N.C.: the state that hates women - especially brown women

[donsu]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=708780

State Secret: Thousands Secretly Sterilized
N.C. Woman Among 65,000 Sterilized by Gov't., Often Without Their Knowledge, in 20th Century

-snip-

From the early 1900s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing.

"The procedures that were done here were done to poor folks," said Steven Selden, professor at the University of Maryland. "They were thought to be poor because they had bad genes or bad inheritance, if you will. And so they would be the focus of the sterilization."

-snip-

Riddick was raped and became pregnant at the age of 13. Social workers labeled her promiscuous and too feeble-minded to ever be a responsible parent. So, after giving birth in 1968, Riddick was sterilized without being told. (she wasn't feeble-minded)

-snip-

Even though the practice ended more than 30 years ago, some say the time has come to make amends. North Carolina was one of the first states out of 33 that once practiced sterilization to offer an apology. State Rep. Larry Womble is crafting a bill to provide financial reparations.
-snip-
-----------------------------------

[Lex]

1. Well, it says

"North Carolina was one of the first states out of 33 that once practiced sterilization to offer an apology."

Looks like 33 states performed these horrible practices.

[Ripley]

8. That might interfere with South Bashing here.

You know, those um, facts.

What I don't understand is why the woman thanks God for giving her a child when she was raped at 13. Is that one of the mysterious ways He works? What's stopping her from adopting another child since she obviously now has the means.

At least the government is working towards financial reparations. The article doesn't say it was only "brown women," it says "undesireables." So more than brown women were victim of this I would imagine.

[supernova]

10. Mostly if you were poor and uneducated

that made you a target. Race was probably a factor to a degree, but there are white victims here too.

[Ripley]

12. Does anyone have a list of those 33 states?

I'd like to know why this thread was started with such a flamer on NC, considering the government there has apologized and is trying to find the money for reparations.

Do ya think any "blue states" did this? Nah, all 33 must be in THE SOUTH.

[lenidog]

13. California did a third of all of the 64,000 and if I recall

Washington state was second. So that theory is shot.

[Ripley]

14. Shock upon shock eh?

Will we ever see a thread titled "California: the State that hates women - especially brown women"? But it should probably be "yellow people" out there.

Why do some DUers insist, ney, DEMAND that we all show our contempt and utter hatred for Southern states? What purpose does it serve?

[lenidog]

15. No we wouldn't

Because it is a "Blue" state and therefore a paragon of virtue in which nothing like this could ever happen. While the South are "Red" therefore they are instantly branded as evil. It makes it easier to dismiss them because of their evil and excuse to ignore them instead of heading down and trying to convert them to "Blue" states. This I find rather ironic situation especially seeing as. The last three Democratic Presidents were Southerner and Gore who should have been President was also a Southerner.

[noiretextatique]

29. california is not a blue state...it's kind of a purple state

with the two big liberal bastions of sf and la being solidly blue, and lots of red areas inbetween.

[Ripley]

31. Actually I was being facetious.

I don't believe in the rightwing meme about red state/blue state. I've seen the population breakdown maps....we're all pretty purple with the exception of I believe Idaho, Oklahoma and Nebraska that were red in every county of their states.

My point was that the OP lambasted NC while the story is actually about something good NC is doing with regards to this history. They should be commended for this.

Those of us in the South are just really tired of fighting the flames cast upon us all the time here in the most broad-brush blanket statements.

[noiretextatique]

32. i can understand that having spent every summer

in texas, though i grew up in california. as my late uncle was fond of saying, he'd never been called the "n" word so much until he visited southern california, and he lived all over the south. when i was visiting a friend in a small town washington state, she told me not to venture too far off the main streets.
southern california is also one of the most segregated places in the US. it's only the terminally naive or deluded who believe the south is the bastion of racism in america.

[fishwax]

36. Actually, Virginia was second and North Carolina was third

at least according to an article on this page: http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nc/eugenics.htm

[lenidog]

45. I found that out too

I must have incorrectly remembered the documentary I saw on the topic.

[supernova]

17. I found The Eugenics Archive

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list_topics.pl

I'm sure there is a list of states in here, but where I don't know. I'm also trying to listen to a teleconference here at work.

