Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius
Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius PDF, ePub eBook D0wnl0ad
In Better for All the World, Harry Bruinius charts the little-known history of eugenics in America—a movement that began in the early twentieth century and resulted in the forced sterilization of more than 65,000 Americans.Bruinius tells the stories of Emma and Carrie Buck, two women trapped in poverty and caught up in a new scientific quest for racial purity. Buck v. Bell became a test case brought before the Supreme Court, which voted 8–1 to make sterilization a constitutionally valid way for the state to prevent anyone deemed “unfit” from having children.
The court’s majority opinion was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes: “It is better for all the world,” Holmes wrote, “if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Eugenicists believed that the human race must begin to take control not just of human reproduction, but of ethnic intermingling. With the natural and objective methods of science they hoped to breed only the biologically best of the races and prevent the propagation of the worst. The result: marriage restriction, anti-miscegenation, and immigration laws.
In Better for All the World, Harry Bruinius shows how reformers across the nation transformed haphazard, locally run systems of charity and welfare—mostly church handouts and town asylums—into government-run systems of welfare that aspired to make America a place where social and moral purity could reign, free from the “hereditary defectives” of the past.
Those who supported the programs included Theodore Roosevelt; Margaret Sanger; Alexander Graham Bell; the heads of the Harriman, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations; and scholars from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
Bruinius writes how many of the leaders of the eugenics movement were New England Protestants who used an evangelical tone that harked back to their Puritan forebears, and who proclaimed their goal to keep the “American stock” pure by excising the causes of immoral behavior.
Drawing on personal letters, diaries, and documents never before used, the author writes of the three scientists who developed the theories and practices of eugenics: Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, who coined the word “eugenics” to describe the science of better breeding; Charles Davenport, the first influential eugenic thinker in America, professor at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, direct descendant of Reverend John Davenport, the founder of the city of New Haven; and Harry Laughlin, Davenport’s protégé, the nation’s foremost expert in eugenic sterilization and also a leader in the movement to stop the tide of immigrants coming to this country.
The author makes clear how America’s quest for racial purity influenced Nazi Germany: one of its first laws, the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, followed the work of California’s Human Betterment Foundation and Harry Laughlin’s Model Law. In less than two years, more than 150,000 German citizens were sterilized, preparing the way for the genocide to come. In 1936, the Nazi regime awarded Laughlin an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University for his contributions to “racial hygiene.” During the Nuremberg Trials, the Allied prosecutors were doubtful they could convict Nazi doctors of “crimes against humanity”—since those accused had carried out acts based on theories of eugenics that had been practiced for decades in the United States.
From reader reviews:
Patrick Stokes:
Do you considered one of people who can't read gratifying if the sentence chained in the straightway, hold on guys this specific aren't like that. This Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity book is readable simply by you who hate the perfect word style. You will find the facts here are arrange for enjoyable reading through experience without leaving even decrease the knowledge that want to offer to you. The writer connected with Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity content conveys objective easily to understand by many people. The printed and e-book are not different in the written content but it just different in the form of it. So , do you still thinking Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity is not loveable to be your top list reading book?
John Ma:
Reading a reserve can be one of a lot of pastime that everyone in the world loves. Do you like reading book consequently. There are a lot of reasons why people enjoy it. First reading a reserve will give you a lot of new details. When you read a publication you will get new information since book is one of numerous ways to share the information or their idea. Second, studying a book will make you more imaginative. When you studying a book especially tale fantasy book the author will bring you to definitely imagine the story how the characters do it anything. Third, you could share your knowledge to some others. When you read this Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity, you can tells your family, friends as well as soon about yours e-book. Your knowledge can inspire the others, make them reading a publication.
Anthony Bankston:
In this particular era which is the greater individual or who has ability to do something more are more important than other. Do you want to become one of it? It is just simple strategy to have that. What you are related is just spending your time little but quite enough to enjoy a look at some books. On the list of books in the top collection in your reading list is actually Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity. This book and that is qualified as The Hungry Hills can get you closer in getting precious person. By looking upwards and review this book you can get many advantages.
Read Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius for online ebook
Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius Free PDF d0wnl0ad, audio books, books to read, good books to read, cheap books, good books, online books, books online, book reviews epub, read books online, books to read online, online library, greatbooks to read, PDF best books to read, top books to read Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius books to read online.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar