Transcript History of Disability and Deaf Eugenics May 7, 2012 Joanne Woiak, [email protected] Disability Studies Program.

History of Disability and Deaf
Eugenics
May 7, 2012
Joanne Woiak, [email protected]
Disability Studies Program
Overview of history of eugenics
• Word means “well-born” (coined by Galton, 1883)
• Goal to improve the biological quality of the human race.
• Methods involved controlling reproduction of the “unfit”
(negative eugenics) and “fit” (positive eugenics).
• History of the eugenics movement, ~1900-1945, organized
in 30+ countries (including US), diverse ideas and policies.
• Key components of eugenics:
– Scientific knowledge claims.
– Ideological beliefs.
– Social practices aiming to reduce “social problem
groups” for “the public good.”
Overview of eugenics: policies to improve
the hereditary make-up of the “race”
• Positive eugenics
– Encourage “fitter” people to have more kids
who share their “good” genes.
• Negative eugenics
– Persuade, pressure, or compel “unfit”
people not to pass on “defective” genes.
• Permanent institutionalization.
• Forced sterilization (surgery to make infertile).
• Murder of disabled people and ethnic minorities.
Overview of disability studies
• Framework for answering “what is disability?”
• Disability is defined as restricted participation
caused by social barriers.
– “The right to live in the world.”
– Negative attitudes and stereotypes (ableism),
architectural barriers, social policies, cultural
representations... oppress people with disabilities.
Theoretical framework:
Models of disability
“Medical model”
•
Problem is the individual’s impaired body or mind.
–
•
The solution is medical treatment (or prevention).
The individual is expected to try to “overcome” her
disability in order to be accepted by society.
“Social model”
•
•
Problem is society.
We can create equality and justice by changing the
environment, not just the individual’s body/mind.
Eugenics analyzed by disability studies
Eugenicists put forward a wide variety of proposals for “race
betterment” in the name of “the public good.” We can
identify these core components of eugenics:
1. Biological (genetic) cause of social problems.
– Disability is pathology; dealt with by medical-scientific professionals .
2. Some people are a burden on society/state.
– Disability is dependency; unproductive people; institutionalized.
These medical and economic framings of disability added up to
an oppressive set of ideas and practices that labeled many
kinds of people unfit for citizenship (and unfit to be born). So
who were the “unfit” / “defective” / “socially inadequate”?
Eugenics targeted people with disabilities:
e.g. pedigree of “feebleminded” family
Source: Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement
(http://eugenicsarchive.org ). Hosted by the Human Genome Project’s
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which was originally the Eugenics Record
Office, the center of US human genetics research and advocacy for
eugenics policy, 1910-1939.
Disability (intellectual and mental) was
believed to be the cause of other “social ills”: crime,
poverty, prostitution…
“The brighter class of the
feebleminded, with their
weak will-power and
deficient judgment, are
easily influenced for evil,
and are prone to become
vagrants, drunkards, and
thieves…. It is better and
cheaper for the community
to assume the permanent
care of this class before they
have carried out a long
career of expensive crime.”
List of undesirable traits,
from the Eugenics Record Office, 1911,
“The Study of Human Heredity”
The “public good” of relieving the economic
burden of disability
“It is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people should
have to support about half a million insane, feebleminded,
epileptic, blind and deaf; 80,000 prisoners and 100,000
paupers at a cost of over 100 million dollars per year.”
-Charles Davenport, founder of the Eugenics Record Office, 1910
History of state institutions for
disabled people
• 19th century goal of treating “lunatics” and training
“idiots” gave way by 1900 to long-term confinement and
“care” in vast state institutions.
– Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children: “brutes in the human
shape, but without the light of human reason.”
• 1886 Washington School for Defective Youth
– 1906 State School for the Deaf and Blind
– 1906 State Institution for the Feebleminded
(1933 Custodial School)
Social construction of disability:
Who was “feebleminded”?
• 1905 IQ invented by Alfred
Binet: “abnormal” children can
be educated.
• 1910s US psychologists
corrupt this goal: Intelligence
is hereditary, unchangeable.
Label & institutionalize.
• “Menace” to society.
– By 1900, in US there were
328 institutions housing
200,000 people labeled
mentally ill or mentally
deficient.
Social construction of disability:
Intelligence testing 1918
• Example from the IQ
tests in US Army
• For recruits who were
non-English speaking or
illiterate.
• “Complete the picture.”
• 40% found to be
feebleminded.
Test Questions, Army Alpha
SAMPLE People hear with their
eyes\ears\nose\mouth
1. Pinochle is played with
rackets\cards\pins\dice
2. Habeus corpus is a term used in
medicine\law\pedagogy
3. Bud Fisher is a famous
actor\author\athlete\comic
4. Velvet Joe appears in ads for
tooth powder\soap\dry goods\tobacco
5. The number of a Kaffir’s legs is . . . 2\4\6\8
Outcome of Army mental tests:
ranking by race / national origin
Disability was sometimes defined in
terms of race and ethnicity
• 1924 Immigration Restriction Act
• Mental testing and “expert” testimony to Congress
legitimized the law.
