Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

written by Robert Cohen 
Reviewed by Carol Taylor

(Keep in mind as you read this Book Review.  We Blackafricans are lactose intolerant (unable to digest milk; we are also on the lowest rung of the American health ladder!)
Now: look up the definition of “Genocide.” Part of growing up is the angst we feel when we discover that the authority figures we believe in are fallible. Robert Cohen’s “Milk: The Deadly Poison” delivers one of the biggest, most devastating doses of instant maturity ever, with his graphic description of corporate (Monsanto) and federal (Food & Drug Authority) coverup and collusion.  If this book doesn’t stir you out of some of your bad eating habits, you might as well admit to having suicidal tendencies!  Despite the immense media hype, especially on TV, that “Milk is a Health Kick,” and despite Spike Lee’s (& others’) milk mustaches, what “Milk: The Deadly Poison” boils down to (pardon the pun) is that milk and milk products-butter, ice cream, cream, yogurt, cheese and the casein (milk glue) they’re putting into everything for “binding,” (including your favorite cans of tuna!) -all of these milk products are delivering disease-producing chemicals and hormones, to the unsuspecting public in America, including our babies and children.  Everything about “Milk: The Deadly Poison”, eerily repetitive, is shocking: the red/yellow cover print the Death’s head on the red carton of milk, along with the ingredient list of “powerful growth hormones, cholesterol, fat, allergenic bovine proteins, insecticides, antibiotics, viruses and bacteria.”  Adding tremendous credibility to this publication is the name of the person who writes the Foreword, Jane Heimlich, the wife of the famous Dr. Henry Heimlich, of “The Heimlich Maneuver” invention.  She states, among other dynamite allegations, that “You may not want to hear this but what you’ve been told all your life about milk is an outright lie. I suspected that milk was a health disaster back in the Spring of ’94. At that time, while researching an article for Health & Healing, a newsletter with a half million subscribers, I learned that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) had approved the use of a genetically-engineered hormone called “recombinant bovine growth hormone. (rBGH) The alleged purpose of the hormone, a $500 million investment on the part of the Monsanto Company, is to increase a cow’s milk output. A more disturbing consequence of the bovine growth hormone is that it increases levels of a powerful growth hormone, IGF-I a key factor in the growth and proliferation of cancer. (My emphasis) From reporting on alternative medicine, I knew too well how the medical establishment can lie through its teeth. Reading this book, you will learn that milk contributes to heart disease and increases your risk of breast cancer. You will learn that milk is a poor source of calcium and why, and that milk is a prime cause of allergies (including asthma) and much more. You will learn that milk can even kill your infant. (My emphasis) At times, this book reads like a detective story.” 
This impactful Foreword leads right into an even more dynamic Preface by the author, Robert Cohen, who describes how a young Black lawyer, Clarence Thomas, used his influence while he was working for Monsanto (which has produced Agent Orange and Aspartame and the intrauterine coil, to get the FDA to allow dairymen in the U.S. to inject milk cows with a bacterium from fecal material, E.Coli (you don’t wanna know!) and a hormone, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone so that the cows would give more milk and so that the dairymen would, therefore, make more money. (You should remember: One out of eight women in America will develop breast cancer.  Calcium in milk is not adequately absorbed.  Milk consumption is the probably cause of osteoporosis. Sixty percent of America’s dairy cows have leukemia virus.  As a society, we have never been more overweight.  By the time the average person in America reaches the age of 52, he or she has consumed in milk and dairy products, the equivalent of cholesterol contained in 1 million slices of bacon. (My emphasis)
Milk hormones exert growth effects on humans.  Cancer, heart disease, asthma, allergies and so much more, are all made possible by milk.  America was told that milk from rbST treated cows, (recombinant bovine somatotropin and E.Coli bacterium) was identical to the milk that had been enjoyed for generations. That statement was untrue. (My emphasis) After cows were injected with this hormone, their milk contained increased levels of another hormone, insulin-like growth factor-I(IGF-I), the most powerful growth hormone occurring in nature. rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) is not approved in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand or Europe. (My emphasis) Finally, if I reproduce all of the important information in “Milk: The Deadly Poison,” I’d be reprinting the entire book. Anyone caring about their own and their children’s, their relative’s or their friend’s lives, has got to read and digest the information (and not ingest milk or milk products!)

