I did a rare thing this week. I responded to a Tweet. I am on Twitter less and less (I wasn’t on there much to begin with) these days.
My response was to a tweet about former Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard’s statement on diversity and eugenics. Gabbard, who also ran for President very briefly, construed efforts at diversity and inclusion as eugenics. I was astonished to hear her statement considering I have been reading and researching eugenics for the past two years.
Here is what Gabbard stated on Twitter.
Tulsi Gabbard’s statement is either intentional manipulative or she has been miseduated. For entire segment here goes: LINK
Gabbard and the host on Fox News are attempting to be critical of Biden’s hiring practices which do strive for a more diverse work force. The host begins the segment by admitting they are tired of diversity. Gabbard takes the prompt and attempts to say that a diverse work force (to consider that a worthy goal) is eugenics (she says race purity) or the same kind of practices Adolph Hitler engaged in to try to exterminate the Jewish people and others.
This is so inaccurate I almost ignored it at first. But, it would be foolish not to respond to these statements. Posterity requires a response.
The fact is Adolph Hitler’s race policy was just the opposite of Biden’s diversity efforts. Adolph Hitler was a eugenicist, among other things. He practiced “race purification” efforts. He not only wanted the Jewish people gone but any person who did not conform to his racial purity guidelines was target for extermination.
Moreover, eugenics, the ideology that drove Hitler’s agenda, is scientific racism. It was created officially by Francis Galton, a geneticist, who is also called “the father of eugenics.” Galton’s work on race improvement and purity in the 19th century morphed into scientific racism.
This is when eugenics became a central feature of modern America and other European nations, like Germany, under Hitler. Scientific racism, according to the Human Genome project, is “an ideology that appropriates the methods and legitimacy of science to argue for the superiority of white Europeans and the inferiority of non-white people whose social and economic status have been historically marginalized.”
In America, eugenics has been specifically used to conduct genocidal activities on the native population, oppress, plunder and disenfranchise African Americans, and push policies that extend racial privilege on the European-Americans at the expense of persons of color. Poor women (many of color) still get sterilized today under the auspices of eugenics.
Every institution in America is poisoned with these ideas. Education, housing, urban policy, health, and now, efforts by Republican governors to ban books and to teach Black history, are all rooted in eugenics.
In addition, if Gabbard was educated on eugenics and not working for a tabloid entertainment channel (FOX News) masquerading as a news outlet, she would understand that Biden’s efforts at diversity are totally counter to eugenics thinking. She would also understand, if she knew the history, that the Nazis under Hitler, obtained their ideas on race from the United States. In other words, America was far more developed in eugenics (racial purity efforts and research) than Germany ever was.
Edwin Black, who wrote a book on this relationship between Germans and Americans on eugenics, wrote the following in 2004:
In the end, listening to Gabbard and the host, I was not surprised by their exchange. I expect nothing lower or more depraved from FOX News. Fox News is not news. It is not interested in practicing journalism or providing accuracy. It is only interested in profit. It achieves that usually by spewing out hate and division all day every day.
Gabbard should be ashamed of her role in the segment. It is not a good look. Gabbard also should be aware that by being Samoan the real eugenicists of the world think her kind have no place on the earth with white people. Does she know this?
Sources
- “Sir Francis Galton: the father of eugenics” Aubert-Marson D.Med Sci (Paris). 2009 Jun-Jul;25(6–7):641–5. doi: 10.1051/medsci/2009256–7641.PMID: 19602363
- https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
- https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa
- https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/518c1ed54d7d6e0000000002
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This post was previously published on Writers and Editors of Color Magazine.
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