white stuff

Racist and eugenicist ideas informed the imperialistic notions and adventures of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge and resulted in the involuntary sterilisation of tens of thousands of American women. (Painter quotes the Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ notorious opinion in support of the sterilisation law: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”) These ideas served as the impetus for the Immigration Act of 1924, (which throttled back immigration rates until 1965,) and inspired Nazi theoreticians and policymakers. Eugenicist ideas also, as Painter acknowledges, played a role in the battles for birth control waged by the feminist activist Margaret Sanger and her circle. Plainly racist ideas motivated the first instances of widespread intelligence testing in the army and at Ellis Island (where 60 per cent of all Jews were found to be “morons”).

it is about:
The History of White People
Nell Irvin Painter
WW Norton & Company
Dh104
The white stuff