I cannot end this review without this addition: “There is a group of chemicals, recently discovered, Prions (my emphasis) which can reproduce themselves without DNA. Prions have been passed on from cows to humans. Mad Cow Disease is a Prion disease. The scientific name for Mad Cow Disease is “bovine Spongiform encephalitis.” After the first exposure to a Prion, the onset of disease might take up to 20 years to develop. Prions are tiny crystals which replicate themselves and slowly destroy the human brain until Alzheimer-like symptoms develop.
A quote from Tim Lang in 1996 as Professor of Food Policy at Thames University:  “We are in a mass experiment which is killing us. Never before have diseased ruminants (sheep) been fed to other ruminants (cows) and then fed to humans.  We have interfered with the whole process of nature and what is now happening is one of our worst nightmares. This is a tragedy on a massive scale. The government has been so totally stupid.”
Forewarned is (supposedly) forearmed, What does the government give out in Blackafrican neighborhoods? COW’S MILK: BUTTER, CHEESE. ..(WIC?  Check out the hospitals and the schools, too!)  MILK DOES NOT DO A BODY GOOD!
DIAL 1-888-NOT-MILK (Information, “MILK: THE DEADLY POISON”)

Last month, a loose collection of politicians, businesses and community residents submitted a thick, detailed application to Washington in the hope of creating a federal Empowerment Zone-a targeted area that could receive hundreds of millions in government subsidies for economic development. 
We’re talking big money here.  If approved, the zone will receive more than $100 million in federal cash and tax breaks over a 10-year period, and another $100 million from state and local sources.  There will also be a sizable block grant for non-profit social services agencies.
In other words, the proposed Zone could be the launching pad for Brooklyn’s economic growth in the next century.  And one of the stated aims of Empowerment Zone is to create thousands of jobs for low-income Brooklynites.  That’s the good news.
The bad news is that important parts of the economic development process-the “empowerment” part of the project-have already begun to slip out of the hands of the people and small businesses in Brooklyn’s low- and middle-income neighborhoods.  What could have been a model of honest dialogue and joint problem solving between downtown corporations and inner city communities is starting to look like business as usual.  Discontent among neighborhood leaders is approaching the point where the project runs the risk of turning into a big, messy brawl.
The first problem is that the lines of the proposed zone were drawn more or less in secret.  As a result, the map leaves out some crucial commercial strips where important clusters of small businesses have been surviving under difficult conditions.  Fifth Avenue in Park Slope is left out of the zone.  So are Vanderbilt and Washington Avenues in Prospect Heights.  The zone also excludes nearly all of the Crown Heights stretch of Nostrand Avenue.  After a fight, the Bogolan Cultural District (in the Fort Greene section of Fulton Street) was included as a special development area that will get some Empowerment Zone benefits.
These strips are places where small businesses are bringing needed services and jobs to working people; they are exactly where new investment could make a big difference and help turn struggling areas into prosperous ones.  Instead, it’s starting to look like the lion’s share of the benefits will go to large developers, large corporations and large cultural institutions (BAM, the Brooklyn Museum and the Botanic Gardens).
Dumping tax breaks and other benefits on large institutions isn’t the smart way to create jobs.  According to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, there are 26,000 businesses in Brooklyn, and 86% of them have 10 or fewer employees.  In fact, fully 95% of all Brooklyn businesses employ fewer than 20 people.  If we’re going to be serious about creating jobs, the logical place to focus is on small businesses.
There’s still some reason for optimism.  The proposed Zone correctly puts a heavy emphasis on the development of the waterfront, from Industry City to Greenpoint.  Red Hook, the Gowanus Canal and the Navy Yard are all included, which makes sense.  But the plan-and Brooklyn’s jobs agenda-won’t succeed until we give small businesses the high priority they deserve.

