Amazing Stories, September, 1942

[gildedcentury.livejournal.com]

Comments

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

That is wonderful. Not sure why the title mentions eugenics though?

Also not sure what "physical mismating" is but maybe I don't want to know.

[anodracs.livejournal.com]

I thought it was pretty cool, until I got to the title, and the term "eugenics" gave me pause. I'd suspect that the book would contain stern warnings about not dating and mating outside your ethnicity. As to "physical mismating", that might have to do with the size of the genitals in the respective partners. Hopefully, it at least cautioned new grooms to not to tearing into their virgin wives like Tasmanian devils on the wedding night...

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if the book has that in it, then that's pretty disgusting. But I don't see any mention of who you ought to date/mate in the ad, so I'm confused. (Then again I'm having trouble reading the fine print...)

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

All I can think is maybe they want to caution new husbands against putting it in the wrong hole?

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

Parts of the book can be found here: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/images/650.html

There are many who claim that, by intermarriage and a gradual attenuation of pure Negro blood, the Negro will ultimately be merged with the white race - his children indistinguishable from them. [cut]The offspring of the Caucasian and the octoroon will, perhaps, result in an apparently Nordic type. What this new race will develop into, commercially, socially and morally, will present an interesting study for those who delve into such matters. Loss to the World if the Negro Race Should Be Absorbed However, this gradual transition of the Negro into an apparent Nordic type has brought about curious changes in thought and action - and even in speech, as witness the languid drawl of a Southern girl, who has been brought up by a Negro "mammy."Everyone who has been thrown much in contact with the Negro will testify to the persistence in him of many child-like And also to his perennial happy-go-luckiness. Uncle Remus, Noah, in "Green Pastures," and many of our best beloved Negro fictional characters hold up a mirror, in which thousands of adult Negroes may see themselves - romancing delightfully, inventing incidents and episodes with all the naivete of an adolescent child. They quaff deep of the Draught of Life. They are often bravely, exultingly happy, under conditions which would cause many a white man to cut his throat and end his misery. They have enriched our literature - these sons and daughters of an enslaved race. They have imbursed the South, and reclaimed thousands of acres of productive land, untenantable by white labor. They rendered signal service in helping to make France the chief military power of the world in what we are famous enough to believe was "a war to end war." And they have given us, in their reverant and truly beautiful spirituals, the true American volkslied - beloved by all who have ever heard "Swing Low , Sweet Chariot," "Wait 'Til I Put On My Crown," "Deep River," "Go Down Moses," and the scores of inspiring songs that reach into our breasts and pluck at our very heartstrings. If the Negro race should ever be completely fluxed in the melting pot of America, something very fine and friendly will have been lost to us.

The book also advocates sterilization of the unfit:

"There are over three hundred girls in the institution for the feeble-minded in Indiana who, if treated in this manner, would be able to leave the institution and be self-supporting, as the only reason for detention is for purpose of segregation. They have not the character to resist the importunities of unprincipled men when thrown upon their own resources. The result is that when they are released from the institution, they shortly return in a state of pregnancy, or marry someone, unable and unfit to rear a family. In either event, there is an addition to the dependent class. With the oviduct severed, this danger is absolutely obviated. In case of the male, the desire for the opposite sex is in no way diminished; his mind is strengthened and his nervous system is benefited from the reabsorption of the sperm. It has a decided effect on the centers of self-restraint, besides improving the physical condition, as the masturbator refrains from excessive indulgence in this practice. Almost wholly as a result of increased will power, the rapist or criminal will be aided in resisting his pernicious impulses. Thus we have a means of preventing procreation in the unfit, at the time improving the condition of the unfortunate individual." If these principles were made universal, and if all who are defective, imbecile, or even of the low-grade moron type, were prevented by this means from propagating their species, we could, within a decade, raise the physical, moral, and intellectual level of the race in a most important way.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's vile. And here from the ad text it looked like a happy little book about how to sex your wife up. (Not that that's problem-free...) But the title should have warned me.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting artifact of it's time, I think. Consider the fact that he does not call the rape of mentally disabled women rape, but instead sees their lack of a resistance to unscrupulous men as a character issue. He does not want to prevent rape, but instead to prevent the unfit mothers from giving birth to possible imbeciles. He thinks that rapists and criminals are motivated by excessive sperm. For him, rape is a perfectly biological impulse, and there are plenty of scientists who still think this is true. The author also admires the animal-like simplicity and apparent happiness of the Negro and their contributions to the culture without any real analysis of the foundations of his conclusions. It's stupendously ignorant and reveals the extent of his blind white male privilege. It makes me wonder how the truths that we now accept as valid reasoning will be construed in a hundred years.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

