By Steven Hayward | POWERLINE
Fun news today that Planned Parenthood in New York has
decided to remove the name of its founder, Margaret Sanger, from its local
headquarters building because they’ve figured out that she was a deeply
racist supporter of eugenics. The New York Times reports:
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York will remove the
name of Margaret Sanger, a founder of the national organization, from its
Manhattan health clinic because of her “harmful connections to the eugenics
movement,” the group said on Tuesday. . .
But her legacy also includes supporting
eugenics, a discredited belief in improving the human race through
selective breeding, often targeted at poor people, those with disabilities,
immigrants and people of color.
“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building
is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge
Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within
communities of color,” Karen Seltzer, the chair of the New York affiliate’s board,
said in a statement.
My favorite sentence of the story is this: “Ms. Sanger
still has defenders who say the decision to repudiate her lacks historical
nuance.”
No word on whether Planned Parenthood will stop targeting
minorities for abortions, which is in full keeping with Sanger’s old views.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club is having a complete
meltdown as it reckons with its own elitist past. Executive director Michael
Brune has posted a long, angst-filled
confessional today on the Club’s website, decrying the Club’s legendary
founder, John Muir:
The Sierra Club is a 128-year-old organization with a
complex history, some of which has caused significant and immeasurable harm. As
defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we
must also take this moment to reexamine our past and our substantial role in
perpetuating white
supremacy.
It’s time to take down some of our own monuments,
starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history. That
will be followed by posts on how we’ve had to evolve on issues of immigration
and population control, environmental justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. . .
The most monumental figure in the Sierra Club’s past is
John Muir. Beloved by many of our members, his writings taught generations of
people to see the sacredness of nature. But Muir maintained friendships with
people like Henry Fairfield Osborn, who worked for both the conservation of
nature and the conservation of the white race. Head of the New York
Zoological Society and the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural
History, Osborn also helped
found the American Eugenics Society in the years after Muir’s death.
And Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in
the early conservation movement. He made derogatory
comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply
harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life. As
the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry
an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous
people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.
There’s much more at the link, but what is to be done at
the end of this self-flagellation? Pay tribute, of course:
Pending approval from our board, we will shift $5 million
from our budget over the next year — and more in the years to come — to make
long-overdue investments in our staff of color and our environmental and racial
justice work. . . We will also spend the next year studying our history and
determining which of our monuments need to be renamed or pulled down entirely.
Take no chances: pull them all down. Replace them with
the Great Pumpkin or something.
Hard to believe there isn’t an acute popcorn shortage
these days.