Where the Jobs Are
If you are friendly, hard-working and looking for a job, the two magic words are Kings Plaza.  Sears, Radio Shack and other stores in Kings Plaza are getting ready to staff up for the holiday crunch, and the managers tell me they are welcoming job applicants.  Sears in particular has streamlined its process so that you can walk into the store and interview for a job on the spot at any time during store hours-no appointments, no complicated call back system.  Sears has 50 to 60 open jobs that they would like to fill.
Obviously, the flip side of this fast-track system is that the interview is extremely important.  Be friendly and energetic, and don’t bat an eye when they talk about the long weekend hours (Saturday and Sunday are when retail stores make their money).

Farewell to a Friend
I recently learned with great sorrow that the Rev. James H. Daniel, Jr. succumbed to cancer in mid-October.  Rev. Daniel, as founder and president of the 21st Century Partnership and the East Fulton Street Group, was a consistent and principled advocate for business development and greater bank reinvestment in Central Brooklyn.  Over the years, in our many strategy sessions and joint meetings with banks, Rev. Daniel was inevitably the one to insist on making our demands just a bit bigger.  He was always the one to interrupt the meeting and up the ante with a quiet, religious intensity. “Why are we settling for a million from these banks?” he would say.  “We should start at $1 billion in venture capital for community businesses, and go up from there!”  His voice will be missed.

(Part One.)
by Dr. George Dawson
Eugenics is and was the pseudoscientific rationale for racial apartheid in social policy in late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States of America and other western nations.  The American version of Eugenics served as a template for Nazi era scientific justification for discrimination against non-Aryans with the subsequent implementation of mass murder of  Jewish Europeans and others.
Medical and legal historians involved in the study of Eugenics suggest its scientific foundations were established with the publication of Charles Darwin’s ORIGINS OF SPECIES in 1859. This most important work on animal natural selection reasoned that the ability of a particular animal species to not only survive, but also prosper, had a genetic basis. That is, those animals less well genetically endowed were doomed for extinction due to some flaw in their biologic makeup. In short, because of nature not nurture, the survival of a particular species was either successful or a failure.
As a result of Charles Darwin’s work in documenting the role of evolution in the survival of various animal species via natural selection, racists at the time adopted his scientific observations and applied them to human events. Hence, the term ‘social Darwinist’.  Eugenic is a word of Greek origin meaning; “eu -good ; genic-to generate.”  British biologist, Sir Francis Galton, who was a first cousin to the noted Charles Darwin, first coined the term eugenic in 1883.  Galton’s research focused largely on the – inheritability of intelligence and IQ, and later, race. He advocated selected breeding of humans to improve the human race. In short, ” positive ” Eugenics. More to the point, he felt social programs promoting the viability of the poor could eventually lead to the deterioration of a society. In addition, the so-called rediscovery of Gregory Mendel’s work in the laws of heredity gained widespread attention by racists masquerading as ‘social Darwinists ‘ and later as eugenicists. Mendel’s work on fruit flies formed the basis for the single gene theory in human behaviors, in that single genes formed the basis for either genius or morons. Environment or nurture was less important than nature. Of course, such simplistic interpretation of Mendel’s work with the hope of applying them to human events have been soundly discredited even to this day.
THE LONG ISLAND STORY
At the turn of the last century, eugenics as a social and scientific movement had become global. Social Darwinists in Europe and the United States of America advocated negative and positive eugenic programs because they felt the process of natural selection as advocated by Charles Darwin’s theory was too slow to affect population dynamics.  So active measures were needed to implement their racist agenda.  The Eugenics Record Office opened its doors in Cold Harbor Springs, Long Island, New York in 1910 under the direction of University of Chicago biologist, Dr. Charles Davenport, with the financial backing of the Carnegie Institute and others. As a result of this organization and the need to actively engage and sustain American apartheid as a legitimate institution, programs were begun on both the public and legislative fronts to influence policies and gain support for eugenic inspired actions. Among the many actions taken, were negative eugenic programs limiting child births in the poor, and curtailing reproduction via state sanctioned castrations of criminals, epileptics, alcoholics and feebleminded persons.  In the American south and large northern cities, blacks were the targets of sterilization programs.