It makes me wonder how the truths that we now accept as valid reasoning will be construed in a hundred years.

I was about to say "I can think of a few that won't last that long..." but of course it's the ones I'm not thinking of that I should be questioning the most.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[amiga500.livejournal.com]

Black people are cool; therefore, you shouldn't marry them. People from Indiana should be sterilized. I wonder how many people actually read that stuff, and how many skipped over it, looking for pictures of boobies. Either way, holy crap!

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[cremepuff.livejournal.com]

The sterilization idea...hoo boy. My husband and I recently endured a cross-country move with his parents, and my mother-in-law talked at length about how developmentally disabled people (regardless of degree of said disability) should be sterilized "so that they don't breed." She even personally knows a couple who had this done to their daughter when she reached puberty.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[koneko-wish.livejournal.com]

Unless a person is SO disabled that there are guaranteed no odds of them ever being mentally mature enough to engage in sex, I can't see any legitimate reason any sane doctor would do such a thing! Even then, it's a huge stretch.

I'm not saying you're not speaking the truth - I'm saying that doctor is a douchebag.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[manatees.livejournal.com]

I heard about a couple doing this to their developmentally disabled daughter, not to stop her from having children but to stop her from having periods. She had the mental capacity of a (non-verbal) toddler and they wished to spare her the trauma and confusion of painful bleeding every month when she would never be able to understand why it was happening. I think that's the only case where I sympathise.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[koneko-wish.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I can really only condone it when you're certain the child will never mentally develop to the point where they could understand what was going on, or have the capacity to make the decision to engage in adult behaviors. The example you provided is also an excellent one - the child wouldn't be able to understand it, and also would never be making their own decisions about what it means. That makes sense.

But this smacks of people who just believe that their child shouldn't be -allowed- to reproduce.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

So, uh, keep black people black so they can entertain da white folks' chillins and plows dey fields? Criminy!

The second one is just frightening all around. I have a special needs child and it chills me to think how he would have been treated if he was born a few decades earlier. They do have a point about the "unprincipled men" and, unfortunately, that is still a problem in these facilities today. Sterilizing the girls will keep them from getting pregnant, but won't keep them from getting raped.

Re: The Image of the "Happy Negro" and Sterilizing the Unfit

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Yes. After all, just think of how the spiritual has been defiled in recent years by the development of the dreaded Contemporary R&B. Slippery slope!

It's interesting to me that the anti-racial mixing thing is presented as a need to "preserve" black people and their cheery entertaining ways, rather than as a warning against the creation of a nation of happy go lucky scatterbrained but musically gifted white folks who don't mind, or are possibly a bit dumb to mind, being enslaved. Sneaky. Maybe the latter was too easily proven bullshit...

[hannahsarah.livejournal.com]

Two words.

Margaret Sanger D-:

[mantriddrone.livejournal.com]

"the chapters on veneral desease are alone worth the price of the book!"

LOL

[phyrbyrd.livejournal.com]

I love that it's about banishing fear, shame and worrying and yet they sell it in plain covers.

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

A bit ironic, too, IMO. I feel fear that these people ever had a significant voice, shame that this is part of our history, and worry that this thinking could make a comeback.

[koneko-wish.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read it yet, you'll still be afraid and ashamed when you buy it! XD

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many 13-year-old boys sneaked that volume out of the house to the barn or woodshed and were very, very disappointed.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Snerk (http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/image_header.pl?id=667&printable=1&detailed=0)