you by Retro Revival. They are not your average antique shop. Open daily. Find them on the corner of NW Third and Grant in downtown Canby.

On Canby Then this week, and in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to revisit one of the most fascinating and intriguing episodes that we have ever run across in our digging through Canbys history. It happened right around this time of year back in 1915.

Two years earlier, In 1913, Oscar W. Sturgis, a well-known Clackamas County pioneer and Canby farmer, made a very difficult decision. He had his 40-year-old son, Charley, committed to the state insane asylum in Salem.

We dont know the exact circumstances of this decision. But we know Oscar Sturgis was in his 70s. His wife, 15 years younger, was also in poor health. Its a reasonable assumption that the Sturgises were unable to provide the level of care that Charley needed.

The Oregon State Hospital in the early 1900s was a dark and infamous place, which is not unusual in a time when mental illness was greatly feared and poorly understood. The hospital was underfunded and overcrowded.

Later, its staff would participate in the eugenics movement, sterilizing more than 2,600 patients over the years, and experimenting with practices now considered barbaric, including electroshock therapy and insulin shock therapy, where patients were repeatedly treated with large enough doses of insulin to induce daily comas.

Is it any wonder that, in April 1915, less than two years after hed been institutionalized, Charley Sturgis, along with a group of other patients, escaped from the Oregon State Hospital. It also was probably not surprising at least not to the local officials who were investigating the case when a body turned up in the mountains of Eugene, near the Wendling Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

The man, who had evidently been murdered, matched Charleys description and was wearing his hospital-issued clothing.

Back in Canby, the Sturgises were informed of the gruesome discovery and sent a family friend, A.J. Burdette, to view the corpse. He positively identified it, noting a particular scar on the neck that was a match to Charley Sturgis. The body was transported back home and laid to rest in a family plot at the Canby Oddfellows Cemetery.

Months passed, and the family worked to move on and put the sad episode behind them. As the holidays drew near, one can imagine how heavily the tragic loss of their ill son must have weighed on his parents hearts. I can only guess that they must have blamed themselves for his death.

If only we hadnt sent him away, they must have lamented in the dark, cold hours of the night. If only we had kept him home for a little while longer, things might have turned out differently.

Then, on Nov. 21, four days before Thanksgiving, a knock came on the door of the Sturgis family home. It was, perhaps, the most unexpected knock in the history of Canby. It was Charley Sturgis. Miraculously alive, smiling, and in good health, mind and body.

The door had been answered by his sister, Bertha Hurst, who was dumbfounded and maybe more than a little afraid to see the man her family had buried months ago, standing before her (and waiting impatiently to be invited in). When she recovered, she took Charley to his old room, then went to break the news to their mother.

She knew she had to handle this carefully, given her mothers fragile state of health. She asked, Can you stand some news which might be a little shock?

Yes, I guess so, but what is it? her mother replied.

She explained that her brother was not dead, in fact had just come home, and her mother promptly fainted.

We had to put her to bed and call Dr. Dedham, Bertha later recalled.

When Oscar Sturgis was told the news, he had the same reaction.

Charley, of course, had no idea that hed been pronounced dead, that hed had a funeral, that there was even a body in a cemetery with a tombstone bearing his name. And his sister was reluctant to tell him, for fear of the effect that this would have on his own mental state. He had, after all, been a patient at a mental institution only a few months earlier, and the only reason he was not still there was because he had escaped. For this same reason, he was not told of the impact his return had had on his parents.

Everything possible is being done to prevent Charles Sturgis from becoming excited, one newspaper noted.

The truth slowly emerged over the next several days. After escaping the state hospital, Charley had traveled to Washington state, where hed worked in various towns, before deciding he missed home and wanted to see his family.

But this didnt answer the big question: Who was the man buried in the Sturgis plot? And why was he wearing Charleys clothes, down to the patient number hed been issued at the state hospital?

Part of this was eventually answered when Charley explained that the group whod escaped the institution in April 1915 had hatched an unusual plot. They had decided to all trade clothes before splitting up, in order to confuse any authorities they encountered. But as to who the man was, and how and why he met his grisly fate, well probably never know.

One thing we can be sure of: The Sturgis family was much brighter that Thanksgiving.

Oh, its a happy Thanksgiving for us, Bertha Hurst, the sister, told The Oregonian. We are so happy because Charley has come home come home brighter than ever before. Our sorrow has been turned to joy.

She said the family would not be returning Charley to the State Hospital, and also that the unknown man whose body had been buried in the Sturgis plot would be exhumed immediately and laid to rest elsewhere. (Hopefully, they waited till after Thanksgiving.)

Unfortunately, we were unable to follow the threads of this fascinating story beyond 1915. If you know anything about what became of Charles Sturgis and his family, please let us know.

