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the placing of the boy in the cage with
a monkey is an outrage the Negro race in
America has a hard enough time as it is
and getting away from the prejudice that
is closely related to the monkey without
having a member of the race placed on
exhibition leading men of science from
Harvard and Princeton and Columbia
University was saying that Africans were
midway between an orangutan and a human
being so a hundred years later it should
not come as much of a surprise that many
people still claim to these notions of
European superiority African inferiority
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[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
the year was 1859 three months after
Charles Darwin published his book on the
origin of species American promoter PT
Barnum unveiled a new attraction at his
popular Museum in New York City
it featured what was described as the
what is it or man monkey visitors were
told that the creature had been captured
by hunters in Africa who discovered a
race of beings roving among the trees
and branches like Eames and monkeys
Museum staff declared that the creature
had been pronounced by scientists as a
connecting link between African blacks
and lower animals in reality Barnum's
so-called man monkey was an African
American man named William Henry Johnson
thanks to Barnum Johnson spent much of
his life on public display as an
evolutionary missing link sometimes in a
cage many reporters at the time were
happy to promote the deception the New
York Tribune declared that Barnum's
performer seemed to be a cross between
an ape species and a negro while another
paper declared the head is shaped like
that of a monkey but the face is more
like that of an African Negro of the
lower order it has been pronounced by
naturalist as a specimen of the
connecting link between man and monkey
many more supposed missing links were
marketed to the public at freak shows
throughout America in the 1880s there
was crowd promoted as living proof of
Darwin's theory of the descent of man
she was described as a perfect specimen
of the steppe between man and monkey
actually crowd was a young woman from
Southeast Asia who suffered from
hypertrichosis a rare genetic condition
that produces excessive hair in the
early 1900's there was Congo the ape man
usually exhibited in a cage next to a
chimpanzee most of these early
presentations of missing links were
crude hoaxes put forward by hucksters
not scientists but the quest to
dramatize the lower stages of human
evolution eventually reached far beyond
freak shows it ultimately involved the
most elite members of the scientific
community and it was given a platform at
one of the most celebrated events in
early twentieth-century America
today Forrest Parkinson Lewis is a place
for walking or riding a bicycle or
spending a quiet Sunday afternoon but
more than a century ago it was one of
the most visited locations in the entire
United States the site of the 1904 st.
Louis World's Fair attracting more than
19 million visitors the World's Fair was
known for its lavish neoclassical
buildings its 22 story high ferris wheel
and the public debut of innovations such
as the x-ray machine and the ice cream
cone but the fair had a darker side
[Music]
[Applause]
organizers imported thousands of
indigenous peoples from around the world
to be put on public display in what was
essentially a giant human Zoo
unlike freak shows the human Zoo in San
Luis was created with the cooperation of
America's scientific establishment the
man behind the human zoo was
anthropologist William McGee one of the
nation's leading scientists McGee had
already served as acting president of
the American Association for the
Advancement of science in 1903 he was
asked to head the anthropology
department for the World's Fair McGee
had grand plans are presenting the story
of human evolution by displaying
representatives of what he considered
lower stages of the human race
McGee's plans reflected the ideas of
mainstream anthropology of the time
anthropology was kind of founded on this
idea of mapping civilization from the
highest to the lowest
right with the lowest at that time said
to be Africans and then you sort of move
up leading men of science from Harvard
and Princeton and Columbia University
was saying that Africans were midway
between an orangutan and a human being
like many scientists of his day mcgee
drew inspiration for his ideas on human
development from darwin's theory that
humans had evolved from ape-like
ancestors
the wins theory provided a template for
categorizing Africans as biological
inference his impact created a bandwagon
effect on many scholars on both sides of
the Atlantic Africans were demeaned with
terms like savages and contract animals
admittedly some of these comparisons
were used before Darwin what after
Darwin the increasingly took on the
authority of science Darwin argued that
the break in evolutionary history
between Ames and men came between
Africans and Australian Aborigines and
gorillas in other words he thought
blacks were the closest humans to Apes
German scientist Ernst Haeckel helped
popularize the idea Heron steckel was
the leading German Darwinist in the late
19th and early 20th century he
corresponded extensively with Darwin and
Darwin recognized heckles affinity with
