Strange Country Ep.148: Eugenics, Part II
Jun 25, 2020
One way to get rid of people was to petition to have them declared feeble-minded and locked away. That's what happened to 17-year-old Carrie Buck in 1924. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly talk about the Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell, that led to Buck's sterilization, and the sterilization of a voiceless many under the banner of eugenics. And hey, it's still on the books so. . . ugh.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands
Cite your sources:
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Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles: the Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. Penguin Press, 2017.
Edgers, Geoff. “The 30-Year Love Affair between Germany and David Hasselhoff Started at the Berlin Wall.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 17 Dec. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/17/year-love-affair-between-germany-david-hasselhoff-started-berlin-wall/?arc404=true.
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Holbrook, Sara. “I Can't Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 5 Jan. 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341.
Johnson, Corey G. “Female Inmates Sterilized in California Prisons without Approval.” Reveal, 7 July 2013, www.revealnews.org/article/female-inmates-sterilized-in-california-prisons-without-approval/.
Lombardo, Paul A. Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Okrent, Daniel. Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and... Other European Immigrants out of America. Scribner, 2020.
Rosenberg, Jeremy. “When California Decided Who Could Have Children and Who Could Not.” KCET, 1 Jan. 2017, www.kcet.org/history-society/when-california-decided-who-could-have-children-and-who-could-not.
Yang, Jia Lynn. “The Surprising Origin of Our Modern Nation of Immigrants.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/sunday-review/immigration-history-us.html.