Imbeciles

Imbeciles

This article was written by a defective. Don’t be shocked. I am in good company. According to some, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joseph Pulitzer, were “unfit [threatening] to bring down not only the nation but the whole human race.” These people, and millions more, were targeted by American eugenicists as undesirable and unnecessary.

Adam Cohen, in his best-selling book, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, details the history of modern eugenics — the science of improving the human population by selective breeding. The eugenics movement in the United States, which hit its stride in the early 20th century, proposed limiting or eliminating those people and races which the movement deemed had “inordinately high levels of physical and mental hereditary defects that were degrading to America’s gene pool.” These groups included eastern and southern Europeans, epileptics, alcoholics, the mentally ill, the physically- or intellectually-handicapped, and the poor.

The eugenics movement was supported by some pretty powerful people: John D. Rockefeller, one of the world’s wealthiest, men funded it; Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, chaired the Board of Scientific Directors of the Eugenics Record Office; and Theodore Roosevelt, the president of the United States, insisted in a national magazine that “the unfit must be forbidden to leave offspring behind them.” The sterilization of the “unfit” was a major goal of the movement.

During this period of history, various states passed laws which prohibited people deemed to be “hereditarily unworthy” from marrying or reproducing. Proponents wanted every American to be “eugenically investigated,” that is, evaluated for defects which indicated that they should be sterilized. Under these laws, 60 to 70 thousand people were sterilized. 

The Immigration Act of 1924, a federal law, severely limited immigration from southern and eastern European nations. The leaders of the eugenics movement claimed that Jews (such as Albert Einstein), blacks (Martin Luther King, Jr.) the physically-handicapped (Helen Keller), eastern (Joseph Pulitzer) and southern Europeans (my heritage) should be denied entry. In 1941, Otto Frank pleaded with U.S. government officials for visas for his wife and daughters, Margot and Anne. He was denied.

Especially targeted were the “feeble-minded.” Many young women thought promiscuous or progressive were judged a “moral or demographic” threat. Cohen details one famous case, that of unwed mother Carrie Buck who was labeled “mentally-deficient,” as were her mother and her infant daughter, even though no reliable intelligence tests existed. Advocates for Buck took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1927, Chief Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes read the deciding opinion, that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Buck was involuntarily sterilized. Nazis on trial for war crimes used this case as a justification for their “final solution.” 

Who decides who is necessary and who is not? Those who have power use it against those who don’t. We are appalled when we read of modern-day genocides abroad and believe that the U.S. is immune to such evils. Our memories are short. As late as 1958, inmates in Virginia were sterilized as degenerates. The last forced sterilization took place in Oregon in 1983. 

Who do we marginalize today? Who do we deem “unfit” to be Americans? Could the atrocities of the past return? In the last century, thousands were denied entry to the U.S. and thousands were sterilized because of unfounded theories. Do we now analyze the purposes of those in power and seek verification for theories (or rumors)?

Our society is made richer by diversity. When we marginalize or judge others to maintain power, we weaken our nation. Be aware. Seek the truth. Einstein, Keller, King, and my ancestors made this nation a better place. 

Only imbeciles judge others before judging themselves.