![Unbroken:A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption[Hardcover]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tt-xdwKvuGn3TXQR6vFZCTGFKX5E8fgXGkLJy_ha5sW8qp0xRuySRG8-BXMytO6WvBvud_a9GNL1G6LzahMTm4nLGGlyoE5VrFpFaRPTIEoMc_dkAwxgA86vGHYwRL72Hsze2pEdsQrHZ0yuXNENpCzErx-qqxsAmOQg=s0-d "Unbroken:A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption[Hardcover]")
i learned more about world war two and the time period than i ever thought i'd want to learn. but it's actually fairly interesting. especially the time just prior to the war, in the early 1900s, in america, where they began a strange practice: eugenics.
eugenics means, basically, killing off the ability of certain individuals to procreate, therefore "cleaning up" the gene pool. sterilization.
i'm not going to lie. when encountering those i deem idiotic or wastes of space at grocery stores, in traffic, and elsewhere, it has certainly crossed my mind that "people like that ought not be allowed to procreate." mean? perhaps. but absolutely true.
i would never, however, actually move to sterilize those people.
i was thinking, as i read the description of the mentally and physically handicapped, criminal, and otherwise troubled individuals who were slated for sterilization, that this was something that happened long long ago, and probably only in backwards areas of the united states (and probably other areas of the world).
and then i read this article: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/10/north-carolina-to-decide-how-much-to-compensate-victims-of-forced-sterilization/?hpt=hp_bn1
what the fuck? apparently, it was happening in north carolina, my home state, up until the 1970s. the 70s! that.is.nuts.
would i have been chosen? i do some dumb shit. would you have been chosen? holy cow!
now, folks are trying to determine how much money is owed to compensate those whose procreation was limited. currently, $50k looks like the number. but can you really put a number on an inability to create a family? an inability to partner with someone who held childbearing as a dealmaker or breaker?
i don't know. i'm not going to pretend. but i think it's wild that something so outrageous (yet, occasionally seems logical when encountering self-determined morons) actually happened just over 30 years ago.
i'm glad my parents didn't get found out. they sure have their moments...
(i love you, mom and dad!)
This just highlights how slanted media can be. Many states in our great nation had this practice as a norm up until the 70's, just like NC. However, they kept it hush hush while NC admitted the error and is trying to make reparations.
ReplyDeleteSo while everyone else covers it up, NC gets slammed as backwoods rednecks for finally coming clean and trying to do the right thing.
that's a great point - thanks for commenting. i did some research and it appears that while 50 states participated in the early 1900s, up to 33 states actually participated up until and into the 70s. Here's a snippet I found:
ReplyDelete“Eugenics in the US is something that’s still not nationally known. People associate it with Nazis; they don’t realize that the US did it too,” Rebecca Kluchin, an assistant professor of History at California State University, Sacramento, tells ABC News.
Sadly, Kluchin’s claim is more than just estimation. Of the 33 states that ran these programs, only seven have ever publicly acknowledged or apologized for them. It is just with this latest case in North Carolina that a payout is being yielded for the first time.