Buy

Steve, that is a good point. The reason why I covered AGB only is due to his tremendous impact to the Deaf Community. He changed the face of Deaf Education irreversibly with his oralism philosophy. Like countless others, I am also the byproduct of his oral method. The majority of deaf people isn’t aware of his interests in eugenics until very recently.

Without any doubt there were other eugenicists advocating for stronger measures to eliminate the propagation of the undesirables. However, like you said, AGB’s role cannot be minimized, though.

I’m not saying your research on Bell’s role in the eugenic effort to wipe out deafness is pointless – it’s truly fascinating, and I’m eagerly waiting to hear more. I’m just saying don’t make Bell the whipping boy for the eugenic movement in general and its contribution to the Nazi genocide.

(That article says that the American eugenicist that Hitler singled out for praise was Madison Grant, who wrote “The Passing of the Great Race”. I will bet you that if you track down and read that book, you will see ‘deafness’ mentioned only as one item in a long list of ‘deformities’ to be eliminated, such as blindness, retardation, and so on.)

Steve

OK, but why focus on him to the exclusion of the others? The other articles on American eugenicists I have read don’t even mention Bell as a particularly prominent one.

Steve

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL

Eugenics and the Nazis — the California connection
Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003

I’d like to call your attention to this passage:

“Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics’ racist aims.”

So, you see, you can’t blame it all on AGBell, no matter how weird or twisted he was. He was only one of many other weird and twisted hearing Ameican millionaires and scientists.

Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, eliminating deafness has long been a dream of the hearing world, not just one or two weird hearies. Our hearing parents would have ‘cured’ us on the spot, if they could have. That’s a simple fact of our world that we just have accept and live with; demonizing AG Bell won’t make that go away.

Steve Sullivan

Did AGB have any communication or sent any proposal to Congress? If so,
what were they? Reason for asking is that in 1990s at
Gallaudet, it was learned
that AGB sent a paper to
Congress, but Congress put the paper aside. In the paper, AGB proposed sterilization so as to end
a variety (deafies) of human being race. Deafness to him
was not perfect. I wish I had jotted down the source on paper when I learned about Bell’s proposal at Gallaudet.

Ironically, Bell’s father-in-law Hubbard and his desceendants made a policy to hire deaf people to work at the National Geography Society. I worked in the
Editorial Department NGS for eight years. There were about
six deaf employees. All heads
(bosses) were especially nice to us, deafies. All employees treated us with respect even though all of the deafies,
myself included, used ASL instead of speech.

Hearing people need to understand that it is DESIRABLE to have variation in the human race.

VARIATION = STENGTH

VARIATION = ADAPTABILITY

VARIATION = RESILIANCE

Therefore, we should be HAPPY that deaf babies are born and that Deaf culture exists.

It’s a cause for CELEBRATION!

this is a myth to my knowledge
agbell NEVER proposed a legislative ban on Deaf to Deaf marriages – he never proposed this to congress

in ur article at top and several of the sources u cited – they all point to AG Bell’s “Memories on the formation of a Deaf variety of the human race” but i doubt anyone has ever read it themselves

in this document he does advocate for Deaf not marrying Deaf but he clearly states he did not want it to be a law banning such marriages

when i have presented about Eugenics targeting Deaf people – during WW II several people over the years will say – u know AG Bell himself wanted a law passed re: sterilization and /or a law banning of Deaf to Deaf marriages

i will always ask where did u SEE this actually written

no proof yet

the closest i have ever come is a footnote in an article by Harlan Lane discussing AG bells – eugenics association advocating for sterilization – not AG bell himself and i still havent been able to track down a copy original source lane cites in the footnote

if someone does find evidence coming directly from bell advocating for a LAW to either sterilize or ban marriages this information needs to go public – its really important

otherwise i think it is a distortion of reality

im not an expert in eugenics at all and its ironic that im kinda defending bell here and in the asl community journal

i just like us to have the facts

i teach deaf studies courses at NTID and have read several books re: AG Bell
Forbidden Signs
A Place of Their Own
The Twain shall never meet

Bell’s own “memoires…” paper – i have incorporated the text into an artwork called “Repressive means” – u can see it by going to
http://www.rit.edu/deafartists
click artists – click durr and click portfolio

so i know those sources make a point of saying bell didnt advocate for sterilization of the Deaf or a law forbidding their marriage but he did advocate for stopping them from meeting, falling in love and mating iradicating the places where they come together (Deaf schools, conventions, deaf publications, etc)

ur general original post is well founded – ANYONE advocating for social darwinism and eugenics helped pave the way for Hitler’s work
i just dont see a DIRECT line from Bell to Hitler and i dont see any direct evidence that Bell advocated for a LAW for sterilizing Deaf folks or a LAW to forbid Deaf to Deaf marriages

instead he employed social engineering mechanicism – which in many ways have been more harmful because they are not as pronounced and r more insidious

AG Bell aims have been pervasive and enduring but because they r not as overt or dramatic as the forced sterilization of 17,000 Deaf Germans as was done under the third Reich, the harm called by AG Bell’s edict in the “memoires…” are not fully understood or recognized. Hitlers regime lasted 12 years. Many Germans had no idea of these forced sterilization (estimated up to 250,000 disabled people were sterilized) until many years late.

Biesold – author of Crying Hands was puzzled when an elderly Deaf friend of his in Germany said “oh, i cant have children because of ‘Hitler Cut’” Biesold was like WHAT what is hitler cut – the Deaf gentleman took him aside and explained about the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offsprings – one of the very first laws that was passed in the Nazis’ quest to create a perfect race

Biesold researched and illuminated this atrocity and included info on euthanasia and Deaf Jewish people’s persecution

He tells us of the fact that many Deaf Germans emulated the Nazis and set up their own SA group which was later disbanned by the Nazis (REGEDE)

much of this info is available at http://www.rit.edu/deafww2

in the site under deaf people/ europeans/ eugenics – u will see the story of franny

it is absolutely horrifying what she endured

again i dont mean to defend AGBell

but if we equate him to Hitler and the Nazis employment of eugenics were are doing 3 dangerous things:
1. misrepresenting facts and history
2. minimizing what was done under the Nazi regime
3. embellishing what was done under the oralism regime and overlooking that it still reigns today in many ways – in the US and abroad

peace

p

peace

p