It is only a few short years ago that eugenics was practised in the United States. It was a direct result of Social Darwinism--of elites trying to "help along" the Darwinist idea of the emergence of an uber-race. This article, reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald underscores how eugenics is part of our recent history. It wasn't just the Nazis.
The killer quotation (literally): "The board's goal was to purify the state's population by weeding out the mentally ill, diseased, feebleminded and others deemed undesirable."
RALEIGH, North Carolina: Elaine Riddick was a confused and frightened 14-year-old. She was poor and black, the daughter of alcoholic parents in a segregated North Carolina town. And she was pregnant after being raped by a man from her neighbourhood.
Ms Riddick's miserable circumstances attracted the attention of social workers, who referred her case to the state's Eugenics Board. In an office building in Raleigh, five men met to consider her fate. Board members concluded the girl was ''feebleminded'' and doomed to ''promiscuity''. They recommended sterilisation. Ms Riddick's illiterate grandmother, Maggie Woodard, marked an ''X'' on a consent form.
Hours after Ms Riddick gave birth to a son on March 5, 1968, a doctor sliced through her fallopian tubes and cauterised them. ''They butchered me like a hog,'' said Ms Riddick, now a determined 57-year-old woman. Nearly 44 years later, the state of North Carolina has proposed paying $US50,000 ($47,000) each to compensate Ms Riddick and other victims of its eugenics program.
It is the first state to consider compensation for victims of forced sterilisation - up to 65,000 in at least 30 states, according to most estimates. Between 1929 and 1974, nearly 7600 people were sterilised under orders from North Carolina's Eugenics Board. Nearly 85 per cent were women or girls, some as young as 10. The state estimates that 1500 to 2000 of the victims are still alive.
The board's goal was to purify the state's population by weeding out the mentally ill, diseased, feebleminded and others deemed undesirable.
Ms Riddick has endured a lifetime of humiliation and regret. She can barely control her outrage when she discusses what the state did to her and what the state proposes by way of compensation and apology.
''Fifty thousand dollars? Is that what they think my life is worth? How much are the kids I never had worth? How much?'' The $50,000 compensation recommended by the Governor's Eugenics Compensation Task Force this month must be approved by the state legislature. If it is, Ms Riddick said, she will refuse it.
Tony Riddick, 43, an entrepreneur in North Carolina, says what the state did to his mother is a crime. ''This is not sterilisation,'' he told the task force. ''This is genocide.'' He supports his mother's refusal of the payment.
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