The UN definition of Racial Genocide

Blog 4: Racial purity and racial genocide

In the book, The Violence of Hate, Levin and Nolan stated that “racial genocide was carried out and encouraged not by ideological fanatics and schizophrenics but by ordinary citizens. Even the perpetrators were normal by conventional mental health standards” (Levin & Nolan, 2011, 102).

For this blog, I have found an example about a form of genocide that occurred in my home state of North Carolina where ordinary citizens sterilized poor women in order to “better society.”

John Railey wrote the article for the Winston-Salem Journal on Sept. 07, 2011.

Most people think of genocide as “when masses of people are exterminated, whether it be in Germany, Rwanda or the latest hell on Earth.” That’s what I thought until I read this article.

However, according to the United Nations’ original Nazi-era Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2, section D says that genocide is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within that group.”

What does this have to do with genocide in North Carolina?

It turns out that from 1929 through 1974 North Carolina had a forced sterilization program aimed at “black women of modest means” where more than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized against their will.

“That’s what they did to us,” said Nial Ramirez, who was sterilized in 1965 in Washington County after giving birth to the only child the state allowed her to have. “If you were poor, black and had nothing, they wanted to get rid of you. They wanted to get rid of your kids. Just like Hitler did the Jews.”

North Carolina was not alone in its actions. In the first part of the 20th century, there was a national movement based on eugenics to “better society” North Carolina’s sterilization program was part of a nationwide movement aimed at “black or white, deaf, blind, epileptic…feeble-minded…poor” women, many of whom did not know what was being done to them.

Railey maintains that “the program slid from paternalism to prejudice to rank racism, its target being to thin out the numbers of blacks on the welfare rolls.”

Since this program clearly imposed measures intended to prevent births within that group it meets the United Nation’s definition of genocide.

Black and Railey are advocating compensation and medical care for the thirty percent of the victims who are still alive but the state government is moving slowly, if at all, in that direction.

In conclusion, I was totally surprised, ashamed, and angry to find out about this program that took place nationwide and in my home state of North Carolina. I had never heard of it before. I cannot imagine people thinking they were improving society through a program like this. As Railey pointed out, the real victims were the children who were never born and who knows how many inventors, doctors, musicians, or teachers were among them who might have made a difference in really improving society.

 For further information:

In 2001, the Winston-Salem Journal ran a series about the program called “Against Their Will” that advocated that the victims be compensated for their pain.

James Black, author and speaker, wrote a book titled “The War Against the Weak”

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