from WRAL.com
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers pushed Thursday to offer reparations to thousands of victims of a forced sterilization program now recognized as a shameful part of U.S. history.
A state House panel recommended the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, which sterilized about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1975 who were considered to be mentally handicapped or genetically inferior. Though North Carolina and several other states have apologized for such programs, none have offered reparations.
“Yes, it is ugly. It’s not something that we’re proud of,” said state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, who has been working on the issue for several years. “But I’m glad that North Carolina has done more than any other state to step forward and not run away from it.”
Lawmakers in the full General Assembly will have to approve the idea. They convene next month.
Illinois was the first state to offer a eugenics program in 1907 as social reformers advocated for a way to cleanse society of the mentally handicapped and mentally ill. Many states curtailed their sterilizations after World War II, recognizing it was similar to the actions taken by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
North Carolina, however, moved ahead aggressively after the war, conducting about 80 percent of procedures after 1945 and growing the program to be the third largest in the nation, behind only California and Virginia.
Most of those sterilized in the 1960s were poor black women.
Willis Lynch, 75, of Littleton was one of the victims. He went through forced sterilization at the age of 14 – not knowing at the time what was happening – and was later frustrated by it.
“I always wanted kids. I love kids,” said Lynch, who married a woman with two children. “You wish you could have kids of your own.”
He praised the state for finally recognizing its mistake 60 years after he went through the procedure. The bills approved by the committee also suggest providing counseling, creating a historical marker and including information about the eugenics program in public school curriculum.
Rep. Ronnie Sutton, the Democratic chairman of the study committee, said because of the nation’s lagging economy, it may not be possible to fully fund the compensation program with an estimated $18 million that would be needed to cover all surviving victims.
“Anything with money is going to have a hard road to hoe,” Sutton said. He suggested that lawmakers may consider funding some of the program in the upcoming session to get it started and finish allocating money at a later date.
At least they’re already acknowledging, that this was a crime!
Yesterday, I had a very long and interesting conversation with a woman, who worked as a sex-educator for people with developmental disabilities, and she told me, that in Germany forced sterilization is still common practice.
Very disturbing, because noone talks about it. Whenever forced sterilization gets mentioned in the media, they treat it like a historical crime the Nazis commited, as if it were already a thing of the past.
We’ve still got a long way to go.
Posted by Bebe on December 20th, 2008.
word! give thanks for truth telling.
Posted by dopegirlfresh on December 21st, 2008.
At first I read the headline as preparations, not reparations. Glad I was wrong in my first reading!
Do you have any statistics on what portion of the people sterilized would be considered mentally retarded today?
Posted by Jonah on December 22nd, 2008.
jonah, i don’t have any stats like that on hand but there is an indepth website put out by the winston-salem journal here in nc that has a lot of information about sterilization/eugenics in nc. http://againsttheirwill.journalnow.com/
dopegirl, i know right? these two state reps also introed a bill last session about racial justice… if it can be proven that racism was a factor in someone’s death sentence, their sentence can be challenged. i don’t have much faith in gov/politicians but it is good to see folks trying to rectify injustice
bebe, good to see you here. : ) maia has a post you might be interested in: http://guerrillamamamedicine.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/forced-sterilizations/
Posted by cripchick on December 22nd, 2008.
Do you happen to know it there’s any similar move to make reparations for the sterilization of Puerto Rican women? I think my grandmother may have been one of the women sterilized (it’s not something I’d just ask her over the dinner table for giggles, but I’d ask her if there were a chance of her getting some kind of reparations)…
Posted by ashley on December 22nd, 2008.
well, that’s some good news among all the really fucked up news lately… tho it does sort of look like they may try to weasel out of it with the “we don’t have enough money” excuse…
jonah’s question bothers me a bit, since it seems to imply that the forced sterilisation was worse if the victims “weren’t really” the intended target group, which is an argument that always really pisses me off (see here… DAMN, was that a year ago??? :o). it is interesting in how something aimed at oppressing/eliminating one minority group was also used against other minorities by associating them with the first one, tho (and does feed into the question of whether there is something that makes disabled people in particular more “acceptable” or “rational” to oppress than other minority groups… i’m agnostic on that one, but it is interesting how often oppression of other minorities gets “justified” by disability metaphors, accusations or associations…)
Posted by shiva on December 24th, 2008.