Yeah, sure the bad old days of gross racial discrimination in America are over... since 1979.
Seriously, this is ghastly and wrong and everybody should know about it. They certainly don't teach these facts in "liberal" U.S. history courses:
"Beginning with Indiana in 1907, 32 states eventually passed laws allowing authorities to order the sterilisation of people deemed unfit to breed. The last programme ended in 1979.
"The victims were criminals and juvenile delinquents, women deemed sexual deviants, homosexual men, poor people on welfare, people who were mentally ill or suffered from epilepsy. African Americans and Hispanic Americans were disproportionately targeted in some states."
In a 1927 decision, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."
"All told, scholars estimate more than 60,000 Americans were sterilised under eugenics laws in the 20th Century."
By Daniel Nasaw
June 14, 2011 | BBC News
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