Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

68 Language Diversity in the Classroomare never socialists or labor unionists, and as long as the dominantimposes its will on the servient race, and as long as they remain in thesame relation to the whites as in the past, the negroes will be avaluable element in the community, but once raised to social equalitytheir influence will be destructive to themselves and to the whites. Ifthe purity of the two races is to be maintained, they cannot continueto live side by side, and this is a problem from which there can be noescape. (Grant, 1916: 7879; see also Brace [2005] for useful notes onGrant and other prominent figures)Grant’s book sold in the millions, and was widely translated mostnotably into German. While scholars frequently attacked his ideas, Granthad many academic supporters, including the noted biologist, CharlesDavenport. The two collaborated to found the Galton Society in 1918;earlier, Davenport had established the Eugenics Record Office, underwrittenby the Carnegie Institution, and published his own very popularbook on heredity and eugenics (Davenport, 1911). In retrospect, theefforts of eugenicists like Davenport and Grant can be seen as the lastscientific (or, rather, quasi-scientific) gasp of a once-respectable (or quasirespectable)set of assumptions. Of course, their passing from theacademic scene hardly signified anything like a full and final disappearance.If more culturally sensitive sociologies and anthropologieswere gaining strength, if the scientific bases of most eugenic argumentswere increasingly seen to be flawed or non-existent, and if the attentiongiven to lay commentators (like Grant) was increasingly challenged bythat accorded to real scientific authorities well, we must not imaginethat victories were either swift or complete.In his decision in a famous Supreme Court case about involuntarysterilization, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, in 1927:We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call uponthe best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not callupon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lessersacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order toprevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all theworld, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime,or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent thosewho are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principlethat sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to covercutting the Fallopian tubes... three generations of imbeciles areenough. (Laughlin, 1930: 52)