• Set quotas for Eastern and Southern European
immigrants allowed into the US.
• Congressman Albert Johnson, R-WA, 1924, head
of the immigration committee:
“With this act, the US is undertaking to regulate and control the great
problem of the commingling of races. Our hope is in a homogeneous
nation. At one time we welcomed all and all helped to build the
nation. But now asylum ends. This nation must be as completely
unified as any nation in Europe or Asia. Self-preservation demands it.”
Eugenicist’s model law for compulsory
sterilization (1922)
• AN ACT to prevent the procreation of persons socially
inadequate from defective inheritance, by authorizing
and providing for the eugenical sterilization.
• Persons Subject. All persons in the State who, because
of degenerate or defective hereditary qualities are
potential parents of socially inadequate offspring,
regardless of whether such persons be in the population
at large or inmates of custodial institutions, regardless
also of the personality, sex, age, marital condition, race,
or possessions of such person.
• “Feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic,
inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, orphans,
ne’er-do-wells, homeless, tramps, and paupers.”
Negative eugenics: 30 states had compulsory
sterilization laws by 1930s
Washington sterilization victims,
1921-1942 (website)
• 685 surgeries under the 1921 law
– 184 Male
– 501 Female (73%)
• 403 “Insane” (Male 147, Female 256)
– 3 state mental hospital
• 276 “Feebleminded” (Male 33, Female 243)
– 2 state custodial institutions
Forced sterilization: social control and
“public health”
• 1927 Buck v. Bell, US Supreme Court.
– This ruling upheld the Virginia sterilization statute
and set precedent for more states.
– “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
• Story: Carrie Buck was a poor, white teen who had a
child out of wedlock and was labeled feebleminded.
• “For the protection and health of the state.”
– “The principal that sustains compulsory
vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the
Fallopian tubes.”
Morality: the “public good” of
regulating female and male sexuality
1.
Female, 20. Parents not married. Mother drank constantly before
conception and during pregnancy. Child was neglected and
abused. Patient’s sexual condition: passionate. Lived with a man
to whom she was not married. Hard to control where men are
involved. Might easily become a prostitute.
2.
Female, 20. Mother of low mentality. Mother’s mother also FM.
Patient uncontrolled around boys. After operation: One of the
few girls with whom sterilization may have done more harm than
good, in making her feel free from restraint.
3.
Male, 20. Masturbator. Up to this time his parents have been able
to care for this boy by keeping him closely at home. Now they are
afraid that he will do harm to some of the little girls in his
neighborhood.
(Actual cases files from the archives of the Human Betterment
Foundation, CA)
“Deaf eugenics”:
Alexander Graham Bell
• Bell’s 1883 paper to the National Academy of Science was a
focal point in the early history of the eugenics movement:.
• “On the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race.”
– Among his list of “socially unfit” people were those with
deafness (as well as “undesirable ethnic elements”).
– Investigated the heritability of deafness (looked at surnames
and deaf relatives in institutional records).
– “Deaf-mutes marry deaf-mutes” because they are segregated by
using ASL.
– “Great calamity” of the births of deaf children.
– Educating deaf children costs the public $1 million per year.
– Policy proposal: prevent inter-marriage of Deaf people.
Bell’s eugenics
• “The influence of selection in modifying our breeds
of domestic animals is most marked, and it is
reasonable to suppose that if we could apply
selection to the human race we could also produce
modifications or varieties of men.”
• “Remember that children follow marriage, and I am
sure that there is no one among the deaf who
desires to have his affliction handed down to his
children.”
Bell’s defense of oralism: comparison with
assimilating immigrants
• “In an English speaking country like the United States, the
English language alone, should be used as the means of
communication and instruction at least in public schools.” The
use of ASL “is contrary to the spirit and practice of American
Institutions (as foreign immigrants have found out).”
• Bell’s goal was to halt the growth of Deaf culture, in order to
“assimilate” Deaf people into the mainstream, like new
immigrants.
• He preferred that Deaf people should choose oralism as the
best way to prevent deaf marriages and offspring. More
humane than forced sterilization or marriage bans. His
opinion was widely respected by eugenicists.
• 1921 proposed
eugenic legislation to
ban marriages of
blind people.
Deaf resistance to compulsory eugenics
1. Scientific evidence:
– their statistics showed that most Deaf children are born to non-
deaf parents, and 90% of Deaf-Deaf marriages do not produce
Deaf children.
2. Individual rights:
– society’s interest (“public good”) in avoiding defective births
(“public burden”) should not outweigh the right of citizens to
make private reproductive choices.