his own theory Ernst Haeckel also is
known for his raving racism and in fact
he had a graphic of the history of human
evolution that in very pointed terms
really embedded a racist view of human
evolution you had the Teutonic male on
the top those are the Germanic male and
then at the bottom you had some
creatures that look partly like Apes
partly like Jews he was also
anti-semitic and in the middle you have
the transition from the ape-like
creatures to the first human creatures
the ape-like creatures look pretty much
like they're Africans and the takeaway
point that Ernst Haeckel had from this
graph was that the difference between
the highest human being and the lowest
human being the gap between the highest
Teutonic male and the first human being
that was just one step above the a
was larger than the gap between the
lowest human being and the highest aim
at the st. Louis World's Fair
William McGee expressed a similar view
arguing that scientists have now shown
the structure of the lowest humans more
nearly resembles that of the highest
ape-like animals than that of the
highest humans like other scientists of
the era
McGee saw primitive non-white peoples as
living evidence of man's evolutionary
history the savage stands strikingly
close to subhuman species in every
aspect of mentality as well as in bodily
habits and bodily structure McGee was
determined to use primitive people's at
the fair to dramatize for the public the
different stages of human evolution
beginning with races he considered
lowest on the evolutionary scale McGee
arranged for native peoples to be put on
display in villages designed to recreate
their native habitats these villages
were enclosed by fences making them
truly seem like human zoos more than 4
million fair goers reportedly visited
these anthropological displays eagerly
staring at and poking at the indigenous
peoples in their enclosures adding to
the indignities native peoples were
pressured to participate in a series of
athletic contests designed to show they
were biologically inferior to whites
those on display were also subjected to
experiments in a special laboratory set
up by the fair's anthropology department
directed by a psychology professor from
Columbia University the lab conducted
tests to measure native people's
intelligence and physical features and
even their threshold for pain
some scientists came to the fair with
more gruesome plans alesh heard littke
was an anthropologist at the Smithsonian
he came to San Luis hunting for dead
bodies
her liquor was obsessed with analyzing
the brains of other races to gain
insight into human evolution he went on
to assemble a collection of hundreds of
embalm demon brains many of them still
stored by the Smithsonian her littke
extracted a promise from doctors in st.
Louis to hand over the brains of any of
the natives who might die while on
display at the fair native peoples were
brought to the st. Louis exposition from
the far corners of the globe from Japan
came representatives of the Ainu people
patagonian z' came from south america
eager odds and Negritos came from the
philippines
both were thought by scientists of the
time to be near the bottom of the
evolutionary ladder for humans the
Negritos were even marketed at the fair
as another missing link between humans
and apes but perhaps the most exotic
people group brought us and Lewis for
public display were pygmies from the
African Congo
we'll the pygmies brought last week to
the World's Fair prove Darwin's theory
of the missing link will a study of the
little black children of the African
jungles shed light on the theory evolved
by Darwin as regards the evolution of
the human race Dr WJ McGee chief of the
anthropology department of the World's
Fair is convinced that it will this is
the first time that the Aboriginal
people of Africa have been brought to an
english-speaking country this is the
first opportunity that has been
presented to scientists to study them
many characteristics were noticed in the
pygmies that closely resembled the ape
or the simian type it is believed that
the pygmies who are said to represent
the lowest form of human development
our next remove from the simian family
the pygmies appearing at the st. Louis
World's Fair had been transported from
Africa by former missionary turned
explorer Samuel Phillips Verna Verna had
gone to Africa with the explicit goal of
finding pygmies to display at the fair
who had gone to the Congo heavily armed
and he had gone hunting
for these people who call pygmies these
diminutive people of the Central African
forest the fairs anthropologist William
Magee repeatedly compared the pygmies to
monkeys and apes in the journal Science
he even asserted that pygmies were
commonly considered to approach subhuman
types more closely than any other
variety of the genus Homo
they look instead of by men of science
at that time to be the lowest form of
preeminence
or in some thought they will supplement
the pygmies were less than thrilled by
their welcome at the fair
the Americans treat us as they do our
pet monkey they laugh at us and poke
their umbrellas into our faces they do
the same to our monkey one pygmy at the
fair
became a special celebrity his name was
OTA Benga Samuel Verner had purchased
him at a slave market OTA Benga was
advertised to fair goers as the only
genuine African cannibal in America