[lenidog]

26. Nothing giving a list of states

[supernova]

28. Drat!

You would think that would be a part of the archive. Thanks for checking.

[lenidog]

30. No problem

I even tried a google search and nothing came up except for the stated fact that 33 states had such programs. I know Washington, Virginia, California, North Carolina and Indianna had programs. So we have five. Now we just have to find out the other 28.

[fishwax]

35. Add Oregon and South Carolina

the governors of both states have apologized for their programs, so they must've had 'em.

http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nc/eugenics.htm

[lenidog]

46. So now we have seven

and in one of the articles I looked at earlier they showed a map of the US showing the states that had adopted sterilization programs up to that time. I could make out New York, PA and maybe NJ.

[ultraist]

23. Yes, race was a factor

I've read articles about this eugenics program in the past. There is no question that race was a big factor. That is common knowledge.

[fishwax]

39. Of course it was a factor

and given the history not just of North Carolina, that shouldn't surprise anyone.

In California, which apparently had more cases than any other state, uneasiness over immigrants and hispanics was apparently a factor, and in North Carolina "most of those sterilized during the 1960s were young black women and girls -- some as young as 10 years of age."


http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nc/eugenics.htm

[comsymp]

19. Ouch- looks like this particular South-bashing thread isn't going

at all in the direction it was intended.

[supernova]

21. Nope, it sure isn't

;-)

[donsu]

43. this isn't a south bashing thread, it's a N.C. bashing thread

for what North Carolinians did to their own citizens.

the only direction I wanted with this thread was to spread the information, so swallow your spit.

[comsymp]

44. So why single out NC of the 33?

It appears to me that, by choosing such a deliberately inflammatory AND MISLEADING title, you were spreading MISinformation.

So, again, why single out NC?

And why, again with the misleading and inflammatory title, use the current tense if referring to past practices which have been repudiated?

I'd really like, but don't expect, an answer.

[donsu]

48. cause the article was about N.C.

nt

[comsymp]

52. You missed part of my post - why the inflammatory, misleading title?

nt

[KamaAina]

37. Any color of woman was originally a target, if she had a disability

Many states, including those outside the South, had sterilization programs aimed at women with disabilities, particularly those with intellectual disabilities (the "feeble-minded").

Somehow, over the years, N.C.'s program shifted towards women of color, who were apparently perceived as being more "feeble-minded" than white women.

Note that: a) this is all the proof you need that people with disabilities are an oppressed minority group; and b) to my knowledge, none of these states sterilized "feeble-minded" men, even though it would have been cheaper and easier to do so.

Think about it.

[comsymp]

40. Actually, you're mistaken

States did sterilize "feebleminded" men as part of these "programs." You probably won't be surprised, though, that the vast majority of those sterilized were women.

[fishwax]

38. Most of the women were black

which probably shouldn't surprise anyone.

<<In North Carolina, most of those sterilized during the 1960s were young black women and girls -- some as young as 10 years of age.>>

http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nc/eugenics.htm

[supernova]

2. I'm glad this has come out into the open

Now it can be properly dealt with.

Edit: And I hope the victims can finally find some peace. So sad.

[lenidog]

7. This has actually been out for years its just now that states are owning

up to it. Mosts historians believe that the American practice was the prototype for the Germans ideas of sterilization for those they considered racially impure which they took to what was the logical conclusion which was the Holocaust and Operation T-4 which was the killing of those they thought were mentally and physically unfit for life.

[lenidog]

3. Don't limit it too North Carolina

I have read extensively about this topic and it was all over the United States though some states were more apt to do it than others. Also blacks and whites were victims of this. Usually the only qualifier was that you were poor and usually uneducated.

[Lex]

5. I agree

plus the article clearly says:

"North Carolina was one of the first states out of 33 that once practiced sterilization to offer an apology."

That doesn't make it right, but where are all the other states who did this--are they trying to make amends?

[lenidog]

9. I don't know though it should be intresting to find out

I know California led the pack in numbers and I think that Washington state was second in the raw numbers.

[supernova]

6. Yes, there's plenty of blame to go around

on this topic.

My parents used to work at Butner in the 50s. Butner is the local state institution.

I wonder how many of their patients got sterilized against their will. They never talked about it.

[lenidog]

11. Records show about 64,000 people with California doing about a

third of them. Though somehow I have a feeling that it could be more. They mostly stopped after WWII because of the medical attrocities done by Nazi Germany which this program was felt to inspire.


Intrestingly enough Sweden of all all countries over a period of 40 years sterilized of 62,000. I would have never thought that with a society that they have today that something like this would have ever been done there.

[LostinVA]

18. And don't limit it to brown women, or even women

Many, many people had this done to them, and many, many were white women and men. Actually, all kinds of perfectly "normal" (because what is normality) children nd adults were institutionalized because of learning disabilities, skewed IQ tests, being poor, and just having no where else to go. A friend of mine's grandmother was put into Western State over in Staunton, VA, because there was no place for her to go after her parents died. She stayed there for ten years until she turned 18, and was never educated, worked in a sewing shop all day, was sexually and physically abused, and was depressed and a problem drinker all of her adult life.

Between this and lobotomies, the US Government has alot to answer for.

[Sequoia]

4. Excuse me, but there were other states and NC said "sorry", not

the other states though.

North Carolina does not hate brown women.

[fishwax]

42. that's not entirely true

North Carolina did apologize, but it's not true that other states haven't. Oregon, Virginia, South Carolina, and California, to name a few.

[G_j]

16. "Silvershirts" in Asheville, NC

I had read an article a few years ago about a eugenics movement and Nazi supporters in Asheville, so I did a very quick google search.
----
The 1930s: Nazis Parading on Mainstreet.

www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930sp6.html

<snip>
One of those indicted, William Dudley Pelly and his group, the Silver Shirts warrants a closer look in studying the evolution of native fascism in the United States. Pelly founded the Silver Shirts on January 31, 1933 in Asheville, North Carolina the day Hitler took power in Germany describing the group as a Christian militia.
Throughout the 30s and up until Pelly's indictment for sedition, the

Silver Shirts were one of the largest pro-Nazi groups and one of the more violent. Pelly was the son of a Methodist minister who believed that Jews were the children of Satan.47 His intense hate of Jews came from when he was a missionary traveling with the American Expedition Force in Russia during the last phase of the WWI. There, he learned from the White Russians a bitter hatred for the Jews. This hatred was later reinforced when Pelly was fired as a screenwriter for Hollywood moguls.

Due to their extreme racist and anti-Semitic views, the Silver Shirts became popular in areas of the country where the Klan was strong in the 1920s. They were particularly strong in the Pacific Northwest and largely took over the void left after the Klan split apart in Oregon and Washington in the 1920s. The Silver Shirts were openly pro-Hitler and formed alliances with both the American Bund and the Klan.

If it were not for their lingering influence on the evolution of fascist groups in America, they would be as forgettable as any of the other 700 plus fascist groups from the 1930s. However, many of today's far right groups can trace their ancestry directly to the Silver Shirts. The Posse Comitatus’ founder Henry Lamont Beach was a leader of the Silver Shirts in Oregon. Likewise, Richard Butler the founder of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, Idaho was also a Silver Shirter as well as a former Klansmen. 45 Here we have direct links between today's right wing and the past fascists groups of the 30s. Butler still uses the Nazi salute at Hayden Lake years after the end of the war.55

Gerald L. K. Smith one of the founders of today’s Christian Identity religion was perhaps the most influential former Silver Shirt member as the Identity religion provides the common bond among many of the right wing extremist groups today. 46 It is the religion that is common to the Posse, the Aryan nations and many of the militias and Klan groups.
<snip>




DejaVu4
www.winterboy.com/dejavu4.html

<snip>
As the Depression deepens through the ‘30s, rampant anti-Semitism increases, driven by the Ku Klux Klan and the 750 plus pro-Nazi/fascist grass roots organizations springing up all over America.
William Dudley Pelly, the son of a Methodist minister who believes that Jews are the children of Satan, founds the ‘Silver Shirts’ on January 31, in Asheville, NC (the day Hitler takes power in Germany). He describes the group as a ‘Christian militia.’ Throughout the ‘30s, the Silver Shirts become one of the largest and most violent of the pro-Nazi/fascist groups and are most popular in areas of the country where the Klan is well established.
In the Pacific Northwest they assume dominance among groups after the Klan splits apart in Oregon and Washington. The Silver Shirts are openly pro-Hitler and form alliances with the American Bund and the Klan.

Many of today's far right groups can trace their ancestry directly to the Silver Shirts. The Posse Comitatus’ founder Henry Lamont Beach was a leader of the Silver Shirts in Oregon. Likewise, Richard Butler, the founder of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, ID was also a Silver Shirter (as well as former Klansmen).
Gerald L. K. Smith, one of the founders of today’s Christian Identity religion- common to the Posse, the Aryan nations and many of the militias and Klan groups- is perhaps the most influential former Silver Shirt member. It is the intolerance and blinding racism of religious fundamentalists that binds the fascists groups of the 1930s to today's right-wing extremists groups.
<snip>

--==
& don't forget Jesse Helms, a true rascist,

Council for National Policy Database HM
www.watch.pair.com/database1.html - 112k - Cached - Similar pages

Jesse Helms - <33º Freemason; (quasi-Masonic, United Nations NGO) Rotary Club> CNP Board of Governors (1982); CNP Membership Directory (1984-84, 1988, 1996, 1998, 1999). With oil billionaires Herbert William and Nelson Bunker Hunt, Helms is a member of the American branch of a racial eugenics group headquartered in Scotland and headed by Robert Gayre, who published the racialist Mankind Quarterly until Roger Pearson took it over in 1978.

[supernova]

34. Some damn scary people!

:scared:

[Lex]

20. The title of this thread is very misleading. NT

[ultraist]

22. It's no secret NC was run by RACIST Republicans for decades

This program was funded, run, and supported by white racists including Helms and his KLAN. NC certainly still has it's fair share of racism, but racism is not a problem exclusive to NC or the South.

If you look at socio-economic indicators, including disparities in health, education and income, you will find that many Northern states have similar disparities between Blacks and whites. For instance, the gap in income between Blacks and whites is WORSE in NY than it is in NC. The percentage of Hate Crimes against Blacks in NY is higher than it is in NC.

The North, Midwest, and West is NOT free of racism.

I also think it's relevant to note: "State Rep. Larry Womble is crafting a bill to provide financial reparations."

[lenidog]

24. If it comforts you to believe that only Republicans would ever carry

out such programs then go ahead believe a lie.

[ultraist]

27. "If it comforts you to believe" that Repukes weren't/aren't more racist...

go ahead. We KNOW that both Dems and Repuks have been racist but we also know that Repukes have been far more racist. Repuke Helms attempted to BLOCK the passage of the Civil Rights Act by fillibuster. Democrats have been responsible for most if not all progress in combatting racism.

[lenidog]

33. You should go back and read your history books

find out the truth about the Democratic Party.

[ultraist]

51. No need to be RUDE and condescending

I was referring to the powerful Helms machine and the FACT that a Democratic Presidential candidate had not won NC since 1976. Previous to that, NC was not progressive, particularly in the area of civil rights.

When has NC had a Dem controlled state legislature? It just turned Dem controlled recently. Do you have info to offer or just insults?

[comsymp]

53. Actually, the Lege has been historically Dem controlled

It went 50-50 in (IIRC) 2000 but had previously almost always been Dem.


After 1900 the state’s farmers enjoyed an improved market. Because of this and the defeats of 1898 and 1900, the populist movement disappeared. The loss of the black vote reduced the Republican Party to impotence for many years. From 1901 to 1973 the Democratic Party maintained an unbroken record of dominance in state government. The Democrats also controlled both houses of the legislature by overwhelming majorities in every session. From the end of the Fusionists’ terms to 1973, every U.S. senator from North Carolina was a Democrat.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568046_14/North_Carolina.html


Flash ahead 10 years. In the intervening decade, North Carolina became a true two-party state. Blue served two terms as speaker, losing the post when Republicans won the House in 1994.

In 1998, Democrats reclaimed the chamber, thanks largely to dramatic turnout in the state's black communities. Conservative Democrats rallied around Rep. Jim Black, a Matthews optometrist who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his own campaign fund to help elect other Democratic candidates, as their speaker candidate.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/politics_nc/3905694.htm

[comsymp]

41. If you're referring to the '57 Civil Rights Act, that was

Thurmond. If you're talking about the '64 Act, that was Russell (D-GA)Helms wasn't elected to the Senate 'til 72.