STERILIZATION:
THE NEGRO PROJECT

Most importantly and equally disturbing, were the programs instituted that affected black Americans. A particular program developed by the Birth Control Federation of America under the direction of its founder, Margaret Sanger, and other prominent black Americans in 1939 was the NEGRO PROJECT.  Its aim was to limit the birth rates of Southern Blacks because they felt these blacks were least capable or fit to care for children. Of course, there were no discussions regarding the extreme impoverished and oppressive conditions blacks had to endured at that time. The argument by Social Darwinist and/or eugenics revolved around nature rather than nurture. It was felt that blacks were genetically inferior to Europeans. Consequently, their mere presence was a threat to the purity of the racial stock of Americans of European ancestry and ultimately they, the blacks, would become extinct due to their biologic weaknesses.  Remember, blacks were only 30 years out of the most wicked system of human exploitation in the history of mankind, American chattel slavery, and were ill prepared, for the most part, to fully enjoy or compete to reaped the fruits of the burgeoning industrial revolution.

COPY-CAT NAZIS
During this same time period during the early 20th century, the Nazis had assumed power in Germany and instituted their version of an eugenics program. The Nazi biomedical science program included the “Nazi Racial Hygiene Programs.” This program had three components; the Sterilization law of 1933, the Nuremberg Laws which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and forbade marriage between Jews and non-Jews and the euthanasia program of 1939 called the T-4 Program. (The latter program was responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 German citizens, including children.  Nuremberg later became famous for being the location where nazi war criminals were tried.)

BACK IN THE US!
The Supreme court affirmed the Eugenic movement by legalizing forced sterilization of persons felt to be imbeciles in the BUCK v BELL CASE of 1927. Eugenic commissions and laws were soon formed and/or enacted in at least 28 states. The result of which led to wholesale sterilization of thousands of black women in the south and some northern states by a deceptive but effective surgery called the Mississippi Appendectomy. During this surgical procedure black women had their Uteruses removed unknowingly. (See Dorothy Roberts’s book, “Killing the Black Body”) . Eugenic sterilization of black women did not stop, in large part, until the 1960’s as a result of work by Senator Ted Kennedy and others.  In addition, laws against black and white intermarriage were enacted in over 30 American states as of 1940.  These American anti miscegenation laws formed the basis of the Nuremberg Laws of the Nazi regime in Germany.

EUGENICS TODAY
FAMILY CAPS AND NORPLANT
AS EUGENIC TOOLS?
Some argue that the ideas and notions of eugenics are just as prevalent today as it was during its heyday in the early twentieth century. We now have ‘family welfare caps’ which have decreased the number of children that welfare recipients can have in states such as New Jersey and Georgia (Washington Post- 6-9-98 and the USA Today 4.-20-98 respectively) . Such family cap laws are in effect in over 20 states. Moreover, some welfare recipients have either had increases in abortions or have had the long acting controversial drug NORPLANT implanted into their arms or more recently, DEPO PROVERA injections. The contraceptive Norplant is active for 5 years but has many side effects and is predominantly used in young black females. Depo Provera is active for an estimated 12 weeks. Neither provides protection from HIV/AIDS or any other STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease). (A class action lawsuit regarding norplant is now in progress involving some 50,000 women.)

NORPLANT AND EUGENICS?
Norplant has an interesting origin in that it was initially developed by the Population Council. The Population Council was founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller, 3rd with the help of Frederick Osborn. As Roberts points out in her book mentioned above, Osborn served as a key eugenic strategist and long time officer in the American Eugenic Society.  With the founding of the Population Council, Osborn felt his eugenic ideas and policies could be carried out in a more effective fashion via the Council’s birth control research.  Osborn would serve as the council’s 1st president and member of the board of trustees. This my friends, is the history of Norplant and the evolution of Eugenics.

THE END RESULT!!!

Anti-birth policies such as family caps and Norplant could easily be characterized as negative eugenics programs. Moreover, the demographics of abortion in the US could be interpreted as a negative eugenic measure when you examined the rate and number of black women undergoing this procedure on a yearly basis. Currently black women undergo a disproportionate, 430,000 abortions per year. David Mastio writing in the USA Today of 1-21-98 notes that “As a result of abortion the racial shift in America that will make America majority-minority by midway through the next century….would have happened much sooner if we had been not aborting blacks and other minorities at several times the rate of whites.”
There is a concept in population jargon called the ‘replacement level’, which translates into fertility rates.  It is generally defined as the minimum amount of children women of a given population must have to sustain, at least, biologically, that particular people. Black female fertility rates are now at an all time low of 2.2 (excluding Hispanics). Which means that African Americans are having the minimum amount babies to sustain themselves. To get below a fertility rate of 2.1 means that within 4-5 generations a particular population, in actual numbers, begins to shrink.  Black female fertility is now at a historic low of 70.8 babies per 1000 women, as opposed to 117 babies per 1000 for Mexican women here in the US.

POPULATION IMPLOSION?
For white women, the fertility rate is 1.7 (excluding Hispanics) which is below the replacement level of 2.1. Consequently, right-wing, and largely, white conservative writers have been bemoaning this significant fact. (Read- Ben Wattenberg’s book, “The Birth Dearth” ; The New York Times of July 10, 1998; Washington Post July 7 1998; Washington Times of February 7, 1998; USA Today-April 17, 1997; and The Wall Street Journal-October 16 1997. All of the previously mentioned essays and a lead article (NYT) bemoan the fact that women of the industrialized nations ( translated-white women ) are not having the requisite number of children to keep their population proportion at a sustainable, if not growing level. So from this perspective of very low replacement levels in western or European women, the fertility industry in the opinion of some, would be a prime example of a ” Positive Eugenic Program” in a most extreme sense. Here, the fertility industry caters largely to the infertility problems of white women. However, black women. who have an infertility rate of almost twice that of whites, are virtually whited out in the many news reports and human interest stories on infertility concerns.  Media, electronic or otherwise, plays a tremendous role in either promoting pro- birth propaganda by portraying positive motherhood as largely white. Examine if you will, magazine covers and pregnancy detection commercials, to name a few. However, black female are rarely portrayed positively, if at all. Normally what you see is either a story of a drug addicted black women or some young black woman on welfare with many children being left alone at home while she, the mother, is out partying.  The psychological effect of these images are devastating to young black females in particular, for they either promote motherhood in a positive fashion in one group or denigrate the mothering potential in another. The impact of this propaganda is measured, I believe, in today’s birth dynamics as outlined earlier. There are many more examples of both negative and positive eugenic programs too numerous to list here. The fact of the matter is that modern day manifestations of Eugenics are there for all to see if you can decipher the messages and actions. What today’s proponents of Eugenics count on is the lack of knowledge by those citizens extremely at risk for such ghoulish notions enacted under the guise of well meaning concerns like anti-affirmative action measures that focuses on race not gender, welfare family caps, long-acting contraceptive implants or injections, abortion, crime and the prison industrial complex, to name a few. The sad part is they are correct in their assessment on this lack of historical knowledge. Ask any high school student, or adult for that matter, to discuss the issue of Eugenics with you historically, with some present day examples and the response would probably be sadly disappointing. Those who forget their history are doomed to relive it in one way or another!

OTHER SOURCES:
1. Life Magazine; April 1998. Pages 38-50.
2. Journal of the American Medical Association; November 27,1996. Special Communications. Pages 1657-1682.
3. Scientific American. June 1993. Pages 122- 131.
4. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Eugenics. Pages 916-917.
5. New York Times; Editorial Notebook -The Bell Curve Revisited. October 11,1997.

