Harry Bruinius

The full title says it all: The secret history of forced sterilization and America’s quest for racial purity. One of the biggest things I learned was that Germany actually modeled its eugenics program after the United States and that many people here were excited to see whether a statewide implementation of the ideas of racial purity would succeed. The story isn’t complete without mentioning that some of the biggest players were themselves genetically ‘inferior’ i.e. epileptic, father of a lesbian, and no father at all.… (meer)

4242 Better For All the World The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity, by Harry Bruinius (read 8 Dec 2006) This tells of the eugenics drive in the U.S. in the early 20th century, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, the opinion in which was authored by Oliver Wendell Holmes. My Constitutional Law teacher at Georgetown told something about what a flawed case it was, but this book tells what a farce the actual trial was, with Buck's lawyer scarcely bothering to help his client. In fact it was a kind of set-up case since the eugenics people wanted to get a favorable ruling--and Holmes obliged with an opinion which illustrates that Father Lucey was right to berate Holmes' legal outlook. In fact the Nazis relied on Buck v. Bell and the sterilization program in the U.S. to defend their horrendous sterilization processes. The book is not too well organized, and kind of jumps around chronologically, but on balance tells an important story which should be better known.… (meer)

I learned several things from reading this book. #1: America's sterilization laws formed the literal blueprint for similar laws in Nazi Germany, and in fact, a leading eugenicist was granted an honorary degree in Germany for his work. #2: the key figures advocating selective breeding of the fittest never had grandchildren, and in fact two of them never had children. #3: Eugenics continued as a force well into the 1940s -- I had always thought it was a 1920s thing.

Vividly told, fascinating and informative. This book will make you angry about our neighbours to the south for a whole bunch of new reasons.… (meer)