Up next is the story of a shooting star, a long time member of the U.S. Rifle Team from right here in Canby. Thats next time, on Canby Then.

Want to support free, useful, locally produced journalism like this? Then consider joining our monthly membership program, Canby Now Plus, for as little as $1 a month! Youll help us sustain and expand our work, plus you can get access to exclusive content, cool merchandise and other goodies. Thanks!

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Canby Man Pronounced Dead, Buried, then Shows Up Back at Home in Time for Thanksgiving - Canby Now Podcast

The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of America by Daniel Okrent is this weeks book of the week.

It traces the impact of anti-immigration sentiment in late 19th and early 20th century America.

The book also discusses multiple changes that were attempted or made as a result of those sentiments: from pushing for literacy test and tax requirements for immigrants to the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, a law that put random restrictions on how many people could be allowed into the United States from different countries.

If anyone would like to better understand the historical roots of how immigration and its regulation became such hot-button issues in America, The Guarded Gate is a good place to start.

This book is available at the Beckley branch.

Elizabeth Hoyle is a reference assistant at the Raleigh County Public Libraries.

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Book review - "The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of...

Outrage was the general researcher and media response to the Chinese bioengineer He Jiankui's announcement last November that he had used CRISPR gene-editing technology to modify the genomes of several human embryos with the goal of making them resistant to HIV infection. The result was the birth of twin girls; one with the genetic modification in all of her body's cells and another whose body is a mosaic of modified and unmodified cells. He did certainly cut both scientific and ethical corners in applying CRISPR technology to human embryos. Happily, a preliminary study in June that suggested the He's modifications might shorten the twins' lifespans appears to be wrong.

Setting aside He's moral shortcomings, is it ever ethical to use CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies to modify the genomes of human embryos? Yes, argues Abertay University bioethicist Kevin Smith in the journal Bioethics. Smith addresses the question using a rigorously applied utilitarian ethics approach. He details recent advances in CRISPR gene-editing safety and concludes that the benefits of preventing heritable diseases already outweigh the risks of using the technology.

In his article, Smith deals with "several wellrehearsed positions and arguments" against permitting parents to use CRISPR gene-editing to fix genetic flaws in their prospective offspring. These include "claims of unnaturalness, the alleged interests of embryos, questions of identity, fears of eugenics, and simply the 'yuck factor.'" Smith points out that critics once denounced in vitro fertilization (IVF) on the grounds of that it was "unnatural." Millions of parents have freely chosen unnatural IVF techniques to overcome their natural infertility. Some 8 million children have been born via assisted reproduction since the first IVF baby was born in 1979.

Some opponents argue using CRISPR would be unethical because embryos can't give their consent to being genetically modified. A requirement for prenatal consent is obvious ethical nonsense. No one has ever given their consent to be born much less to be born the specific complement of genes they bear. In addition, it's hard to imagine that a child will later feel morally aggrieved that his or her parents had prevented them from suffering a debilitating genetic disease. Providing parents with the ability to choose to prevent heritable disease and disability in their progeny using biotechnology is not to be equated with morally pernicious state-imposed eugenics. And lots of biomedical treatments and reproductive technologies have gone from yuck to yippeeas their significant benefits became evident. CRISPR gene-editing will do the same.

Smith persuasively argues that not only would the early application of the technology improve the welfare of prospective parents and their progeny now, it will usher in a human germline genetic modification (HGGM) revolution that will greatly benefit future generations. As Smith explains, "The longer we wait until commencing the HGGM revolution and moving towards a world of increased utility, the greater will be the quantity of suffering accrued meantime through genetically influenced disease."

When should CRISPR and even better gene-editing technologies be made available to parents seeking to prevent genetic diseases in their offspring? Given that some folks are still spooked by He's announcement last November, Smith prudentially suggests that "wekickstart the next biomedical revolution by proceeding not immediately but within around 12 years to intervene in the human germline."

The revolution, however, may start sooner than that. Russian researcher Denis Rebrikov says that he hopes to gain permission in the near future from the appropriate authorities to gene-edit embryos to repair a gene that causes congenital deafness.

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Genetically Modified Babies Are Ethically OK - Reason

Photo: Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61

Some depressing new research suggests that your dog might not really be obsessed with you. Well, it might be, but not because of a special human-dog bond. It turns out that dogs love basically every species they come into contact with, be it a sheep, a duck, or a dolphin.

While I refuse to believe that the human-dog connection is anything less than sacred, a dogs ability to fall for basically every living thing is not necessarily a bad thing, says Clive Wynne, a dog behavior specialist who has been researching dog emotions for decades. He explained to the New York Times that dogs abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path has helped them thrive relative to other members of the animal kingdom (they outnumber their canine cousins, meany wolves, 3,000 to 1.)