Eugenics is and was the pseudoscientific rationale for racial apartheid in social policy in late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States of America and other western nations.  The American version of Eugenics served as a template for Nazi era scientific justification for discrimination against non-Aryans with the subsequent implementation of mass murder of  Jewish Europeans and others.
Medical and legal historians involved in the study of Eugenics suggest its scientific foundations were established with the publication of Charles Darwin’s ORIGINS OF SPECIES in 1859. This most important work on animal natural selection reasoned that the ability of a particular animal species to not only survive, but also prosper, had a genetic basis. That is, those animals less well genetically endowed were doomed for extinction due to some flaw in their biologic makeup. In short, because of nature not nurture, the survival of a particular species was either successful or a failure.
As a result of Charles Darwin’s work in documenting the role of evolution in the survival of various animal species via natural selection, racists at the time adopted his scientific observations and applied them to human events. Hence, the term ‘social Darwinist’.  Eugenic is a word of Greek origin meaning; “eu -good ; genic-to generate.”  British biologist, Sir Francis Galton, who was a first cousin to the noted Charles Darwin, first coined the term eugenic in 1883.  Galton’s research focused largely on the – inheritability of intelligence and IQ, and later, race. He advocated selected breeding of humans to improve the human race. In short, ” positive ” Eugenics. More to the point, he felt social programs promoting the viability of the poor could eventually lead to the deterioration of a society. In addition, the so-called rediscovery of Gregory Mendel’s work in the laws of heredity gained widespread attention by racists masquerading as ‘social Darwinists ‘ and later as eugenicists. Mendel’s work on fruit flies formed the basis for the single gene theory in human behaviors, in that single genes formed the basis for either genius or morons. Environment or nurture was less important than nature. Of course, such simplistic interpretation of Mendel’s work with the hope of applying them to human events have been soundly discredited even to this day.
THE LONG ISLAND STORY
At the turn of the last century, eugenics as a social and scientific movement had become global. Social Darwinists in Europe and the United States of America advocated negative and positive eugenic programs because they felt the process of natural selection as advocated by Charles Darwin’s theory was too slow to affect population dynamics.  So active measures were needed to implement their racist agenda.  The Eugenics Record Office opened its doors in Cold Harbor Springs, Long Island, New York in 1910 under the direction of University of Chicago biologist, Dr. Charles Davenport, with the financial backing of the Carnegie Institute and others. As a result of this organization and the need to actively engage and sustain American apartheid as a legitimate institution, programs were begun on both the public and legislative fronts to influence policies and gain support for eugenic inspired actions. Among the many actions taken, were negative eugenic programs limiting child births in the poor, and curtailing reproduction via state sanctioned castrations of criminals, epileptics, alcoholics and feebleminded persons.  In the American south and large northern cities, blacks were the targets of sterilization programs.

STERILIZATION:
THE NEGRO PROJECT
Most importantly and equally disturbing, were the programs instituted that affected black Americans. A particular program developed by the Birth Control Federation of America under the direction of its founder, Margaret Sanger, and other prominent black Americans in 1939 was the NEGRO PROJECT.  Its aim was to limit the birth rates of Southern Blacks because they felt these blacks were least capable or fit to care for children. Of course, there were no discussions regarding the extreme impoverished and oppressive conditions blacks had to endured at that time. The argument by Social Darwinist and/or eugenics revolved around nature rather than nurture. It was felt that blacks were genetically inferior to Europeans. Consequently, their mere presence was a threat to the purity of the racial stock of Americans of European ancestry and ultimately they, the blacks, would become extinct due to their biologic weaknesses.  Remember, blacks were only 30 years out of the most wicked system of human exploitation in the history of mankind, American chattel slavery, and were ill prepared, for the most part, to fully enjoy or compete to reaped the fruits of the burgeoning industrial revolution.

COPY-CAT NAZIS

During this same time period during the early 20th century, the Nazis had assumed power in Germany and instituted their version of an eugenics program. The Nazi biomedical science program included the “Nazi Racial Hygiene Programs.” This program had three components; the Sterilization law of 1933, the Nuremberg Laws which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and forbade marriage between Jews and non-Jews and the euthanasia program of 1939 called the T-4 Program. (The latter program was responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 German citizens, including children.  Nuremberg later became famous for being the location where nazi war criminals were tried.)

