5 ms·

Damn, 130 million americans were once under forced sterilization laws pushed by the human betterment foundation (HBF) which was chaired by those guys. It seems

Damn, 130 million americans were once under forced sterilization laws pushed by the human betterment foundation (HBF) which was chaired by those guys. It seems like such a waste of time to do all this renaming stuff for a bunch of hyper-sensitive freshmen (freshpeople?) but some of the sterilizations were for things like 'insanity' 'feeblemindedness' 'mentally diseased' 'mentally defective' and applied to you if you were below 70% of the average intelligence of your age group. I certainly wouldn't like to live under those laws yet some part of me still values eugenics. Vasectomy for thee but not for me I guess. I remember something about nazi schools teaching children the sterilised were victims of their ancestors, not nazi society. From what I recall they even had laws against treating the sterilised with contempt. Very progressive. Here's some newspaper clippings by the HBF. https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.0020380g/?st=gallery https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.0020380g/?st=gallery

selimthegrim 6y ago
(I'm a Caltech and Ruddock House alum). Millikan is also on record writing in a letter to his wife in the 50s that if blacks in MS reached a majority of the population democracy there as we understand it would cease to exist. I say it's time for him to go.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 5chan 6y ago
  What if he was right? What are the well functioning majority black democracies?
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Botswana and Namibia, ever hear of them?
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      I don't know what the comment you're replying to said, but guessing at its contents, I'd also throw in Ghana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Seychelles to round out the usual list of well-governed Sub-Saharan African countries.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- BannedQuick 6y ago
  Wait until you hear about what Margaret Sanger said about the blacks.
- michtzik 6y ago
  In case anyone is curious, this story discusses the letter: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-07/caltechs-racist-past https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-07/caltechs-r... It quotes, "More than half of the population in this state is made up of negroes — a very serious situation. For it means that under universal suffrage they could control the state now — an unthinkable disaster in view of the sort of people they now are." In particular, the phrasing above of "reached a majority of the population" is exactly backwards, as Mississippi had been majority African American from the 1840s to the 1930s, and likely already wasn't at the time of Millikan's visit in 1951 (contrary to his assertion). African Americans historically have moved away from Mississippi and other southern states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...
thewarrior 6y ago
Yes I too was surprised to learn that many of Germany’s eugenicists were inspired by people and ideas in the United States. Eugenics used to be a very respectable field of study. Highly intelligent people believed that unless the “feeble minded” were stopped from reproducing it would lead to the decline of the human race. Institutes were established, Nobel prize winners wrote in its favor. It was seen as doing humanity a favor somewhat like how climate change is discussed today. Take any random figure of western history who is widely admired. I’m not taking any names but odds are they believed that the rest of the world needed the guiding hand of western civilization to attain modernity. Colonialism, Slavery and imperialism were seen as justified expressions of the natural order. Skulls were assembled from around the world and brain volumes meticulously noted down to “prove” this. From this was born the ideology of the Nazis that humanity is a collection biological races constantly struggling for evolutionary dominance. And the duty of the superior race was to help this along by vanquishing the weaker races and sterilizing the feeble minded. The under currents of this movement exist to this day. It has been rebranded as “Human bio diversity” to escape its Nazi past. Some writers hailed as truth telling heroes by people here have been recently revealed to have sympathies for these ideas. These days it’s couched in extremely vague sounding dog whistles that are very hard to decipher. “Welfare bums” etc By cutting our links with it we are not necessarily erasing the past but sending a message to those lurking beneath polite society that these ideas that have led to some of the most horrific massacres in history are unwelcome.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  You could just say Scott Siskind's name, you know.
  - dang 6y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to HN? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that lately. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- monoideism 6y ago
nerpderp82 6y ago
*read the whole comment and the link before you flag* Eugenics, Genocide, DnR, does a rose by any other name ... I am all for forced sterilization, but it won't be an IQ test the decides it. The UK is using covid as cover to dispose of its retarded. Yeah, that isn't the term we use anymore. But that is how it feels when we mark our fellow humans as subhuman and queue them for death. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/new-do-not-resuscitate-orders-imposed-on-covid-19-patients-with-learning-difficulties https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/new-do-not-res...
- dang 6y ago
  Please stop posting flamewar comments to Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ashtonkem 6y ago
One of the things we’ve learned about eugenics is that even if you agree with it in principle (and to be clear, I do not), it’s painfully clear that in practice it slides down to Nazism and genocide very rapidly. This is why these ideas have been purged from polite society, and people who openly espouse them are shunned and shamed. We’ve seen where these things lead, and most people are rightly horrified by it. The road between “these people are ‘feeble minded’ and we should sterilize them for the good of the species” and “these aren’t even people we should kill them” is very short and paved in literal millions of dead bodies. The processes that allow one to forcibly sterilize a fellow human being against their will requires some degree of dehumanization, which is why it goes to even worse places than where it started.
- mc32 6y ago
  I agree that eugenics is problematic for many reasons. However, when people were thinking these things out, many or most thought they were doing it to improve humanity (I guess we’d breed out the undesirable traits). From that PoV I would not try to erase their memories. This reminds me of the cultural revolution and the four olds (sì jiù). There are other important things to attend to. Learn to live with your warts. You don’t have to look like a pristine model. Nor does society.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    > From that PoV I would not try to erase their memories. How is choosing to no longer use their name for a building or award erasing their memories?
    - mc32 6y ago
      One day you find out your parents were cheats. Or they stole Amazon packages, whatever. Do you think those people should go ahead and change their surnames? A bunch of goodie-two-shoes.
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        If I found out my parents believed in Eugenics I wouldn't talk to them
rayiner 6y ago
Eugenics was seen as progressive and scientific. The Catholic Church was a major force of opposition against it: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/631736/pdf https://muse.jhu.edu/article/631736/pdf Woodrow Wilson was probably the nadir of that ideological dead end: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-12-08/woodrow-wilson-wasn-t-the-only-progressive-racist https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-12-08/woodro... The Cornerstone Speech is another example of science invoked in support of a terrible thing, in that case slavery, in juxtaposition to the religious zeal of the abolitionists: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto... > Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.

