Meheen Hauge 4/7/23 Meheen Hauge 4/7/23

Ableism in America: colonialism into popular Eugenics, a selected history

Read on as I break down a brief history and explanation of ableism, eugenics, and some forward movements in the present day.

“Ableism: a type of oppression that tends to be minimally examined and understood by mainstream society.” Senator Tom Harkin Collection.

Historically, how has ableism impacted the Disabled Community in the United States of America?

This is the question behind my contribution to the panel, Ableism in America: colonialism into popular Eugenics, a selected history. The reasoning for my complicated title is because I want to be precise. This is in no way a complete timeline, at all. Related instances have been put together as a sampling to tell a historical narrative I hope resonates especially in our current political moment. Because the disabled body is already politicized, we must be aware of the history we as disabled people, chronically ill people, trans or queer people, and all marginalized people may be subjected to again.

I want to contextualize my timeline of Ableism in the USA/California with colonization. It is important to understand that marginalization from our colonial history has one of the biggest influences on disability.

Look for the history of disabled people’s oppression outside academic and written sources, look at music and art too.

Ableism, sometimes called disablism, is older than the European settler project. When we think of colonial violence and chattel slavery as mass disabling violence, we can have a more complete and equitable view of our history.

“Ableism: a type of oppression that tends to be minimally examined and understood by mainstream society.” Senator Tom Harkin Collection.

This part may be difficult to hear because it is so painful, so violent. We are in a scary time of history in the present moment but we can have a lot more hope than the past.

As medicine developed in the USA, disabling violence continued in many forms including experimental procedures on enslaved women, for the benefit of white patients. The foundation of patient advocacy in the USA could easily be said to be the community of enslaved individuals—there are accounts from the so-called ‘father of gynecology’s records of enslaved women who were advocated for by her peers. Because of the philosophies in power believing in a hierarchy of humankind, that one person could by any trait be superior or inferior to another person, we have to be exceedingly cautious within the medical system. Our disabled bodies are the most intersectional and medicalized, but we have the least precedent of reasons to trust the medical institutions.

Whom in this room is familiar with the concept of Eugenics?

Something essential to the Nazi philosophy was perfected in the USA.

David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford University, was a vocal leader of this movement that would make it possible for millions to accept and then enact the horrific violence of the Holocaust. Imagine as many advertisements as you might see for a typical fast-food chain in a given day. Imagine that is the volume of propaganda telling you how burdensome disabled people are. Touring talks by prominent scholars, sold-out conferences. Doctors forcibly sterilized over 60,000 people during this time. Reproductive freedom is something that we no longer have access to fully in this country, and in the present day there are many barriers for disabled parents, but in the 19th and much of the 20th century the State did not want reproductive freedom for disabled people, to a violent end. Eugenic attitudes became worse after the 1918 Influenza pandemic, sometimes called Spanish flu but actually originated in Kentucky.

Although we are talking about the USA, I need to tell you this example by beginning in Germany right before the rise of the Nazi party. Around this time, it was accepted socially that German medical technology was superior and American nurses in training were commonly sent there for education before coming home to their careers. At that time Eugenic attitudes were already so severe that prior to 1933 it was a practice that, if a disabled baby were to be born, that a nurse would leave them outdoors to die.

In 1939, the first victims of the Aktion T4 were disabled children. There are estimates that 10,000 disabled children died during this stage of the genocide. There was a mandate to institutionalize and then euthanize all disabled children. Midwives were paid per child to provide to institutions. (Echoes of current Texan abortion bounty laws.) By 1941 the Euthanasia program was officially ended but individual Euthanasia at Doctor’s discretion was permitted through the end of Nazi reign. Although the State made the decision for violence, Doctors became an arm of the state sanctioning this violence under their care. In material terms, it was the nurses whom carried out the lethal injections, gassing, and killing. Despite this fact, nurses were rarely tried after the war. Nurses were not named at Nuremberg; a privileged position able to claim ‘following orders’. One group of 14 nurses brought to trial was acquitted despite one defendant admitting to personally killing over 210 disabled children.

