Race Clensing In America

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“Race Cleansing in America” Peter Quinn Article Review 2.1 In Peter Quinn’s article, “Race cleansing in America”, he states that it was against the law for the mentally retarded, or the “feeble-minded” (Quinn, 82) to produce offspring. These people were looked down upon as criminals to society who should not bring into being a second generation of themselves. Quinn’s theory: the feeble-minded were weak and the rich, as well as society, stepped all over them. Sterilization was the method that was introduced to end “imbeciles” (Quinn, 82), which would lead to a greater America. “It is better for all the world,” Justice Holmes asserted in Buck v. Bell, “if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”(Quinn, 82) Carrie Buck was the daughter of a woman who was feeble-minded, for that she was sent to “the State Colony for Epileptics and the Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg, Virginia.” (Quinn, 82) Buck had a child and the Supreme Court felt it was the state’s right to sterilize her. But, she declined and her case was sent to the “nation’s highest court”. (Quinn, 82) For Buck, the case was a complicated one especially because there were many who believed that the state had a significant role in determining offspring. “In the case of Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, the requirement of sterilization was glaringly self-apparent. “Three generations of imbeciles,” Holmes concluded, “are enough.”” (Quinn, 82) A group, “Eugenics” was formed dedicated to the sterilization rights, this group included people such as, Theodore Roosevelt, Francis Galton, W.E.B. Du Bois. “Eugenics---the theory as well as

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