Imbeciles and Raven Learning Too Much History

If I had to describe "Imbeciles" in just one phrase, it would absolutely have to be "It gets worse before it gets worse". Rarely are we presented with a historical event in which at almost every avenue everyone was making a horrible decision. "Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck" tells the story of just that. It certainly isn't light-hearted reading material, but sometimes we have to talk about uncomfortable issues. Particularly this issue needs to be addressed in broad daylight.

This is a part of history and is one many of us are only vaguely aware of. Or we are aware of it in different contexts. So let's clear the air now. This is about America's push for Eugenic policies, particularly that of eugenic sterilization. When we discuss eugenics we often focus on one dark spot in history, Nazi Germany. However, this book does a good job of highlighting those ideas did not just magically come out of nowhere. America held many ideas revolving around "Scientific racism" in which people attempted to justify racism through science, or rather what sounded like science.

However the book is not just a timeline of Eugenic ideas, rather it focuses on an often overlooked and unrepealed Supreme Court case. The case of Buck v. Bell was what allowed the courts to rule that sterilization as outlined in the Virginia law was constitutional. Now, the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma did outlaw sterilization as punishment. However, that did not protect people from having this horrible procedure forced upon them for other reasons.

So how did that happen? A group of people who were well invested in the eugenic causes sunk as much time and resources as they could into building a test case that they hoped they could take all the way up to The Supreme Court. This group, who we spend plenty of time getting to know, stacked the odds as far in their favor as they could. However, the public is not blameless in this case. The popular opinion of The Progressive Era was heavily in support of eugenic causes. They found it easy to blame some other theoretical group for the problems with society. Then fear was stoked in the general public and they bought even further into the idea of eugenics. Eventually, the fears were taken to such extremes that mean bought into the solution being sterilizing those that carried "bad genes".

What were the bad genes? It depend of course on who you ask. The subjects in this book carried a range of opinions. Some went so far in their beliefs as to suggest "pauperism" was an inherited trait that could be removed from the gene pool. It is important to note that these men were not random wealthy individuals. Many who held these opinions held Ph.Ds in science or practiced medicine and were well-respected doctors.

There is a lot to take in with this book. I would imagine for many of us the vast majority of this book is new information. There is also a good chunk of this dedicated to clarifying misconceptions. For example, probably the one that surprised me the most, was that the idea of Social Darwinism is not something Charles Darwin ever advocated for or even came up with. It was an idea that predated "The Origin of Species" but came close enough that people conflated survival of the fittest to human ideologies. In fact it was Darwin's cousin who ended up coming up with the underlying ideas of Social Darwinism. There are plenty more ideas to uncover and clarify, this was just one that stood out in my mind.

I believe I have made it very clear that this is not an easy read. This book took a lot for me to get through. Yet I would still tell you to read it. You might already know parts of this story, but the full story deserves to be heard.

Now if I had to say some issues with the book I do have a couple. The book is of course structured to highlight how eugenicists often came from privilege and wealth. This in turn influenced how they saw the lower classes and people who were not cut from the same cloth. However this does lead to long stretches of learning about the career of some man that had a hand in the downfall of our main focus, Carrie Buck. It was important to me to know how far the wealth ran and how much their own status played into eugenics, but it got boring at times. I was stuck at times of not wanting to read on because I was tired of hearing about some lawyer from somewhere. There was also an underwhelming focus on the legacy. Our conclusion focused a bit on our big shot eugenicists and how they all eventually passed away. There was a whole chapter dedicated to how Carrie's life was after the case. However the overall legacy of the case and the lives of those who fell victim to it felt more like a footnote. I wanted to know more about the issue as it has evolved.

Final Rating: 3/5 Stars. I did enjoy this book, I will continue to highlight its importance. However this read did not take it in the directions I thought needed to be explored. There was a lot of information that had to be expressed here. I won't fault an author for being thorough. However my focus often felt like it was shifting too much and we had to spend half a chapter to get back to the focus, only to back track again to review some other figure's involvement. I wanted to enjoy this a bit more, but at times the big events felt like a blur of motion and I was left wanting more. I don't think I would read this book again, unless research necessitated it. With all that being said its a crucial read and could help many others learn a serious side of history that is often overlooked.

-Sincerely Raven