And while dogs may be better at following human directions than other animals, and are nicer to us too, this is mostly thanks to thousands of years of domestication, Wynne says. He even found genes in dogs that are associated with indiscriminate friendliness in humans, suggesting that humans have bred so many good dogs that the dog genome actually changed.

Outside of that light bit of eugenics, dogs will be mostly nice to anything humans just have a little bit of an evolutionary advantage. And while that may be the case, it doesnt make love from these very good boys any less real.

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Does Your Dog Actually Love You? - The Cut

No, not that one, the other one:

In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roofs murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a white genocide-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in Mein Kampf.

The SPLC obtained hundreds of e-mails that Miller sent to fellow travelers at Breitbart between 2015 and 2016. They were leaked by Katie McHugh, a former Breitbart editor who renounced the alt-right.

As the SPLC dryly remarked, Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. Almost all of them are about race and immigration, usually with an obsessive focus on crimes committed by immigrants, or simply the danger of immigration causing Western culture to be diluted. After the Charleston shooting, he bemoaned the removal of Confederate flags.

Millers isnt the euphemistic, Fox-News-approved brand of racism, either, the kind thats watered down and disguised just enough to make it palatable to the masses. He links to articles on VDARE and American Renaissance, two explicitly white supremacist sites. He lauds the anti-immigration policies of Calvin Coolidge, beloved by racists for his screeds against interracial relationships.

He also recommends a novel called The Camp of the Saints, a vile work of racist fiction by a far-right French Catholic, Jean Raspail. In the book, Raspail spins an apocalyptic scenario of the West being overrun and destroyed by hordes of immigrants from the Third World, whom he depicts as crazed, dirty, hypersexual and violent. Its every racists white genocide phobia given concrete literary form.

Unfortunately, especially with the impeachment furor now consuming the news cycle, this story hasnt gotten the attention it deserves. Ill admit, its hardly a surprise. Its been apparent from the beginning who Trump is and what kind of people he surrounds himself with. This is just adding a few more shovelfuls to the top of a mountain of evidence.

But for those who say this is a dog-bites-man story too obvious to bother with, Amanda Marcotte has words on why it matters:

Its the kind of news that, in a pre-Trump era, would have shocked the nation and brought all other news coverage to a standstill. The presidents principal speechwriter, a man who shapes his policy around immigration and other important issues, has a long history of sending white nationalist and neo-Nazi propaganda to right-wing news sites, successfully getting them to publish articles influenced by such materials. This is a huge story. This should be as big a story as the impeachment story. Yet its being met largely with a yawn.

To be clear, Trump is no innocent dupe. Hes a racist and is undoubtedly happy to go along with these policies. But I doubt hes intelligent enough to conceive of them by himself. These things are only happening because more intelligent and ambitious racists, people like Stephen Miller, are steering the agenda. Theyve found a president whos willing to give white supremacists what they always wanted.

As with the Ukraine story, the broad outlines of whats happening are obvious to every honest person. But the point is getting the receipts the paper trail of evidence that we can shove in the face of every right-wing blowhard who lies and denies with a smile. They know theyre lying; we know theyre lying; but theres satisfaction in being to prove it.

Marcotte points out that, prior to the release of these e-mails, Democrats like Ilhan Omar were viciously attacked for labeling Miller a white nationalist:

So, internet cynics, while you declare that everyone already knows that Miller shares views with neo-Nazis and has been doggedly trying to mainstream them, I can safely say that the right-wing media apparatus has put a whole lot of effort into denying and concealing what everyone already knows.

Indeed, the SPLC article points out that Miller went to considerable pains to keep his true beliefs secret. He often communicates by phone so as not to leave a written record, and he limits e-mail to a small circle of allies and confidants. Whatever you might say about how everyone already knew the gist of this, he clearly believed there was value in maintaining deniability. To my mind, that alone means theres value in exposing him.

I admit because Ive struggled with it myself that at this point, three years into the Trump presidency, it can be hard to care. When youre on a bed of nails, its tough to feel one particular prick among all the rest. Theres such a steady flow of terrible news, many progressives have numbed ourselves to it as a survival mechanism.

Even so, we cant give in to cynicism. The bad guys win when we let our sense of outrage wither, when we respond to stories like this with a shrug of resignation. We cant allow ourselves to accept this as the new normal. Racism has been Americas stumbling block since its founding, but what progress has been made was only made because people refused to stop dreaming of how we could do better and be better. If we lose that sense of possibility, weve truly lost everything worth holding onto.

Image based on HARRIS.news via Wikimedia Commons, released under CC BY-SA 3.0 license

Originally posted here:

Dystopia Journal #35: Racist in the White House - Patheos