After the war, the practice of sending American trainee nurses to learn in Germany prevailed, the reasoning being that the Germans still had “more advanced” medical equipment than the USA. Although concentration camps became memorials, several hospitals where these atrocities happened simply went back to seeing patients uninterrupted after the war. This was the time of the institutionalization of disabled people through the mid-20th century. There is a historical line that can be drawn to the forced sterilizations affecting Indigenous and Black women into the 1990s here in the USA, in California. There is also a line to the HIV/AIDs epidemic becoming a tool by the State to further marginalize and genocide LGBT+, and medical personnel perpetrating the State’s violence. Black, trans, poor, and IV drug users became acceptable deaths in the eyes of the State and in society’s mainstream propaganda. The colonial practice in the mid-20th century of testing pharmaceuticals on Puerto Rican and Boricua women would give “liberation” sexually to White women in the form of the birth control pill.

“Western Medicine has always relied upon the brutalization and dehumanization of Black people, who were forcefully subjected to medical research and unanesthetized surgeries under the guise of ‘scientific discovery.’” – Sabrina Strings, author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

To come into the 21st century, the forms of Ableism most prevalent now have built upon the legacies of colonialism, but incarnated modern.

In the USA, one of the leading causes of disability for Black men is police violence. Mass incarceration is a mass disabler. Especially in our age of Covid, our most marginalized already are the ones at highest risk if they choose to participate in society. Black people are the group most likely to develop Long Covid after an infection.

Masking became very commonplace in Asia during the aftermath of SARS-1 about two decades ago. Sinophobia, or Anti-Asian sentiment, has been behind a lot of anti-masking propaganda.

In current times, a pressing Ableism issue is the shut-out of immunocompromised people from society. Ending mask mandates for healthcare, for example if one is on Chemotherapy, can halt treatment for 6 months or more. If you become disabled, 84% of doctors believe you have a lower QOL than an able-bodied person, point blank. Only 56% of doctors in the same poll strongly agreed that they would welcome a disabled patient.

Many people are having the experience of delaying needed procedures because of lack of Covid safety. And it is a well-founded fear; if we look in our history, Polio was “just a cold” until the sequelae of severe illness disabled over 250,000 Americans. It could be called “Long Polio” as 70% of people infected with the original virus have no side effects, by today’s propagandized medical reporting standards.

Please continue to be curious, be critical, and challenge power! Only your imagination is the limit, even when things seem hopeless, we have our community and hope.

What improvements have been made to create a more accessible society?

How did these improvements come about?

The Federal Reserve Bank of NY concluded in 2020 that the Influenza Pandemic a century ago, was inextricably linked to the rise of the right-wing Nazi party in Germany. 287,000 Germans died during that pandemic, which was quickly forgotten as rising Right-wing politics brought World War 1 to fruition.

However the Influenza pandemic introduced Masking and cleaning of air were first introduced technologically to modern USA as public health mitigation measures. Medical science advanced during this time due to the discovery of microorganisms.

1960s civil rights movements, disabled activist at Alcatraz! Wilma Mankiller, was very important as a piece of the 1969 Reoccupation of Alcatraz. She would go on to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation for a decade and helped to cement ICWA.

504 sit ins mentioned by Willow, the BPP member Brad Lomax was instrumental to getting material support to the sit in enabling the systemic change for April 1977.

Brief mention Judy Heumann, child of two Holocaust survivors, worked for about two decades to get the US from 504 passage to ADA passage, worked with Brad Lomax.

Repealing of Ugly Laws by 1974 granted some more access to public life. Implementation of new federal standards meant accessible public buildings had to be built, but it was extremely easy for developers to get around the requitements.

People fought very hard against immense cruelty. Although Disability Studies has only formally existed since the 1980s, we exist between the lines through all human art making our themes.

What steps can we take moving forward to continue to support the Disabled Community?

Individual

Wear a mask! (if your sensory experience is able to tolerate it!)

Continue to be critical, and be curious about malicious intent when you hear Eugenicist language or concepts. We will see an increase going into election year.

Don’t stop at the academic level, question and question again. Was your old teacher’s favorite Enlightenment scientist someone directly involved in ableist violence and scientific racism to the detriment of science today? Be so, so brave. Stars of academia with thousands of citations could be disproven.

Resist cultural pushes for ableism. I can’t help but notice a massive increase in anti-Helen Keller propaganda since the Pandemic? Dig for the truth.

