Morons discuss the Mentally Disabled

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UnrepentantLiberal (4,736 posts)
 
Origin of the Word Moron: Eugenics, Racism and Henry H. Goddard
By Allen Butler
August 1, 2007
 
Henry H. Goddard

It is hard to go through a day without hearing the word "moron" used at one point or another. We probably use the term liberally ourselves. Moron is one of our favorite epithets used to describe those we consider stupid or foolish.

The modern popularity of the word moron belies its dark and somewhat disturbing origins, springing from the mind of American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. At the turn of the 20th century Goddard was one of the foremost American researchers in the study of "feeble-mindedness" and the introducer of the Binet system of intelligence testing to the English language.

In the 1910's Goddard became world-famous for his ideas about "feeble-mindedness" particularly his belief that it was a hereditary trait. His seminal work, The Kallikak Family, studying two strains of the same family (one strain considered normal, the other considered "defective") became an international bestseller and became extremely popular in Germany under the Nazi regime. He personally instituted a testing system at Ellis Island in order to keep these "feeble-minded" people out of the United State used to reject an estimated 80% of potential immigrants and forcing them to be deported back to their home country.

It was in the midst of Goddard's work on intelligence testing that he coined the word "moron." He created a classification system for those on the bottom end of the intelligence scale: people whose IQ was between 0-25 would be classified as idiots, people with an IQ between 25 and 50 would be imbeciles and those with an IQ between 50 and 75 would be classified as Goddard's own invention: morons. He derived the word from the ancient Greek moros meaning dull or foolish.

Goddard believed that morons and the feeble-minded in general were a threat to America, and believed that an America filled with the feeble-minded was unfit for democracy. Aside from his work limiting immigration of the so-called "feeble-minded" into the United States, Goddard hoped for a plan of sterilization of the retarded, believing this would ultimately remove mental defects from the American population. Realizing that such a view would not fly in the world of public opinion, however, Goddard advocated what he felt was a more benign option: the segregation of the feeble-minded into specially designed colonies. This of course never happened.

More: http://voices.yahoo.com/origin-word-moron-eugenics-racism-henry-474052.html

HiPointDem (1,941 posts)
3. "specially-designed colonies" did happen, in the form of state asylums, etc. i'd also like to

Last edited Fri Jun 1, 2012, 02:38 AM USA/ET - Edit history (2)

note that the eugenics movement was the origin of standardized testing, and is with us today still.

that is, the impulse to divide humankind up into the worthy and unworthy, superior and inferior, and call this "science".

no_hypocrisy (23,393 posts)
7. His "work" was persuasive enough to allow scores of states to justify the *legal* and

involuntary sterilization of their citizens under the guise of prevention of "feeble-mindedness". It culminated in the Supreme Court case of Buck v Bell, a Virginia case where the Chief Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes explicitly opined "Three generations of imbeciles is enough". Thousands of people were submitted for surgery, not being told its purpose, married, and later couldn't understand why they couldn't start families. This practice continued into the Seventies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002751783

Shock!

Horror!

Moral Indignation!

Now read this:

From these same elements, living under these same conditions come the feebleminded and other defectives. Just how many feebleminded there are in the United States, no one knows, because no attempt has ever been made to give public care to all of them, and families are more inclined to conceal than to reveal the mental defects of their members. Estimates vary from 350,000 at the present time to nearly 400,000 as early as 1890, Henry H. Goddard, Ph. D., of the Vineland, N. J., Training School, being authority for the latter statement. Only 34,137 of these unfortunates were under institutional care in the United States in 1916, the rest being free to propagate their kind—piling up public burdens for future generations. The feebleminded are notoriously prolific in reproduction.

So where did THAT come from?

here:

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966).  Woman and the New Race.  1920.

III. The Materials of the New Race

http://www.bartleby.com/1013/3.html