The study looked at the time that saw 2,100 sterilizations in North Carolina (picture)
Washington:
A sterilization program that operated in the US state of North Carolina from 1929 to 1974 was explicitly designed to “uplift” black citizens and met the UN definition of genocide, a study found this week. .
Nearly 7,600 men, women and children as young as 10 years old have been surgically sterilized as part of a program that was created to serve the “public good” by preventing those deemed “weak-minded” and others. to become parents.
Most were forced, but some women who had no other means of contraception sought sterilization by being declared unfit mothers.
The new article was published in the American Review of Political Economy.
He looked at the years 1958 through 1968, during which time more than 2,100 authorized sterilizations took place in all 100 counties of the state.
The authors found that, for the period studied, sterilization rates increased with the size of the unemployed black population – but unemployed whites and other races were not targeted in the same way.
William Darity Jr, professor at Duke University and co-author, said that the United Nations definition of genocide cites the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
This includes, according to the text of the Geneva Convention, “the imposition of measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
“North Carolina’s disproportionate use of eugenic sterilization on its black citizens was an act of genocide,” Darity said.
Previous work had shown that the eugenics program had disproportionately targeted black people, but the new paper shed light on the mechanisms by which the program worked and why.
“Controlling black bodies and their reproductive choices is nothing new,” added co-author Rhonda Sharpe of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race.
“Our study shows that North Carolina has restricted reproductive freedom, using eugenics to deprive black residents of their rights.”
The state created a foundation in 2010 to compensate the living victims of the program.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
