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The Spectacle Blog
In a “fact check” of Herman Cain’s statement that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, aimed at “preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born,” the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler described Sanger as a “racial pioneer” for her time.
Of course, Kessler is egregiously wrong. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway explains the truth, which is that Sanger was an unapologetic racial eugenicist with truly dark views about minorities.
The Washington Post’s fact check isn’t working. Kessler’s shameful piece will lead readers much further from the truth than Cain’s claims.
Update: Glenn Kessler has commented:
I provided a comment to MZ Hemingway’s article but this is how Sanger’s biographer described her racial views for Salon today: “She actually held unusually advanced views on race relations for her day and on many occasions condemned discrimination and encouraged reconciliation between blacks and whites. Though most birth control facilities conformed to the segregation mores of the day, she opened an integrated clinic in Harlem in the early 1930s. Later, she facilitated birth control and maternal health programs for rural black women in the South, when local white health officials there denied them access to any New Deal-funded services.”
The biographer Kessler references, as another commenter points out, is a Planned Parenthood board member, so she’s hardly an unbiased referee. But there’s really no way to get around the fact that Sanger, in her own words, supported eugenics “as … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
I’m sorry, that’s racist and abhorrent no matter what time period you live in. Luckily such views are no longer reputable today.
View all comments (9) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/02/wapo-glosses-over-racial-eugen
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Bumr50| 11.2.11 @ 11:31AM
Herman Cain speaks truths that others dare not speak in the public arena.
If nothing else, it's clear that he doesn't give a rat's rear about WaPo or their "journalistic integrity."
David W| 11.2.11 @ 1:29PM
Some time back I read about a young, black, minister who wrote a letter (I believe to Congress) complaining about how its support of abortion was racist. Today, that man is a well known, black minister and Democratic civil rights leader who is so wrapped up in his self-importance and need for power that he walks in lock-step with the same people he complained about oh so long ago. If I could find the articles from the paper I would mention his name.
Glenn Kessler| 11.2.11 @ 1:37PM
I provided a comment to MZ Hemingway's article but this is how Sanger's biographer described her racial views for Salon today: "She actually held unusually advanced views on race relations for her day and on many occasions condemned discrimination and encouraged reconciliation between blacks and whites. Though most birth control facilities conformed to the segregation mores of the day, she opened an integrated clinic in Harlem in the early 1930s. Later, she facilitated birth control and maternal health programs for rural black women in the South, when local white health officials there denied them access to any New Deal-funded services."
Peter S.| 11.2.11 @ 2:01PM
@Glenn - The Sanger biographer you quote, Ellen Chesler, is a board member of Planned Parenthood. She has a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of her organization's founder. I don't think this automatically discredits Chesler as a source on Sanger, but quoting her doesn't win the argument for you.
PattyMor| 11.2.11 @ 2:27PM
And the Herminator called the Left out on their eugenics and didn't back down. He is absoutely correct, but no one before has dared to speak the truth. Go Herman, go. They're NOT taking down another of our conservatives.
Glenn Kessler| 11.2.11 @ 2:57PM
Actually, she wrote that biography long before she became a board member, though I noted her board membership in my original column.
David T| 11.2.11 @ 4:48PM
Here's NRO's Jonah Goldberg on Margaret Sanger:
In 1939 Sanger created the...“Negro Project,” which aimed to get blacks to adopt birth control. Through the Birth Control Federation, she hired black ministers (including the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.), doctors, and other leaders to help pare down the supposedly surplus black population. The project’s racist intent is beyond doubt. “The mass of significant Negroes,” read the project’s report, “still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes…is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.” Sanger’s intent is shocking today, but she recognized its extreme radicalism even then. “We do not want word to go out,” she wrote to a colleague, “that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Rapnsum| 11.3.11 @ 12:10PM
Sanger was racist - watch the documentary film - Maafa21 to see proof ( http://www.maafa21.com)
Herman Cain: Planned Parenthood is planned genocide-http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/herman-cain-planned-parenthood-is-planned-genocide/
Read This: Planned Parenthood Board Member Ellen Chesler excuses Sanger’s racism as “Well Intentioned” http://saynsumthn.wordpress.co.....tentioned/
lee| 11.4.11 @ 8:43PM
If a eugenicist was interested in controlling a certain segment of the population, let's say minorities, wouldn't you logically integrate birth control shops in "colored" neighborhoods? You would assist black women with birth control to impede their lineage.
As a minority I can appreciate her more advanced views on race in a time of bigotry. She was actually against abortion (and masturbation, per wikipedia?), which is less preferable to birth control. But she was apparently either a Malthusian or social darwinist, and that's dangerous enough. She had some crooked opinions on immigrants and what constitutes an "unfit" portion of the population.
Discussions like this reveal how Americans often put those who fought for racial harmony on a pedestal. Even now, those civil rights leaders aren't "progressive" by default. Plenty of communists and dangerous people condemned racial segregation and bigotry while advocating oppression along gender, class, and other lines.