today for a nickel he would display his
pointed teeth that supposedly enabled
him to eat human flesh at the end of the
fair the pygmies returned to Africa with
Samuel Verner but in 1906 Verner brought
out a beggar back to America it would
prove a fateful choice Samuel Verner
returned from Africa to New York City on
July the 30th 1906 arriving on the SS
Armenia from Liverpool he was
accompanied by two chimpanzees a snake a
parrot and 50 boxes of materials from
Africa that he hoped to sell to museums
he was also joined by OTA Benga Verna
quickly departed New York leaving Benga
at the American Museum of Natural
History and Manhattan established in
1869 the museum was already becoming one
of the premier scientific institutions
in the world Oh Topanga was largely left
free to wander the museum's exhibit
halls when Samuel Verner eventually
returned to New York he was fighting off
creditors and the museum wanted him to
find new lodgings for OTA Benga
so verna worked out an agreement to move
Oh Topanga to the New York Zoological
Park otherwise known as the Bronx Zoo
spread over more than 260 acres the
Bronx Zoo had been envisioned by its
founders as the largest zoo in the world
and the grandest zoological
establishment on earth the zoo was
directed by William temple Hornaday a
noted zoologist Hornaday formerly worked
at the Smithsonian and he had already
founded the National Zoo in Washington
DC overseeing holiday was an executive
committee chaired by Henry Fairfield
Osborn a distinguished professor at
Columbia University holiday and Osborn
had dreams of exhibiting more than just
animals at their new zoo both wanted to
install Native Americans on zoo grounds
with Osborn promising that one day the
Indian and his tepee would take their
place next to the zoological parks
Buffalo now they had their chance to put
their first human on display Hornaday
quickly agreed to purchase one of
Vernors chimpanzees and to house both
the chimp and Otto Benga at the zoo
Holliday planned to exhibit the pygmy
and the chimpanzee together in a cage in
the zoo's monkey house it was presented
as science not as a circus act because
these were men of science who were doing
this Oh Topanga went on display in the
monkey house on Saturday September the
8th 1906 the next day the sign was
placed on the cage explaining the new
exhibit the African pygmy alter Binga
aged 23 years hiked 4 feet 11 inches
wait a hundred and three pounds brought
from the Kasai River Congo Free State
exhibited each afternoon during
September thousands of New Yorkers came
to stare and laugh and debate the
meaning of the display is it a man
some of them wondered newspaper coverage
brought even more people and in just a
few weeks the zoo drew nearly a quarter
million visitors but the notoriety also
brought controversy New York's clergy in
particular were horrified at what they
saw as a dehumanizing spectacle first to
speak out was the Reverend Robert
Stewart MacArthur pastor of the city's
Calvary Baptist Church one of the
largest baptist congregations in America
the person responsible for this
exhibition degrades himself as much as
he does the African instead of making a
beast of this little fellow he should be
put in school ministers from New York's
african-american community soon
organized a protest committee after
visiting the zoo and seeing Bangor for
themselves they were horrified they
thought it was outrageous they clearly
saw a human being who appeared to be
afraid who was being heckled and hear
that and things flown at him and he was
being you know - based and on the
hallowed grounds of the New York
Zoological Society in New York City The
ministers demanded that OTA Benga be
taken off display and be offered an
education
James H Gordon superintendent of the
Howard colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn
appealed to the zoo to end the spectacle
[Laughter]
we would have seen that he was well
cared for
Gordon also denounced the way the young
African was being used as a prop to
prove Darwinian evolution such an
exhibition only degrades a human being
we do not like this exhibition of one of
our race with the monkeys depressed
enough without exhibiting one of us with
the eight Samuel Verner tried to deflect
the criticism denying that he put oh
Tobago on display to show that he was
somehow subhuman if vota Binga is in a
cage he is only there to look after the
animals zoo director holiday meanwhile
declared that the black ministers
protest was ridiculous though a believer
myself in the Darwinian theory I had no
idea of using the exhibition to enforce
it the boy is on exhibition simply
because the public wishes to see him he
is well treated and happy to say that
the boy is placed in the cage to show
his similarities to the monkeys nonsense
he is much more intelligent than many
white men who I have known whole today
made clear that he wasn't about to shut
down the popular exhibit the exhibition
shall certainly be continued unless the
directors of the park decide otherwise
but the leaders of the New York
Zoological Society were pleased by the
display
Henry Fairfield Osborn even
congratulated Hornaday for the excellent
press coverage commenting that Benga is
certainly making his way successfully as
a sensation spurned by Hornaday the
african-american ministers decided to
appeal to George McClellan Junior
Democratic mayor of New York McClellan
