I would like to start this story from the final few points that need for synthesis, have been omitted in the course of this long saga, which may help to better understand the implications of the measurement of human intelligence by the samples of determinism that We met in previous games and we will provide an interpretive trail for the rest of this particular story:
" We know what the weakness mental and there arose the suspicion that all the people who are unable to adapt to their environment, which are less to the conventions of society or civil life, are the weak mental "HH Goddard, 1914.
" Not all criminals are feeble-minded but all feeble-minded people are potential criminals. That every feeble-minded woman is a prostitute potential, it would hardly challenged by someone. The moral sense as that of the business or the social or any thought process than other is a function of intelligence. Morality can not flourish and thrive if the child remains intelligence. "LM Terman, 1916.
Intelligence is so elusive and indefinable entity that can take the form that each prefers. Attribute identification with the moral conduct and adherence to social conventions today seems completely arbitrary and pointless, but maybe, deep down, the spirit of that time is not yet totally extinct and probably be wrong to underestimate the deteriorating effects that these visions compliance and approvals can produce today. You can now get an idea of \u200b\u200bwhere in reality the application of biological determinism in the social sciences went to parry, and those abuses may be committed within this conceptual framework. In his monumental work
measurement of intelligence on behalf of the army, RM Yerkes went to meet some disappointment: while most of the recruits was placed just above the limit of moron with a mental age of 13 years, including conscientious objectors, for political reasons as much as A 59% obtained a score, the higher the scale, and even the rebels and the government had fully a score higher than average. Yerkes but still found a way to comfort his prejudices, as usual, thanks to companies that meet the troops on their way:
" data results from an examination of prostitutes, according to the tests confirm the conclusion of the army, obtained test administered to civilians with prostitutes various parts of the country, that they are 30 to 60 percent deficient, and for the most senior moron, and that 15 to 25 per cent of all prostitutes are mentally capable of so low that it is wise (as the rest is possible under the laws of many states) imprison permanently in institutions for mentally weak . "RM Yerkes, 1921.
To take full advantage of this statement should make the effort to imagine the army personnel who gathers the prostitutes in the area, to wait in a big room and submit to the tests of IQ (and perhaps include an expression of man's work ...).
Yerkes was a prerequisite for the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, and for a variety of eugenic laws enacted by various states in the U.S. in a few years. The law of Virginia for the forced sterilization of carriers of hereditary defects, real or fake, it was enacted in 1924, and was the first person convicted of an eighteen year old white named Carrie Buck, a recluse in the Colony for Epileptics and weak state of mind. His case was taken to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1927, and that was the litmus test for the validity of the law. The case of Carrie Buck would not have anything special had it not been for this historical circumstance, in turn linked to the chilling words written by Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then one of the most famous lawyers of America, at the conclusion of the proceedings for the defense of the law of Virginia, who became a kind of manifesto of the American eugenics movement: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Carrie Buck
Both his mother Emma Buck, then fifty-, were considered half-wit, having scored a mental age of nine and less than eight years, respectively, to test Stanford-Binet. The third generation of imbeciles, crucial to tip the scales of justice toward the sterilization was made up of six months by his daughter Carrie, Vivian Buck, who had been diagnosed with a mental impairment similar to a social worker.
In 1980, Dr. K. Ray Nelson, who became director of the Lynchburg Hospital where Carrie was sterilized, he discovered that the law of 1924 was applied until 1972, more than 4,000 forced sterilizations in Virginia. Carrie Buck was still alive and Dr. Ray Nelson decided to go see her, followed by other researchers and some journalists, and the case returned to light.
Carrie Buck was then an old simple and not very sociable, he read the newspapers and was regularly both with her sister Doris who with a neighbor that the more educated to help solve the puzzle. The first impression of Ray Nelson was confirmed by the psychologists who examined in old age: it was neither delayed nor suffering from any mental illness. So what we did in 1924 inmate in an institution for weak-minded?
The fact that this story mothers, daughters and grandchildren all have the same surname might have given you a clue already. Carrie was one of several illegitimate children of Emma Buck, was bred by the Dodds family, and lived with foster parents until seventeen, when she was raped by a relative of Dodds. Expectations from the hearing which decided the institution is not no diagnosis of mental deficiency, except for "is" the adoptive family, who had requested admission "in a school or somewhere," just want to remove from home compromising the prominence of her womb, and to protect the identity of the rapist.
At the time of first trial at the court of Virginia, 1924, the small Vivian Buck, the "third generation of imbeciles" was about six months, and the testimony of the social worker Miss Wilhelm: " It 'difficult to judge the chances of a child so small, but it seems to me that it is not exactly a normal child. For the look. I must say that, perhaps, the fact of knowing the mother can influence me in this point of view, but I saw the girl with the baby daughter of Mrs. Dodds, who has three only days older than she, and there is a difference between the two is quite marked in the development. This happened about two weeks ago. There is something that is not perfectly normal in appearance, but what exactly I can not say "is the whole of the evidence against the child's mental retardation. Nothing but the file shows.
Vivian Buck died from an intestinal infection at only eight years, and Paul Lombardo, who studied the case in 1980 , managed to retrieve the report cards of his brief two years of schooling. Except for one D in math, his ratings were between B and C in all subjects, with A in conduct. It was a brilliant scholar, as well as fellow school we all had just enough votes they obtained.
Nothing is known of Emma Buck, but at this point it is easy to doubt that his alleged mental impairment is identified only by his conduct low morale.
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough. "And probably in this soria there is no fool, not one. Two generations of children born out of wedlock enough. Carrie Buck was sterilized at twenty, and his family was considered a health hazard mind of the nation, but it was probably the sanctimonious puritanism of the United States to be threatened, not the intellectual quality of the country.
But it's not over yet. When, in 1980, Dr. Ray Nelson interviewed the protagonists and survivors to reconstruct the events of trial at the Supreme Court, the "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" of Justice Holmes, Doris Buck, Carrie's sister, suddenly burst into tears. Suddenly, he understood why she and her husband were never able to have children who did so wish, gave her account of that phrase hit the sadness of a lifetime. He remembered that day, a girl, took her to the hospital saying she had to be operated on for appendicitis, and connected everything.
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
Sister Carrie Buck was sterilized without her knowledge.
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