BACK IN THE US!
The Supreme court affirmed the Eugenic movement by legalizing forced sterilization of persons felt to be imbeciles in the BUCK v BELL CASE of 1927. Eugenic commissions and laws were soon formed and/or enacted in at least 28 states. The result of which led to wholesale sterilization of thousands of black women in the south and some northern states by a deceptive but effective surgery called the Mississippi Appendectomy. During this surgical procedure black women had their Uteruses removed unknowingly. (See Dorothy Roberts’s book, “Killing the Black Body”) . Eugenic sterilization of black women did not stop, in large part, until the 1960’s as a result of work by Senator Ted Kennedy and others.  In addition, laws against black and white intermarriage were enacted in over 30 American states as of 1940.  These American anti miscegenation laws formed the basis of the Nuremberg Laws of the Nazi regime in Germany.

EUGENICS TODAY
FAMILY CAPS AND NORPLANT
AS EUGENIC TOOLS?
Some argue that the ideas and notions of eugenics are just as prevalent today as it was during its heyday in the early twentieth century. We now have ‘family welfare caps’ which have decreased the number of children that welfare recipients can have in states such as New Jersey and Georgia (Washington Post- 6-9-98 and the USA Today 4.-20-98 respectively) . Such family cap laws are in effect in over 20 states. Moreover, some welfare recipients have either had increases in abortions or have had the long acting controversial drug NORPLANT implanted into their arms or more recently, DEPO PROVERA injections. The contraceptive Norplant is active for 5 years but has many side effects and is predominantly used in young black females. Depo Provera is active for an estimated 12 weeks. Neither provides protection from HIV/AIDS or any other STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease). (A class action lawsuit regarding norplant is now in progress involving some 50,000 women.)

NORPLANT AND EUGENICS?
Norplant has an interesting origin in that it was initially developed by the Population Council. The Population Council was founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller, 3rd with the help of Frederick Osborn. As Roberts points out in her book mentioned above, Osborn served as a key eugenic strategist and long time officer in the American Eugenic Society.  With the founding of the Population Council, Osborn felt his eugenic ideas and policies could be carried out in a more effective fashion via the Council’s birth control research.  Osborn would serve as the council’s 1st president and member of the board of trustees. This my friends, is the history of Norplant and the evolution of Eugenics.

THE END RESULT!!!
Anti-birth policies such as family caps and Norplant could easily be characterized as negative eugenics programs. Moreover, the demographics of abortion in the US could be interpreted as a negative eugenic measure when you examined the rate and number of black women undergoing this procedure on a yearly basis. Currently black women undergo a disproportionate, 430,000 abortions per year. David Mastio writing in the USA Today of 1-21-98 notes that “As a result of abortion the racial shift in America that will make America majority-minority by midway through the next century….would have happened much sooner if we had been not aborting blacks and other minorities at several times the rate of whites.”

There is a concept in population jargon called the ‘replacement level’, which translates into fertility rates.  It is generally defined as the minimum amount of children women of a given population must have to sustain, at least, biologically, that particular people. Black female fertility rates are now at an all time low of 2.2 (excluding Hispanics). Which means that African Americans are having the minimum amount babies to sustain themselves. To get below a fertility rate of 2.1 means that within 4-5 generations a particular population, in actual numbers, begins to shrink.  Black female fertility is now at a historic low of 70.8 babies per 1000 women, as opposed to 117 babies per 1000 for Mexican women here in the US.