David Starr Jordan’s name is no longer on campus at Stanford because of attention from one lesbian’s book! You can really change a lot by a search for truth.

Prioritize your own true health and wellness needs, rest more than you are told you should.

Look for the disability story within every community you belong to already. The Disabled God, Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability by Eiesland is a great read that engages and critiques a spiritual and theological approach.

Stay alive, we really need you!

Once we change our mindset about the white supremacist violence, the depth of the propaganda toward white supremacy, it matters to affect tangible change in the disability community.

Systemic (organizing)

Advocate for Covid mitigations to continue until this vascular disease, SARS-2, can leave the top causes of death of Americans. Eugenicists have already used this pandemic to plant seeds of genocide. Eerily similar playbooks and passages spreading disinformation about Covid-19/SARS-2 happened in the wake of the 1918 Influenza pandemic. It was only the space of a couple decades between the end of the Flu pandemic added to the quick pace at which the rest of the political and social machine moved on without re-evaluating Eugenics in the face of so many newly disabled people. Similar to Long Covid, the Flu had its own wave of disabling effects on the workforce which exacerbated the speed of Right-wing political movements.

Fight for Universal Healthcare. Defund and abolish the Police. Disability is a leading target for police violence; up to 50% of people murdered by police are disabled.

One lifetime of collaboration can change things for millions. Make art.

If you are disabled especially, you LIVE in a political body. So there is not an option to escape as political decisions affect us daily. Right wing politics AND other forms of consumer-focused party politics are both political ideologies that in history have led to excessive death of disabled people. Please beware Right-wing & policy models that have created these issues so far.

Reproductive liberation! The legacy of Buck V Bell today has shadows in the conservatorship program wherein parents of disabled children and adults can have them sterilized without their consent. Famously Britney Spears, during her conservatorship, was forced to have an IUD. Yes, #FreeBritney was a disability rights issue!

Eugenics was an adopted and supported pseudoscience. What present day pseudoscience affects our health? There are many examples to be aware of; medical fatphobia, Covid denialism, gender-based discrimination in health outcomes, and carceral domestic violence outcomes are some.

Key Terms & Timeline for Further Reading

Key Terms

Colonization
Genocide
Eugenics
Aktion T4
Medical Model
Sequelae

Timeline:

1492: “The Sun had treacherously murdered our people on the twentieth day after the captain left for the coast. We allowed the Captain to return to the city in peace. But on the following day we attacked him with all our might, and that was the beginning of the war.”

From Broken Spears

1840s: Medical field of Gynecology “invented” through torture of enslaved women.
1867s: Ugly Laws enacted in San Francisco.
1883: Francis Galton coins term “Eugenics” building upon previous scientific racism propaganda of the 19th century.
1894: First documented Polio outbreak in Virginia
1907: First Eugenics Sterilization Law passed.
-first victims become incarcerated disabled individuals. Medical testing without consent on incarcerated individuals within the asylum system became normalized.
1918: Influenza epidemic begins. "most public health authorities who lived through the 1918–1919 pandemic looked back on it as a test that they had failed." Incarcerated individuals at San Quentin were tested on. Droplet and contact infection theory was developed in medical science.
1927: Buck V Bell Supreme Court Case sets foundation for institutional sterilization at State’s will or Doctor’s will.
1933: Holocaust begins.
1935: Social Security Act. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself physically disabled but used media savvy to hide this fact, signed into law some benefits for physically disabled and blind Americans.
1945-1946: end of Nazi Germany rule and International Military Tribunal in wake of war crimes.
1955: Polio vaccine is safe and effective.
1972 - independent living center in Berkeley!
1974: US repeals Ugly Laws
1977: Sit-ins in San Francisco for 504 regulations allowing disabled people to function in federal buildings.
1990: ADA signed into law.
2008: ADA amendments act lol 18 entire years later
2020: COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2 pandemic begins globally.
2021 - Britney Spears freed from conservatorship and regains reproductive freedom.
2021 – Polio eradicated globally except two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. What is the intersection of war as disabling violence and inaccessibility of life saving medical technology?
2023 – Roe V Wade overturned, ICWA threatened, and mass disabling pandemic State violence. Stay vigilant! We need you!

I thank you dearly for reading this far. Please use this blog as a resource starting point in your journey against Ableism.