was the son of the controversial general
during the Civil War who had tried to
unseat Abraham Lincoln in the
presidential election of 1864 the elder
McClellan openly confessed that he was
prejudiced in favor of the white race
and said that he couldn't learn to like
the odor of either Billy Goats or
Negroes the younger McClellan now
refused to even meet with the
african-american ministers sending out
an assistant with a dismissive note
referring them to the New York
Zoological Society The ministers then
went to see Madison grant the Zoological
Society's secretary grant was a
prominent member of New York society a
graduate of Yale he received a law
degree from Columbia he was also a
trustee of the American Museum of
Natural History a counselor of the
American Geographical Society and a
founder of the Bronx Zoo
it would have been hard for the
ministers to find someone less
sympathetic grant was an open racist who
thought blacks were an inferior race and
regarded those who had parents of
different races as mongrels within a
decade he would write the passing of the
great race a book which championed
Nordic supremacy and keeping black
subservient to whites the book was
reportedly praised by Adolf Hitler as
his Bible grant also rebuffed the
ministers so did the city's most
prominent newspaper the New York Times
which profess to be puzzled by the anger
of the protesters we do not quite
understand all the emotion which others
are expressing in the matter describing
African pygmies as very low in the human
scale
The Times made clear that it viewed
pygmies as less than fully human whether
they are really closer to the anthropoid
Apes than the other African savages or
whether they are viewed as the
degenerate descendants of ordinary
Negroes they are of equal interest to
the student of ethnology and can be
studied with profit the editors at The
Times thought it absurd to make moan
over the imagined humiliation and
degradation OTA Benga was suffering in
fact they claimed the pygmy was probably
enjoying himself the suggestion that
Benga should be placed in a school
instead of a cage ignores the high
probability that school would be a place
of torture to him and one from which he
could draw no advantage whatever the
idea that men are all much alike except
as they have had or lacked opportunities
for getting an education out of books is
now far out of date after African
American ministers criticized the zoo
for trying to use OTA Benga to prove
Darwinian evolution the New York Times
weighed in again the Reverend colored
brother should be told that evolution in
one form or another is now taught in the
textbooks of all the schools
and that it is no more debatable than
the multiplication table as protests
continued increasingly rowdy crowds came
to the zoo in order to visit the pygmy
on Sunday September 16th 40,000 people
converged on zoo grounds to see the
city's newest sensation according to
press reports the mobs chased OTA Benga
around the zoo all day howling cheering
and yelling some of them poked him in
the ribs others tripped him all laughed
at him
Venga responded by shooting an arrow at
his tormentors after which zookeepers
caught him and returned him to his cage
as both crowds and OTA Benga became
unruly zoo director Hornaday grew
increasingly defensive he now claimed
that he had decided to exhibit OTA Benga
in a cage simply for convenience we have
no platform that we could place him on
and this big open-air cage was the best
place we could find to put him where
everybody could see him eventually the
continued controversy made Hornaday want
to wash his hands of the whole affair
ultimately an agreement was reached to
move OTA Benga to the Howard colored
Orphan Asylum and later to a seminary in
Lynchburg Virginia there nearly 10 years
later OTA Benga shot himself to death
Venga had expressed a desire to return
to his native Africa but by 1916 the
continent was being further ravaged by
European powers as they fought World War
one so return was no longer an option
I think the hopelessness of it all the
trauma he had sustained the loneliness
and you know I can't even imagine he had
no idea what had become of his his
people if his village was still even
there so it's not hard to imagine the
myriad reasons why he would have sunk
into this deep depression that
ultimately caused him to take his life
in one final indignity the New York
Times published Anna bitchery assuring
readers that during OTA Benga stay in
their city he was actually an employee
of the Bronx Zoo who had been hired to
feed the Apes according to The Times it
was this employment that gave rise to
the unfounded report that OTA Benga was
being held in the park as one of the
exhibits in the monkey cage OTA Benga
was largely forgotten by history until
the 1990s but the passion of social
Darwinists in America for putting humans
on display continued and 15 years later
some of the same figures involved in the
OTA Benga scandal would be involved in
another kind of human display one whose
impact would prove even more horrifying
in September of 1921 leading scientists
from around the globe gathered the
American Museum of Natural History in
New York City for the second
International Congress of eugenics
eugenics was the science of breeding
better people the term had been coined
by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis
Galton
but Darwin himself helped lay the
groundwork for eugenics in his book The
Descent of Man according to Darwin human
beings developed through a long and
cruel process of natural selection or
survival of the fittest
less fit organisms died leaving more
capable organisms to reproduce and
flourish it was this ruthless process of
elimination not the foresight of a
designer that had propelled human beings
to the top of the evolutionary ladder
but Darwin worried that modern society
was now doing its best to undermine
natural selection we civilized men do
our utmost to check the process of
elimination we build asylums for the
imbecile the maimed in the sick we
Institute poor laws and our medical men
exert their utmost skill to save the
life of everyone to the last moment
there is reason to believe that
vaccination has preserved thousands who
from a weak Constitution would formerly
have succumbed to smallpox no one who
has attended to the breeding of domestic
animals would doubt that this must be
highly interest to the race of man
hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow
his worst animals to breed a kindly man
Darwin was troubled by the implications
of his theory for society but his
followers had a solution they thought
they could apply Darwinian selection
rationally and humanely through the
science of eugenics which became known
as the self-direction
of human evolution eugenics was eagerly
embraced by America's scientific elites
sometimes today it's argued that
eugenics was just fringe science just a
few people believed in it of course we
don't believe in it now that ignores the
fact that for decades eugenics was what
could be called the consensus view of
the scientific community the eugenics
Congress at the American Museum of
Natural History
drew scientists from America's top
research institutions including Harvard
Yale MIT this
Sounion ohio state UC Berkeley and the
University of Texas participants
included inventor Alexander Graham Bell
and Charles Darwin's own son Leonard who
lashed out at the threat biological
defectives posed to modern society
scientists were welcomed to the eugenics
congress by then President of the
American Museum of Natural History
Henry Fairfield Osborn who had been
involved in the display of OTA Benga at
the Bronx Zoo a future head of the
American Association for the Advancement
of science Osborn had become one of the
most celebrated scientific champions of
evolution in America soon he would
become embroiled in a controversy with
politician William Jennings Bryan over a
fossilized tooth discovered in Nebraska
Osborn insisted that the tooth supplied
irrefutable evidence of the existence of
man-like Apes in ancient North America
to his embarrassment the tooth later
turned out to be part of an extinct pig
at the eugenics Congress Osborn told
scientists that eugenics was essential
to the future of human evolution to know
the worst as well as the best in
heredity to preserve and to select the
best these are the most essential forces
in the future evolution of human society
Osborn also attacked racial
intermarriage 500,000 years of human
evolution have impressed certain
distinctive virtues as well as faults on
each race put three races together you
are likely to unite the vices of all
three as the virtues Osborn argued that
racial groups should be studied to
determine what tasks each race is best
fitted to accomplish
but it was clear that he already thought
he knew the proper place of non-whites
if the Negro fails in government he may
become a fine agriculturalists or a fine
mechanic the American Museum of Natural
History accompanied the eugenics
Congress with a major Museum exhibition
designed to sell eugenics to the
American public participants included
America's top publishers insurance
companies government agencies and
private groups like the American Red
Cross as many as 10,000 people attended
the special exhibition there were no
live humans put on display at the
eugenics exhibit but it was still a kind
of human zoo it put human racial groups
under the microscope to judge their
worth to society there were displays
highlighting differences between black
and white babies in the womb displays
comparing the mental stamina of
different races displays reporting on
the capabilities of immigrants and
displays showcasing equipment for
measuring human intelligence and other
features there also would displace about
the human brain one compared the brains
of criminals and non criminals but the
most extensive brain display was created
by anthropologist alesh heard literature
from his growing collection of embalmed
brains heard littke left his original
specimens stored in jars of the
Smithsonian but he brought gelatin
models of the embalmed brains of AIDS
and three races of humans heard Lydia's
presentation filled seven separate
display cases it also included a series
of skulls from Native Americans the
scows purported to show that Native
American brains revealed primitive
features from earlier stages of
evolution
in the midst of more sophisticated
displays were cruda exhibits featuring
the blatantly racist books of Madison
grant and Lathrop Stoddart Stoddard had
published the rising tide of color
against white world supremacy Stoddard
claimed that whites were in danger of
being overrun by the colored races of