POPULATION IMPLOSION?
For white women, the fertility rate is 1.7 (excluding Hispanics) which is below the replacement level of 2.1. Consequently, right-wing, and largely, white conservative writers have been bemoaning this significant fact. (Read- Ben Wattenberg’s book, “The Birth Dearth” ; The New York Times of July 10, 1998; Washington Post July 7 1998; Washington Times of February 7, 1998; USA Today-April 17, 1997; and The Wall Street Journal-October 16 1997. All of the previously mentioned essays and a lead article (NYT) bemoan the fact that women of the industrialized nations ( translated-white women ) are not having the requisite number of children to keep their population proportion at a sustainable, if not growing level. So from this perspective of very low replacement levels in western or European women, the fertility industry in the opinion of some, would be a prime example of a ” Positive Eugenic Program” in a most extreme sense. Here, the fertility industry caters largely to the infertility problems of white women. However, black women. who have an infertility rate of almost twice that of whites, are virtually whited out in the many news reports and human interest stories on infertility concerns.  Media, electronic or otherwise, plays a tremendous role in either promoting pro- birth propaganda by portraying positive motherhood as largely white. Examine if you will, magazine covers and pregnancy detection commercials, to name a few. However, black female are rarely portrayed positively, if at all. Normally what you see is either a story of a drug addicted black women or some young black woman on welfare with many children being left alone at home while she, the mother, is out partying.  The psychological effect of these images are devastating to young black females in particular, for they either promote motherhood in a positive fashion in one group or denigrate the mothering potential in another. The impact of this propaganda is measured, I believe, in today’s birth dynamics as outlined earlier. There are many more examples of both negative and positive eugenic programs too numerous to list here. The fact of the matter is that modern day manifestations of Eugenics are there for all to see if you can decipher the messages and actions. What today’s proponents of Eugenics count on is the lack of knowledge by those citizens extremely at risk for such ghoulish notions enacted under the guise of well meaning concerns like anti-affirmative action measures that focuses on race not gender, welfare family caps, long-acting contraceptive implants or injections, abortion, crime and the prison industrial complex, to name a few. The sad part is they are correct in their assessment on this lack of historical knowledge. Ask any high school student, or adult for that matter, to discuss the issue of Eugenics with you historically, with some present day examples and the response would probably be sadly disappointing. Those who forget their history are doomed to relive it in one way or another!

OTHER SOURCES:
1. Life Magazine; April 1998. Pages 38-50.
2. Journal of the American Medical Association; November 27,1996. Special Communications. Pages 1657-1682.
3. Scientific American. June 1993. Pages 122- 131.
4. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Eugenics. Pages 916-917.
5. New York Times; Editorial Notebook -The Bell Curve Revisited. October 11,1997.

Mary France was born one of eight children, in Scottsburg, Va. Her father never went to school; he and Mary’s mother were farmers.  Mary graduated from Mary Bethune High School in Halifax, Va., an all-black segregated school.
   After high school Mary moved to Corona, Queens, She got married, had six children, worked for an agency part-time cleaning offices early in the morning and late at night while she took care of her children and began attending York College in Jamaica. She worked with the Parent Associations in her children’s schools, including being the president of the P.A. at PS 92 in Corona. She graduated Cum Laude from York College with a BA. in English in 1980. Mary was the founding president of the Parents Coalition for Education in 1982 and continued in that capacity until 1989. She ran for school board twice, in 1986 and 1989 and as an independent for State Assembly in 1994. She has been a member of the Queens Coalition for Political Alternatives, National Black Child Development Institute, NAACP, and the National Council of Negro Women.  She played a leading role in the Emergency Campaign to Save Our Schools, African Americans
Political Power, the Citywide Coalition of African American Education Organizations, Advocates Children, the National Committee for Independent Political Action and the Campaign for a New Tomorrow(CNT). She was N.Y. State coordinator for Ron Daniels’ Independent Presidential campaign -in 1992. She has worked actively with CNT’s Haiti Support Project.
   Mary was the Director of the Office of Parent Involvement under Richard Green, the city’s first American School’s Chancellor. She has worked as the Director of the Homework Assistance Program at the Langston Hughes Library and Cultural Center, Senior Instructor and Project Director at York Adult Learning Center and Director of the Even Start Program in Community School District 2. She currently teaching English at I.S. 227 in East Elmhurst and serves on the N.Y. State Regents Visiting Committee for Low-Performing Schools. In addition to her sir children, she has six grandchildren.