Much
attention was been paid in recent years to America’s silent eugenics program.
Originally conceived in the 1920s, eugenics was viewed by many as a way to
alleviate economic pressure on welfare programs across the US by giving the
state the right to remove individuals deemed unfit for reproduction from the
gene pool. Of those labeled “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous” or victims of
rape, tens of thousands were subjected to sterilization under the cold blade of
the US government’s knife, often without consent or knowledge that the state
had decided to deprive them of their ability to have children.
As
reports of similar programs across 32 states have come to light over the past
years, North Carolina’s program has the distinction of being the most
aggressive and prolonged. Operating from 1933 to 1977, the Eugenics Board of
North Carolina quietly sterilized an estimated 7,600 people, targeting
minorities and poor young women due to their low income and education.
Of
course, North Carolina is not the only state with such a dark past. Eugenics cast a dark shadow over the 20th
century in the United States. At least half the states in the Union have had
programs similar to North Carolina’s whereby certain people who were deemed
unfit to procreate by the government were either forced or cajoled into being
sterilized for the sake of “racial betterment.” However, it was most often the
poor, the undereducated, the physically or mentally disabled, and minorities
who were targeted by these programs. Among the worst was California, where 20,000 people were forcibly sterilized between
1906 and 1963.
In June 2012, North
Carolina has voted down the first attempt to compensate the victims of its
eugenics program, one of 32 such programs that sterilized tens of thousands
without their knowledge or consent across the US from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Opponents
cited budgetary restraints and concerns of setting an unfair precedent for
other groups that claim to have been victimized as the main reasons for their
vote, according to the Associated Press.
North
Carolina senator Austin Allran said "The state has no money anyway and
the teachers would like to have a pay raise, and state employees would like to
have a pay raise and you're dealing with a $250 million shortfall in Medicaid.”
North
Carolina would have been the first state to grant restitution to the victims of
its program, as Governor Bev Purdue sought to include $10 million (roughly
$50,000 per victim) in the 2012 state budget for the survivors.
Several
North Carolina lawmakers were dismayed, saying they were “ashamed” to be part
of the general assembly. Republican Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina
House, called the decision “a personal failure”, and pledged to continue his
support of the measure. Tillis has advocated heavily for the plan throughout
his term.
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| Elaine Riddick |
However,
the defeat weighs heaviest on the surviving victims. One of the most vocal,
Elaine Riddick, was raped as a young girl, deemed “promiscuous”, and sterilized
without her consent immediately after giving birth. She was 14.
"I
have given North Carolina a chance to justify what they had wronged," she
said. "I gave them up until the last moment, but now I have no other
choice. These people here don't care about these victims. … I will die before I
let them get away with this."
Riddick
is now planning legal action on behalf of all the victims, both living and
deceased.
“I
have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my
life.”
The bill resurfaced in January 2013, but the public's attention span is short. If you wait through a news cycle of three or four days, the issues falls from the table and is buried in other day to day struggles. so it seems is the problems of these eugenics victims. I wonder what will make the issue resurface again in the era of budget deficits, the Tea Party, Republican obstuction and the Sequestor.
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