selimthegrim 6y ago

(I'm a Caltech and Ruddock House alum). Millikan is also on record writing in a letter to his wife in the 50s that if blacks in MS reached a majority of the population democracy there as we understand it would cease to exist. I say it's time for him to go.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
5chan 6y ago
What if he was right? What are the well functioning majority black democracies?
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Botswana and Namibia, ever hear of them?
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    I don't know what the comment you're replying to said, but guessing at its contents, I'd also throw in Ghana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Seychelles to round out the usual list of well-governed Sub-Saharan African countries.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
BannedQuick 6y ago
Wait until you hear about what Margaret Sanger said about the blacks.
michtzik 6y ago
In case anyone is curious, this story discusses the letter: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-07/caltechs-racist-past https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-07/caltechs-r... It quotes, "More than half of the population in this state is made up of negroes — a very serious situation. For it means that under universal suffrage they could control the state now — an unthinkable disaster in view of the sort of people they now are." In particular, the phrasing above of "reached a majority of the population" is exactly backwards, as Mississippi had been majority African American from the 1840s to the 1930s, and likely already wasn't at the time of Millikan's visit in 1951 (contrary to his assertion). African Americans historically have moved away from Mississippi and other southern states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...

thewarrior 6y ago

Yes I too was surprised to learn that many of Germany’s eugenicists were inspired by people and ideas in the United States. Eugenics used to be a very respectable field of study. Highly intelligent people believed that unless the “feeble minded” were stopped from reproducing it would lead to the decline of the human race. Institutes were established, Nobel prize winners wrote in its favor. It was seen as doing humanity a favor somewhat like how climate change is discussed today. Take any random figure of western history who is widely admired. I’m not taking any names but odds are they believed that the rest of the world needed the guiding hand of western civilization to attain modernity. Colonialism, Slavery and imperialism were seen as justified expressions of the natural order. Skulls were assembled from around the world and brain volumes meticulously noted down to “prove” this. From this was born the ideology of the Nazis that humanity is a collection biological races constantly struggling for evolutionary dominance. And the duty of the superior race was to help this along by vanquishing the weaker races and sterilizing the feeble minded. The under currents of this movement exist to this day. It has been rebranded as “Human bio diversity” to escape its Nazi past. Some writers hailed as truth telling heroes by people here have been recently revealed to have sympathies for these ideas. These days it’s couched in extremely vague sounding dog whistles that are very hard to decipher. “Welfare bums” etc By cutting our links with it we are not necessarily erasing the past but sending a message to those lurking beneath polite society that these ideas that have led to some of the most horrific massacres in history are unwelcome.

selimthegrim 6y ago
You could just say Scott Siskind's name, you know.
- dang 6y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to HN? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that lately. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
monoideism 6y ago

nerpderp82 6y ago

*read the whole comment and the link before you flag* Eugenics, Genocide, DnR, does a rose by any other name ... I am all for forced sterilization, but it won't be an IQ test the decides it. The UK is using covid as cover to dispose of its retarded. Yeah, that isn't the term we use anymore. But that is how it feels when we mark our fellow humans as subhuman and queue them for death. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/new-do-not-resuscitate-orders-imposed-on-covid-19-patients-with-learning-difficulties https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/new-do-not-res...

dang 6y ago
Please stop posting flamewar comments to Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ashtonkem 6y ago

One of the things we’ve learned about eugenics is that even if you agree with it in principle (and to be clear, I do not), it’s painfully clear that in practice it slides down to Nazism and genocide very rapidly. This is why these ideas have been purged from polite society, and people who openly espouse them are shunned and shamed. We’ve seen where these things lead, and most people are rightly horrified by it. The road between “these people are ‘feeble minded’ and we should sterilize them for the good of the species” and “these aren’t even people we should kill them” is very short and paved in literal millions of dead bodies. The processes that allow one to forcibly sterilize a fellow human being against their will requires some degree of dehumanization, which is why it goes to even worse places than where it started.

mc32 6y ago
I agree that eugenics is problematic for many reasons. However, when people were thinking these things out, many or most thought they were doing it to improve humanity (I guess we’d breed out the undesirable traits). From that PoV I would not try to erase their memories. This reminds me of the cultural revolution and the four olds (sì jiù). There are other important things to attend to. Learn to live with your warts. You don’t have to look like a pristine model. Nor does society.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > From that PoV I would not try to erase their memories. How is choosing to no longer use their name for a building or award erasing their memories?
  - mc32 6y ago
    One day you find out your parents were cheats. Or they stole Amazon packages, whatever. Do you think those people should go ahead and change their surnames? A bunch of goodie-two-shoes.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      If I found out my parents believed in Eugenics I wouldn't talk to them

rayiner 6y ago

Eugenics was seen as progressive and scientific. The Catholic Church was a major force of opposition against it: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/631736/pdf https://muse.jhu.edu/article/631736/pdf Woodrow Wilson was probably the nadir of that ideological dead end: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-12-08/woodrow-wilson-wasn-t-the-only-progressive-racist https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-12-08/woodro... The Cornerstone Speech is another example of science invoked in support of a terrible thing, in that case slavery, in juxtaposition to the religious zeal of the abolitionists: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto... > Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.