Racism, Classism, Misogyny: An American Tale

The state of North Carolina is picking at a still-open wound that for years has been ignored:  the involuntary sterilization of those deemed racially undesirable and unfit to reproduce.

The practice of forced sterilization was an outgrowth of the politics of race in late 19^th and early 20^th century America, the child of eugenics, the grandchild of social Darwinism.  Twenty-seven states instituted some type of forced sterilization programs, usually targeting criminals or the mentally ill or disabled.  North Carolina was one of only a few states to include race and class in its formulation to determine who would be subject to the government’s scalpel.  Young women on public assistance – the vast majority of them African-American – were threatened with being cut off from the pittance they were allotted by the state unless they accepted being surgically sterilized.

One such victim is Elaine Riddick, who, at the age of fourteen, was raped, became pregnant, and gave birth to a son, Tony, in 1968.  Unbeknownst to Elaine, her illiterate grandmother was somehow convinced to authorize the state to sterilize the teenager (she marked an “X” on the consent form).  Elaine gave birth via a C-section, and at the same time the physicians sterilized her – a fact she didn’t know until five years later, at which point she was newly married and ready to bear children with her husband.  But of course, she couldn’t – because the state had, without her knowledge and certainly against her will, made the decision that she should never again conceive a child.

Why had the state done this?  Because the state believed she was “promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others.”

Riddick later said “I didn’t get along well with others because I was hungry.  I was cold.  I was a victim of rape.”

The charge of promiscuity is what stands out for me, because it reveals so much about the way in which our male-dominated society has historically viewed the crime of rape.  Elaine was brutally attacked and impregnated by a man – and yet she was branded “promiscuous”.  Was this the state’s way of saying “she was asking for it”?  Was 1968 too early for North Carolina’s law enforcement agencies to recognize rape as a crime of violence, rather than of sex?

Elaine Riddick was a victim many times over.  She was  not only victimized by the man who raped and impregnated her.  She was additionally victimized by a culture that saw her rape not as a crime committed by a stronger man against a weaker girl, but as the result of her own “promiscuity”, making her at least partly responsible for her own rape.  She was victimized by a state which saw her as less human thanks to her race and her class.  And she was victimized by a society that still tries to divide people in order to keep them subservient to the desires of the powerful.

North Carolina’s current government is grappling with how much to compensate the victims of its eugenics program.  No matter how much money the state eventually gives in recompense, it will never be enough to erase the stain of genocidal intent.