How Much Compensation Will Women Sterilized Against Their Will Receive?

 
 
North Carolina has become the first state to compensate victims of sterilization programs. The Eugenics Compensation Task Force has offered $50,000 per person as a form of apology. I'm glad that task force member Demetrius Worley Berry said that "this is not an attempt to compensate, repair or restore what happened years ago." Because there is no dollar amount that can rectify yet another tragic part of American history.

In case you haven't heard all about the horrific sterilization program that North Carolina(and more than half the states in the U.S.)  imposed on people that they determined to be unfit to reproduce,here's an excerpt from a piece written about this diabolical experiment in eugenics from The Winston-Salem Journal:

"They were wives and daughters. Sisters. Unwed mothers. Children. Even a 10-year-old boy. Some were blind or mentally retarded. Toward the end they were mostly black and poor. North Carolina sterilized them all, more than 7,600 people.

For more than 40 years North Carolina ran one of the nation's largest and most aggressive sterilization programs. It expanded after World War II, even as most other states pulled back in light of the horrors of Hitler's Germany.

Contrary to common belief, many of the thousands marked for sterilization were ordinary citizens, many of them young women guilty of nothing worse than engaging in premarital sex.
      I don't want it. I don't approve of it, sir. I don't want
      a sterilize operation.... Let me go home, see if I get along all right.
      Have mercy on me and let me do that.       — A woman pleading with the eugenics board, 1945.

The sterilization program ended in 1974, but its legacy will not go away. Many of its victims are still alive and they bear witness to a bureaucracy that trampled on the rights of the poor and the powerless.
In response to a Winston-Salem Journal investigation of the state sterilization program, the Wake Forest University School of Medicine is looking into its own role in the eugenics movement.

The state program was run by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a panel of five bureaucrats who usually decided cases in a few minutes. It was inspired by the eugenics movement, which made exaggerated claims that mental illness, genetic defects and social ills could be eliminated by sterilization. The system granted excessive power to welfare workers, browbeat women into being sterilized and had ineffective safeguards.

“They don't want to hear how I feel, or what's going on in my mind. You're pregnant — you need to get sterilization,” said Nial Cox Ramirez, recalling her sterilization in 1965 after having one out-of-wedlock child.

“And they had the nerve to tell me, "That's what's best for you,'” she said recently.
North Carolina sealed most records of the eugenics board and until recently few details were known about how the board operated, or the nature of cases it handled." (End of Excerpt) Read more of this excellent report here. 
 

Michael Eric Dyson Replaces Tavis Smiley As MLK Speaker

Tavis Smiley says that the president must be held accountable for his actions. Apparently, the organizers of a luncheon that champions the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. felt the same way about Mr. Smiley. One of the organizers, Alma Brown,expressed concern that Tavis Smiley's controversial political views would cause too much friction among the guests who were there to honor MLK.

Here's more from Politico:

"Smiley was booted from the 20th annual MLK luncheon on Jan. 16 that is hosted by the Peoria Civic Center. The group announced last week that Smiley had been replaced by Michael Eric Dyson as the guest speaker, citing people who were “upset about comments that Tavis Smiley has made.”

“What’s important to us is putting together a luncheon that celebrates the life and work of Dr. King,” luncheon organizer Alma Brown said last week, according to a local report. “And it became evident over the last few days that people were upset about comments that Tavis Smiley had made, comments that we weren’t aware of unfortunately so we made the decision to cancel his contract.”

Smiley said Monday that some 1,500 guests had bought tickets to attend the luncheon, but the “six people” that complained ended up “trumping the entire event,” calling the situation a “quintessential example of political correctness.”

Last summer, Smiley teamed with social activist and author Cornel West to embark on a 16-city “poverty bus tour” to highlight the economic disparity in the country, especially as it affected the nation’s African-American community. Smiley said in an interview that “it would be nice to hear the president say the word poor — to say the word poverty.”

“But we can’t get this president or any leaders to say the words poor or poverty, much less do anything about it,” he said." Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71225.html#ixzz1j5Gm2gbp

Far too many people show no tolerance for a contrarian point of view. I,on the other hand, thirst for debates. If someone has a different perspective than I on any subject, I love to try to sway them to my way of thinking. Or be swayed to follow their train of thought on any given issue. Many feel that Tavis Smiley's arguments about President Obama's failings is motivated more by personal issues he has with Obama more than anything else.

They felt that his very vocal criticisms stemmed from the fact that he has not been invited to the White House.

Here's more from Mediaite:

"Tavis Smiley and Cornel West continued their media tour on C-Span this morning, and expressed frustration with President Obama over a much more personal issue than merely not talking about poverty. Smiley noticed that Obama invited Bill O’Reilly to the White House, but he himself has yet to receive an invitation from the President, who regularly appeared on his show before being elected President.

Smiley suggested he wasn’t crying about being ignored by Obama......." Read more here.