The Young Conservatives Trying to Make Eugenics Respectable Again
www.theatlantic.com
The pseudoscience of race provides both a justification of hierarchies and an enemy to rail against.

Unpaywalled Version: https://archive.ph/n9NWZ

With increasing dogmatism on the far right, ideology that should have become extinct rears its ugly head. If we don’t stop this, a lot of innocent people will get hurt in the end.

    • jimbolauski@lemmy.world
      12·
      1 year ago

      PP finally removed Sanger’s name from Manhattan Health Center in 2020.

      https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/us/margaret-sanger-planned-parenthood-trnd/index.html

      “The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” said Karen Seltzer, the chair of PPGNY’s board. “Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy.”

      • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        That’s doesn’t exactly support your claim, or at least not very well. That article is light on the details, but from the sound of it, Sanger’s name was on a plaque of some sort, and her name isn’t exactly super well known, nor is her racist history, so it’s sounds like it was more or less forgotten. Second, a plaque within a single building doesn’t automatically reflect the values of an entire organization.

        There are still confederate statues around, does that reflect the values of all american cities? No, of course not.

        There are Carnegie libraries all over my city. Do those libraries hold the values that Carnegie did? Not really.

        It just doesn’t make sense to label an entire organization as racist, let alone jump to the claim that “eugenics is still very popular” based off of one plaque on one building of one organization.

            • jimbolauski@lemmy.world
              11·
              1 year ago

              It wasn’t just a plaque on some wall they were removing, 2020 is when they finally denounced her.

              • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
                2·
                1 year ago

                Ok, that still doesn’t address the root of my argument, so I will ask it in a different way.

                Can you prove that planned parenthood was explicitly embracing Sanger for her eugenics beliefs, instead of her beliefs about the importance of reproductive rights?

                For example, people in this country openly embrace George Washington. Yet he was a slaver. He had slaves. But the people who see George Washington as a source of good for our country typically don’t include the slavery part as the good part.

                Would you consider organizations that honor George Washington to be racist?

                • jimbolauski@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Your George Washington straw man misses the mark, he didn’t fight for slaves. It’s more like beatifying General Lee, slave owner and general for the confederacy. I would say people that support General Lee are racists.

                  I don’t have to prove PP publicly approved of Sanger’s eugenics. They knew about her past, celebrated her and tried to down play her racists ramblings up until 3 years ago. Their current statement on her should have happened 40 years ago.

                  • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    Your George Washington straw man misses the mark, he didn’t fight for slaves.

                    That’s not the basis for my comparison, and therefore not relevant. The basis for comparison was that he, just like Sanger, is a historical figure that did a lot of good, while also doing a lot of bad.

                    “I don’t have to prove republicans publicly approved of Washington’s slavery and slaughter of the natives. They know about his past, celebrate him, and continue to this day to try to down play his racist actions.”

                    Do you still not see the problem here?

                    Would you consider organizations that honor George Washington to be racist?