In Search of Better Angels by Smith J. David;

Author:Smith, J. David; [Smith, J. David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1994224
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2003-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Contrary to these comments, my visit to the Kallikak family, which I described in my 1985 book Minds Made Feeble, revealed that there were not discrete “good” and “bad” bloodlines in the family. Rather, Goddard’s perception was colored by what he was looking for in these families. He wanted support for his argument about the social threat posed by what he perceived to be a class of genetically inferior people. He made the characters fit the story he wanted to tell.

It was on the basis of these beliefs and this reasoning, however, that Carrie Buck was sterilized. Thus, the precedent was established for the suspension of the rights of some individuals and classes for the protection of society. These views, with the credibility afforded by what was accepted as scientific fact, became powerful forces in shaping public opinion and social policy.

The impact of eugenics was always greatest on those who were the poorest, least educated, and least powerful in society. Their lives were seen as problems for social control. Their protection and their rights were subjugated to what was considered compelling scientific evidence.

In The Bell Curve (1994), the authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, succeeded in bringing the attention of the public back to issues of ethnicity, social class, and intelligence. Although I suspect that there were relatively few people who actually read the 847-page book, it stimulated much controversy and comment in the media. In fact, the book presented little that was new in terms of data and much that was old in terms of reductionism. The arguments the authors advanced essentially laid the responsibility for poverty and discrimination at the doorsteps of the victims. It called for the abandonment of hope, opportunity, and dignity for millions of people. It was filled with classic eugenic principles, veiled, only thinly, by a new cover. Eugenics, old and new, deserves the scrutiny and critique of those in the field of disabilities who recognize all too well its disturbing and divisive messages.

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