North Carolina and the meaning of truth

Lecture module alert (A new feature of this blog, a warning that I worry that I have stepped into my beloved teaching mode. This means I feel an irresistible urge to think through the nuances of a topic out loud. To add context and examples. To be sure it makes sense. Please don't decide not to read this ... it's pretty interesting. And please excuse me if I launch into discussions about stuff you already know and if I get sort of wordy. I can’t help it.)


Ideas are always products of their times. They grow according to the elements of the soil they where they sprout. Of course we like to believe that our ideas are exceptions to this. Our "truth" isn't tied to time and place. We have it right, and others are simply wrong. But really, what we “know” is always shaped by the world around us. Our point of view always depends on where we stand. As philosopher Donna Haraway said, “There is no view from nowhere.” 

So, thinking about this (as I have been recently) leads me to reflect on how easy it is to see someone else’s ideas, ideas that grew in different soil, as wrongheaded, ill informed, absurd. But when I do that, I miss the point that those folks likely think that my ideas are wrong-headed, ill informed, and absurd.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with North Carolina. OK, I’ll explain.

This train of thought came to mind as I read some recent news about North Carolina. The state of NC is considering paying reparations to victims of state-legislated, forced sterilization in the early twentieth century (in some cases, as late as the 1970s). In fact, sterilization programs were being pursued in more than 30 other states at the same time. This took me back to my years teaching the history of psychology. That may seem like a stretch, but stick with me a minute.

Most of us haven’t heard much (if anything) about this nation’s foray into eugenics. (In case that word isn’t in your everyday vocabulary, eugenics refers to programs intended to improve the species through selective breeding.) One form of eugenics involves encouraging the “right” sort of reproduction among people (or animals or plants). Think animal breeding and plant genetics, designer dogs and seedless watermelons. A very recent example of human eugenics was the “Nobel Prize winners’ sperm bank.” (If you’re thinking of signing up, it’s too late.)

Another form of eugenics aims to ensure that some people, the “wrong” people don’t reproduce. We see this in laws that prohibit marriage between close relatives or between members of different races. We saw its most extreme form in Hitler’s efforts to eliminate groups he saw as “inferior”: Jews, Gypsies, gay men, people with disabilities.

To get back to the North Carolina story, eugenics was widespread public policy in the US in the early twentieth century. Much of the push for eugenics came from wealthy and powerful people. Its supporters included Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, John Kellogg (of Kellogg’s corn flakes fame), Theodore Roosevelt, and Margaret Sanger, the “mother” of birth control and founder of Planned Parenthood. Not surprisingly, the advocates of eugenics were quite clear about who the “fit” people were—people like them. And the “unfit” folks who should be prevented from reproducing were people unlike them: non-white, non-educated, poor, foreign born, people with disabilities.

Winners of the Fittest Family contest,
Topeka KS

During the heyday of eugenics in the early 1900s, government-sponsored programs encouraged reproduction among the “fit.” Others discouraged, prohibited, or physically prevented reproduction among those were “unfit.” These included national contests to select the “fittest family” as well as programs supporting the sterilization of “unfit” people. University courses and textbooks about eugenics appeared around the country. Widespread public support resulted in the passage of legislation mandating sterilizations for those shown to be unfit. Like the ones in North Carolina.

Psychology played a major role in the eugenics movement (here’s where I came in). Early versions of IQ tests were designed to identify people with limited mental ability—children who wouldn’t benefit from traditional schooling, army recruits who shouldn’t be given advanced assignments, immigrants who shouldn’t be admitted to the country. IQ tests were often used to identify people as “feebleminded,” which meant they were unfit and should be sterilized.

It’s not hard to see the racism, classism, and abelism in these ideas. It’s hard not to see the advocates of eugenics as purely self-serving. But it’s too easy to write these people off as cruel, thoughtless, or at best misguided. There are lessons for us here, too. I’m not saying that eugenics is a good idea just because it fit the context of that time. (In fact, I think it's a very bad idea, whatever the times.) Actually, I’m not really talking about eugenics at all. I’m just saying that ideas—including our own ideas—are products of the soil they grow in.

In one of my all-time favorite books, The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke recounts people asking him, “How could medieval Europeans have possibly thought the sun circled the earth?” Burke replies, “What would it have looked like if the sun had been circling the earth?” The answer, of course, is that “It would look exactly the same. … We see what we want to see, according to what we believe at the time.”

So, when I get to thinking this way, I start wondering: What are we thinking as a culture that will look absurd or horrendous to people 50 or 100 years from now? Of course, we can’t really know—we’re still in the soil. But it’s fun to speculate. I hope we’ll see today’s resurgent anti-immigrant movement as wrongheaded, ill informed, absurd. And the idea that “preemptive war” is justifiable in any moral code. And the belief that some people should be barred from the right to marry as they choose. But I suspect that there will be even grander ideas than these that will bite the dust.

Just as important, I wonder: What ideas am I spouting that will be considered crazy in 50 or 100 years? Maybe the very idea that ideas are shaped by their times will seem absurd. In that case, this discussion will have proven itself!

This is an interesting exercise, wondering about the future of your own certainties. Give it a try. But keep in mind that we’re doomed to limited success. We can’t see our viewpoint when we’re standing on it.