3. “Normal” domestic lives:
– Deaf people are no different in their desire for love, marriage,
and children.
Source: Joseph J. Murray, “True Love and Sympathy: The Deaf-Deaf Marriages
Debate,” Genetics, Disability, and Deafness
Deaf support for “voluntary eugenics”
• A British Deaf researcher on 118 Deaf-Deaf marriages:
– “They have 234 children and 60 grandchildren and I am thankful
to say they can all hear and speak perfectly.”
• An American Deaf leader:
– “Self-evident” that births of Deaf children “should be avoided.”
– Preferably, Deaf people should “voluntarily ” practice eugenics
in selecting marriage partners.
• Murray’s conclusion:
– “With their rights potentially at stake, Deaf leaders sought a
middle ground, refusing to cede individual rights [to marry], yet
rejecting any attempt to publicly defend the right to have Deaf
children.”
Most extreme: eugenics in Nazi Germany
• 1933 Forced sterilization law:
• applied to 400,000 “hereditary defectives.”
• 1939 T4 killing programs (so-called “euthanasia”
or “mercy death”):
• More than 200,000 institutionalized adults and
children with disabilities.
• Economic logic: “lives not worth living,” “useless
eaters.”
• 1941 Final Solution
• Gas chambers from Action T4 were moved to the
concentration camps to murder 6 million Jewish
people and other groups.
Links between German and American
eugenics movements
• Nazi regime seeking “racial purity” (1933) borrowed
the idea of forced sterilization from the American
eugenicists and used Laughlin’s model law (1922).
• Hitler: “I have studied with great interest the laws of
several Am. states concerning the prevention of
reproduction by people whose progeny would be of
no value or be injurious to the racial stock…. The
possibility of excess and error is no proof of the
incorrectness of these laws.”
July 14, 1933, sterilization “Law for the Prevention
of Genetically Diseased Offspring”
• Doctors required to register all “defective” births
in Germany.
• Forced sterilization for hereditary feebleminded,
mentally ill, epileptic, alcoholic, blind, deaf, etc.
– Deaf people were 4% of sterilizations = 16,000.
– In 1932, there were total 40,000 Deaf people in
Germany.
– Commonly, deafness was associated with “idiocy.”
Deaf community responses to Nazi policies
• Some superintendents of German deaf schools
collaborated with Nazis to implement sterilization law.
– Informed the Genetic Health Court about individual deaf
students; gathered family histories of deafness; encouraged
parents to consent to children’s surgeries.
• Some Deaf school leaders resisted the Nazis
– Refused to turn in deaf and/or Jewish students
• To avoid persecution, some schools and deaf clubs
publicized themselves as “ideal Germans” (i.e. not
Jewish).
– Source: Interviews with survivors in Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and
Deaf People in Nazi Germany (1999).
Murder of Deaf people in Nazi Germany
• July 26, 1941, letter to the sister of a deaf teenager who had
already been forcibly sterilized, and was now being taken from her
deaf school to the killing center:
• “By order of the Reich Defense Commissioner [she] was
transferred to another institution whose name and address are
not known to me. The receiving institution will send you a letter. I
would ask you to abstain from further inquiries until this notice is
received.”
• 5 weeks later: “We inform you with regret that your sister
unexpectedly died as a consequence of pulmonary tuberculosis….
[local police] ordered the immediate cremation of the remains
and the disinfection of belongings.”
– Source: Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi
Germany (1999), 168.
Crimes against humanity?
• Doctors and nurses who performed the
sterilizations: none charged with crimes.
• “Euthanasia” and human experimentation: 23
physicians were tried, 15 found guilty, 7
hanged. They argued their actions were
“humane” to kill the disabled.
Conclusions: where were “disability” and “Deaf”
in the history of eugenics?
• Some shared experiences in the history of the disability
and Deaf communities:
– Marriage restriction
– Institutionalization
– Sterilization
• Deaf eugenics:
– Persecution: oralism, violate reproductive rights, murder.
– Negotiated strategies of resistance within discriminatory
societies.
• Constructions of the category “disability”:
– Intersections with class, race, gender categories. “Disability”
was determined based on ideological needs, racism, sexism.
Deaf positive eugenics?
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1916462.stm
• April 8, 2002, Couple 'choose' to have deaf baby
• A lesbian couple in the US have provoked strong criticism by deliberately
choosing to have a deaf baby. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough,
who have both been deaf since birth, were turned down by a series of
sperm banks they approached looking for a donor suffering from
congenital deafness.
• The couple, who have been together for eight years, then approached a
family friend who was totally deaf, and had five generations of deafness in
his family.
• While she was pregnant, Ms Duchesneau said: "It would be nice to have a
deaf child who is the same as us. "I think that would be a wonderful
experience. You know, if we can have that chance, why not take it? A
hearing baby would be a blessing. A deaf baby would be a special
blessing."