the world and he argued that immigration
from what he called lower human types
had to be rigorously curtailed you
Genest pretty universally viewed
immigrants and people of non-white races
as a drag on the human race you Janice
viewed blacks and Mexicans and Hispanics
as throwbacks evolutionary throw backs
that were lower races in evolutionary
terms and therefore were a drain on
modern society and they justified this
in the name of Darwinian science you
know there were racists before the you
genis the interesting thing about
eugenics was the way that they built on
top of Darwinian biology and claimed
that there was a scientific
justification for racism the eugenics
exhibition advocated a chilling agenda
for public policy including forced
sterilization and harsh new restrictions
on immigration it also promoted a
radical proposal advanced by the
eugenics Record Office one of the
eugenics groups participating in the
exhibition the proposal called for
assembling biological profiles on all
Americans to determine whether they were
biologically fit to mate the eugenics
records office was so extreme they
wanted to hold records on everyone in
the United States biological records
showing their family trees so that if
you want to marry someone you could
write to them and they could tell you
whether the person you were willing to
marry had a fit family tree in
evolutionary terms so that you can marry
them or if they had bad heredity so that
you couldn't and in fact they had
exercises and packets that were given to
biology teachers around
country that one of the exercises you
were supposed to do in your biology
class when you're studying evolution and
then eugenics was to have kids fill out
this form with their family tree of you
know who are the black sheeps of the
family what diseases they had in the
family so that these could then be sent
off to the eugenics Record Office and
their vaults and so that they could keep
records on everyone the American Museum
of Natural History later called the
eugenics Congress of 1921 perhaps the
most important scientific meeting ever
held in the museum a decade later the
museum was at it again hosting the Third
International Congress of eugenics in
1932 this time it put on an even more
extensive museum exhibition for the
public at the entrance to the exhibit
hall were placed the busts of two men
accredited as the founding fathers of
eugenics Francis Galton and Charles
Darwin
although some scientists raised concerns
about eugenics probably the strongest
opposition to the movement came from
traditional religion it's a story that
Americans don't know as well as they
should and it's a story that American
Christians don't know as well as they
should but at the basis of opposition to
the so-called scientific eugenicist
movement in the early 20th century where
Christians Protestants Baptists
Catholics who understood the value of
every human being that's not only a
Christian value that is fundamental to
the American experiment itself when
Nebraska's Legislature passed a forced
sterilization bill in 1913 Governor John
Morehead a Presbyterian vetoed it
Morehead argued that the legislation not
only violated the state's Bill of Rights
it also offended a higher law this
proposed legislation seems more in
keeping with the pagan age than with the
teachings of Christianity man is more
than an animal
while many modernist clergy supported
eugenics theologically conservative
religious figures were much more
skeptical American evangelical William
Jennings Bryan for example denounced
eugenics as an impossible system for
scientific breeding under which a few
supposedly superior intellects
self-appointed would direct the mating
and the movements of the mass of mankind
but the most consistent opposition to
eugenics came from Roman Catholics in
1930 pope pius xi strongly condemned
forced sterilization for eugenics in one
of his encyclical x' the pope criticized
you Genest s-- for asking the government
to assume a power which it can never
legitimate ly possess
the most fundamental principle of
Catholic social teaching is the
intrinsic dignity of every human being
in other words people are valuable
simply as creatures made in the image
and likeness of God they're not valuable
merely because they have economic value
or they're productive or they're smart
they have value in and of themselves as
spiritual creatures made in God's image
that idea obviously contradicts the
fundamental principle of eugenics which
is through either passive or active
means to favor particular ethnic groups
over others across America Catholic
clergy actively resisted the eugenics
crusade in Louisiana the Catholic Church
played a key role in preventing the
passage of a sterilization law catholic
opposition to eugenics was so pronounced
that some eugenics groups targeted the
catholic church for attacks the human
betterment foundation in california was
dedicated to promoting eugenics through
forced sterilization its president
yes Ghazni lashed out at catholic
efforts to block sterilization laws
every legislature considering a
sterilization bill in the United States
is visited by representatives of the
bishop or Archbishop who lay down the
law of Rome to those willing to accept
the henchmen are prompt to fall in line
Ghazni suggested that the Catholic
Church should be asked to pay for
Catholics who aren't sterilized
