The
Smithsonian Institute refuses to remove a bust of eugenicist and Planned
Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger from its “Struggle for Justice” exhibit from
the National Portrait Gallery despite the demand from Ministers Taking a Stand
(“MTS”), a group of black pastors led by Bishop E. W. Jackson. While acknowledging Sanger’s involvement in
the eugenics movement, in a letter to MTS, Director Kim Sajet responded, “There is no ‘moral test’ for people
to be accepted into the National Portrait Gallery.” While allowing Sanger’s
bust to remain alongside Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., Sajet said, “[Sanger’s] association with the
eugenics movement shadowed her achievements in sex education and
contraception…”
The
Smithsonian’s response to MTS is offensive to anyone who understands the
history of eugenics and Planned Parenthood and comparable to the symbolic requests
to remove the Confederate flag in South Carolina after the horrific mass murder
in Charleston. By refusing to place the
memory of Sanger in its proper place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Josef
Mengale, the Smithsonian celebrates the founder of race suicide.
The
following is an excerpt from my book The
Prodigal Republican which provides an historical perspective on Sanger to
underscore the Smithsonian’s naïveté:
“Before
the Roe v. Wade decision was handed
down in 1973, white women were responsible for having 80 percent of all illegal
abortions.
Since
Roe v. Wade, the abortion rate among
black women is five times that of white women in the United States, according
to the Guttmacher Institute. Black women
(15-44) are responsible for 40.2% of all abortions in the United States.
But
there was a long, dark history before Roe
v. Wade that led to the genocide in the black community we see today. The
efforts of the American Eugenics Society… began right after the Emancipation
Proclamation took effect….
Every
aspect of the American economy was invested in the slave trade, so first and
foremost, there was a general fear of retribution by the four million freed
slaves. The North feared a massive migration. White elites also feared that
freed slaves would flood the economic system with new costs for welfare,
medical care, and education… [and they also feared] an increase in crime and the
prison population.
The
first response was colonization (shipping the Negro back to Africa), but the
idea didn’t have wide support. Then [some of] the white and wealthy schemed to
wipe out the Negro race in America. Eugenics was the answer. Eugenics was a movement to shrink the future
Negro populations by controlling the birth rate…
Eugenics
failed over time but not for lack of trying. The movement imposed sterilization
on black people by the thousands… [but ultimately] faced constitutional
challenges.
Adolf
Hitler mimicked the American eugenics playbook and exterminated Jews.
Eventually, eugenics slithered below ground after getting a bad name from Nazi
Germany… Reducing the growth of the black population around the world, but
especially in America, was still the goal...
Negative eugenics followed. The idea was to create an
environment that would convince blacks to limit the number of their children,
in effect to accept “race suicide.” This movement was carried out by crusaders
like Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League which
became Planned Parenthood in 1942 the largest operator of abortion clinics in
the United States...
In
1922, Sanger, referring to the Negro, said “we are paying for and even
submitting to the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of
human beings who never should have been born at all.” This is the person who occupies space in the
“Struggle for Justice” exhibit in the venerable Smithsonian Institute. How can this be?
Sadly,
the Smithsonian only portends to celebrate a pioneer of sex education as it explains
in its response to MTS; rather, it misses the point
that as a repository of history, the museum fails to recognize Sanger as the
monster she was, highlights only her role in contraception while ignoring her intent
to annihilate the black community and in so doing offends those of us who are
informed. The museum owes the public a duty to tell the truth; it deliberately
fails with respect to Margaret Sanger. Shame
on the Smithsonian!
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