ON EDIT: And though I appreciate the sentiments expressed in your first post on this subthread, NC has not been run by Republicans. IIRC, prior to Martin (84-92), we hadn't even had a Republican Governor in around 100 yrs.

[ultraist]

50. Right, it was his Klan

I stand corrected. Helms blocked the vote to extend the Voting Rights Act.

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/christensen/story/2408469p-8786486c.html

Helms used the filibuster -- or the threat of one -- to fight a federal gasoline tax hike, making Martin Luther King's birthday a federal holiday, extending the Voting Rights Act, and blocking a treaty making genocide an international crime. He not only blocked Democratic nominees to the federal bench -- four from North Carolina during his last years --Helms also went after Republicans he didn't like, such as then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, whom President Clinton nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Helms refused to schedule a hearing.

Helms learned from the old Dixiecrats, such as Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia and Sen. Jim Allen of Alabama, who used the filibuster to block civil rights legislation. Helms once defended Allen, who was filibustering a bill providing federal financing of elections. "As a freshman senator, wishing to be properly courteous and deferential," Helms said, "I nevertheless am obliged to wonder why the majority in the Senate are so fearful of the due processes of this body." Another of Helms' heroes, Sen. Sam Ervin Jr., a conservative Democrat who represented North Carolina from 1954 to 1974, took part in a filibuster in 1957 against a bill to protect voting rights for blacks.

In his filibuster, Ervin called a very mild civil rights bill, which Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson pushed through, "a rape upon the constitutional and legal systems of the United States." Sen. Josiah Bailey, another Democratic conservative and leading anti-New Dealer who represented North Carolina from 1931 to 1946, took part in a filibuster that helped block passage of an anti-lynching bill in 1938.

During his filibuster, Bailey whose old home is still standing on Raleigh's Blount Street, warned Northern Democrats that if Congress meddled in Southern race relations, the Democratic South would go Republican. "In the hour that you come down to North Carolina and try to impose your will upon us about the Negro," Bailey said, "so help me God, you are going to learn a lesson which no political party will ever again forget."

When conservatives were in the minority, they loved the filibuster. But that was then.

[ultraist]

25. NC Democratic Gov Easley, third Gov to apologize for eugenics

http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nc/eugenics.htm

Easley Is Third Governor To Apologize For Sterilizations
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
December 16, 2002

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA--"On behalf of the state I deeply apologize to the victims and their families for this past injustice, and for the pain and suffering they had to endure over the years."

That quote is from a statement North Carolina Governor Mike Easley sent to the Winston-Salem Journal Thursday.

"This is a sad and regrettable chapter in the state's history, and it must be one that is never repeated again," Easley said.

Easley's apology was intended for more than 7,600 North Carolinians who were surgically sterilized between 1929 and 1974 under the state's eugenics program.

Easley is the third governor to give an official apology for a state's part in the eugenics movement. Virginia's Governor Mark Warner apologized in May on behalf of his state for the sterilization of 8,000 of its citizens. Earlier this month, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber apologized for his state's sterilizing of more than 2,600 people, most of whom were in state-operated institutions.

Eugenics was based on the racist idea that "undesirable" people should not be allowed to have children. Thirty states had mandatory sterilization laws on their books for much of the twentieth century. Thirty states had mandatory eugenics laws by which more than 60,000 people, primarily people with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, are documented to have gone through the procedures. In some circumstances, girls and young women were forced to go through the operation simply because they were runaways or lived in poverty.

The eugenics movement began to lose force after World War II when people learned that Adolph Hitler used the same tactics to sterilize hundreds of thousands of people during the Nazi era in Europe.

North Carolina, however, dramatically expanded its program after 1945. The state also targeted black women in the general population and gave social workers the power to recommend sterilization.

Under North Carolina's laws the third largest number of people in the nation were sterilized, just behind Virginia and California.

Last week, the Winston-Salem Journal ran an excellent five-part series on North Carolina's eugenics system.

This link will take you to the Journal's series:

[lenidog]

47. While searching for some more info on this thread it seems that

it may still be going on. Check out this article for more info

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb221186.php

[donsu]

49. thanks for posting this info - I hadn't seen it before

nt