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| It's very possible this is a Photoshop and not a real photo. Still, she gave the speech and it was warmly received, leading to many invitations to speak to other KKK groups. She must have said lots of things they liked. |
I did a little surfing around and came to the conclusion that Sanger was only implicitly racist. Her big thing was birth control and she was obsessed with it. She was deeply committed to bringing birth control to all women and Southern blacks were no exception. If she saw an opportunity to push it, she did. The KKK was just another avenue to make a sale.
There's no question that Sanger was a eugenicist. Her book, The Pivot of Civilization, is nothing but eugenics. For her, it was all about intelligence. At the time, the scientific consensus was that blacks were naturally less intelligent, so it's hard to believe that she didn't think pursuing what she called "the Negro Project" was an important part of her overall goal of preventing the spread of mental defectives. That would make her a racist, but only because the cultural default position was black inferiority.
Having said that, it doesn't appear that she was a racist per se. Therein lies the whole problem with finding narrow, modern bins into which a person from the past can be fit. Sanger held some wacky beliefs and I think her creation, Planned Parenthood, is a pack of greedy vultures preying upon babies and making mounds of cash off their deaths. Still, Sanger wasn't motivated by that and, like all historical figures, was complex.
Was she purely evil? It's hard to make that case given what she saw in her own life. She set evil in motion, but I think you need to have some, perhaps small, sympathy for her and what she was trying to do. It's also important to remember to interpret her through the lens of her time. Hopefully people will do that for us when we're dead and gone, too.
Hate the sin (abortion) not the sinner, no?
Have I got this all wrong?
A classic example of a virtue that is out of balance-- she wanted a good end, but had bad information and used immoral means (specifically, people as a means to an end) to go after it.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember where I heard it first, but evil is rarely done for its own sake. Instead, it's usually done with a good end in mind.
ReplyDeleteCS Lewis, perhaps?
....and of course, 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. Though the evil therein is more an accidental by product than is the case of Sanger'a evil means to an intended good end. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteHitler saw poverty in the slums of Vienna and blamed the Jews. Sanger saw crime, poverty and degradation and blamed the mentally retarded. Biden sees injustice and blames whoever is currently on his party's Enemies List. They saw real problems, but got way off track finding solutions.
ReplyDelete