if Catholics do not want their
feeble-minded communicant sterilized it
would seem more logical to ask them as
Hitler's done in Germany to keep these
feeble-minded segregated at their own
expense in order that the American
Commonwealth may be subjected to no
unnecessary damage from the presence of
a great body of defectives who increased
the amount of human misery contribute
largely to the ranks of the delinquent
and criminal augment the tax burdens
diminished the efficiency of Industry
and dilute the quality of American
citizenship
the eugenics movement in the supportive
eugenics in the early 20th century
actually tried to make an anti-catholic
campaign part of their public argument
on the one hand they claimed that their
ideas were based firmly in natural
science and yet they actually ran a
public campaign that was anti religious
you get the impression that there was
something more than simple empirical
science at stake in the debate despite
opposition from Catholics and others the
American eugenics movement continued to
flourish in the years leading up to
World War two the eugenics movement
eventually led to the forced
sterilization of more than 60,000 people
in America compulsory sterilization in
the name of eugenics was ultimately
upheld by the United States Supreme
Court in a decision that declared three
generations of imbeciles are enough many
of those sterilized would not be
considered mentally handicapped today
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the eugenics movement also succeeded in
securing the passage of a draconian
immigration law that sharply restricted
the flow of non Nordic ethnic groups
into the United States while considering
the legislation the United States
Congress invited testimony by a leading
u Genest
on the biological aspects of immigration
starting in the 1920s in particular
there was a huge push for immigration
restrictions on people who are coming
from non Germanic non northern European
countries and so people coming from
Mexico to the United States or people
coming from Africa or southern European
countries that had people that the U
Janice viewed as evolutionarily
backwards they had to be stopped because
they were going to destroy our society
but the most horrifying implementation
of eugenics policies took place not in
America but in Nazi Germany the Nazis
ultimately sterilized more than three
hundred thousand supposed hereditary
defectives in the name of eugenics they
then started gassing the disabled at
special medical facilities it was in
these killing centers that the Nazis
began to perfect the methods they would
later use to exterminate Jews the sordid
history of eugenics and the mainstream
scientific communities embrace of it
remains completely unknown to many
Americans so does the scientific
community's involvement with social
Darwinism and scientific racism
including human zoos it's a history some
people are still trying to cover up
geneticist James Watson won the Nobel
Prize for Co discovering the structure
of DNA but in 2007 he sparked outrage
when he suggested that African blacks
were genetically inferior to European
whites echoing the arguments of
scientific racist from the past Watson
claimed that black inferiority was due
to evolution there is no firm reason to
anticipate that the intellectual
capacities of people's geographically
separated in their evolution should
prove to have evolved identically James
Watson Watson was widely condemned for
his comments both inside and outside of
the scientific community it was an
indication of how times have changed but
although scientific racism no longer
received support from mainstream science
many in the scientific community remain
reluctant to honestly discuss the past
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Sheeran Western brew is mayor of Baton
Rouge Louisiana in 2001 she was a member
of the Louisiana House of
Representatives when she proposed a
resolution to encourage teaching
students about the history of scientific
racism the resolution highlighted
Darwin's views on race as well as how
his views had been exploited by other
scientists such as Ernst Haeckel to
promote racism the resolution also
encouraged teaching students more recent
scientific findings supporting racial
equality I'm not asking you to take
evolution out of the school I am merely
asking the legislature the State
Department of Education the Board of
Regents and the State University System
that they'd be made aware that Darwin
promoted the justification of racism and
his definitive work on the Origin of
Species by means of natural selection
and the son of man
I certainly understand that racism was
in effect before Darwin this has never
been denied yet he was the originator of
a scientific justification for racism as
well as giving wings to modern racism
Harvard University Stephen Jay Gould
wrote quotes
biological arguments for racism may have
been common before 1859 but they
increased by orders of magnitude
following brooms resolution provoked a
firestorm with supporters of Darwin's
theory accusing her of trying to
unfairly maligned Charles Darwin this
resolutions not only a product of
creationists but also a Christian
supremacists and Christians permit ISM
is a high paced ideology and you can't
combat hatred with hatred I never ever
have emulated any type of hate toward
anyone
the resolution only passed after all
references to Darwin and hackle were
deleted It was as if scientific racism
had never happened but Louisiana isn't
the only state where the past misuse of
science has been censored in 2007 the
Kansas State Board of Education rewrote
a statewide curriculum standard about
the history of science the standard
originally called for students to
understand both the positive and
negative aspects of science on society
including how science can be abused as
examples of the abuse of science the
original standard cited the eugenics
movement scientific racism and the
infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment
where government researchers left poor
black men untreated for syphilis in
order to observe the progression of the
disease
the Kansas Board of Education revise the
curriculum standard to eliminate any
study of the abuses of science now
students would only learn about how
science had improved Society the
original standard did not mention Darwin
or darwin's theory that did not stop
proponents of rewriting the standard
from claiming they were defending the
teaching of evolution but public
officials aren't the only ones who have
tried to cover up the history of
scientific racism some of the
institution's most involved in promoting
scientific racism in the past are still
suppressing their own history the
American Museum of Natural History
remains one of the world's leading
science museums but to this day it has
never apologized for the role it played
in promoting the international eugenics
movement it has also tried to downplay
the role of scientists in promoting
scientific racism in 2005 the museum
mounted a major new exhibition on the
life and legacy of Charles Darwin the
exhibition is still available today as a
traveling exhibit the exhibit contains a
section on social Darwinism that fails
to acknowledge any involvement by the
scientific community in either eugenics
or scientific racism even more glaringly
the exhibit also fails to disclose the
museum's own role in promoting social
Darwinist policies like eugenics
according to the current exhibit social
Darwinism had no real connection with
either Darwin or science the fact of the
matter is that if you read the
scientists of the day in the late 19th
and early 20th century many of them were
promoting racism and even racial
extermination extinction of races they
were promoting the gaining of living
space they were promoting competition
the things that we know of as social
Darwinism these were things being
promoted by Charles Darwin himself to
some degree many other leading
biologists errant Steckle in Germany and
many
you could go on and on it by the 1920s
and 30s they were becoming rallied very
prominent if you look in especially the
field of anthropology and evolutionary
anthropology many of them were promoting
social Darwinist this was not just an
idea of some cranks or some political
people that didn't really understand the
science this was an idea that was very
prominent in scientific circles
officials of the American Museum of
Natural History declined a request to be
interviewed for this documentary their
stated reason was that filmmakers were
unable to purchase two million dollars
in insurance the museum also turned down
repeated requests to answer questions
about its history and writing officials
at the Bronx Zoo are likewise skittish
when it comes to discussing its display
of OTA Benga they also refused to be
interviewed and if you visit the zoo
today you won't find any remembrance of
what happened to odor bingo
instead what they've done is they've
closed off the monkey house so we wrote
abanda was housed at you the public
could not even see it now and they have
just not had any comment whatsoever
it's as if zoo officials hope that OTA
Benga and the scientific racism that
dehumanized him whilst a forgotten
others seemed to share the same hope but
some things should never be forgotten
because things that are forgotten have a
way of coming back the recent resurgence
of white supremacist groups in America
has raised chilling echoes of the past
evolutionary arguments for racism that
were rejected by the scientific
community are now being resurrected by
modern racists in 2009 white supremacist
James von Braun drove to the Holocaust
Museum in Washington DC where he fatally
shot an African American security guard
von Braun had published a manifesto
arguing that crossbreeding whites with
species lower on the evolutionary scale
diminishes the white gene pool while
increasing the number of mongrels
Richard Spencer is a leader of the so
called alt-right he argues that quote
Darwinism offers a compelling and
rational justification for whites to act
on behalf of their ancestors and progeny
and feel a shared sense of destiny with
their extended kin group unquote in a
2017 study more than 400 self-identified
members of the old right revealed that
they view blacks Mexicans and other
racial and ethnic groups as less evolved
and closer to humans ape-like ancestors
than whites the misuse of science to
promote racism is no longer just a sad
relic of our history it's also an
uncomfortable part of our present
one reason we should remember the sins
of the past is to help us avoid making
the same mistakes again we need to learn
from the past not cover it up
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you