So Scary, I Don't Whether To Laugh or Cry

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I wanted to look up something on Black Genocide.org, but I didn't know the web address off the top of my head. I Googled "Maragret Sanger's Negro Project", and the first result was a page in the Planned Parenthood site called "The Truth About Margaret Sanger". I of course saw the irony because the "truth" will of course be followed by a number of lies.

To my surprise, the first quotes they had of Margaret Sanger to convince us that she was not a racist (who did not believe birth control should be used to lessen the black population remember) in my opinion revealed the opposite sentiment:

In a letter to philanthropist Albert Lasker, from whom she hoped to raise funds for the project, Sanger wrote that she wanted to help

a group notoriously underprivileged and handicapped to a
large measure by a 'caste' system that operates as an
added weight upon their efforts to get a fair share
of the better things in life. To give them the means of helping
themselves is perhaps the richest gift of all. We believe
birth control knowledge brought to this group, is the most
direct, constructive aid that can be given them to improve
their immediate situation (Sanger, 1939, July).

So, what are the "better things in life?" Men being able to sleep around without commitment? Being married and not having children with the person you love? If she was so worried about black people having "the better things in life", why didn't she hand out free gift certificates to Macy's, fine restaurants, scholarships, or Cadillacs? OK, maybe some of my choices are over the top, but I am not sure what she is talking about. Does she mean "better things" like necessities, or luxuries? If it's necessities, maybe providing those instead of birth control would be of better help.

My mother was born in 1950, and grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem (her clinic was in Harlem), and moved to St. Albens, Queens (home to Run DMC, Al Roker, James Brown, and if anyone read the book The Color of Water) as a teenager. The Harlem of her childhood, before the ravages of birth control (now the black community has an 80% out of wedlock birth rate) and drugs was a working class neighborhood where even though her mother worked, the neighbors kept tabs on the kids, because if they did anything amiss, their parents would be notified. Hers was a neighborhood with intact families, where girls attended finishing school and grew up to be debutantes, where my mother attended the first black private school (The Modern School), and her sister went on to be the first black woman to go to Bronx Science.A neighborhood regardless of your faith, when the Church bells rang at noon for the Angelus, everyone at least stopped if you were not Catholic. Sugar Hill is no longer like that, and I wonder what factors transpired to change it...

Anyway, my mother's family was working class, but like many of us, we don't realize there are much better things than having the bills paid, hugs from our family, and a fresh baked apple pie, until someone points out we are falling short materially. I hear no stories from her about what she didn't have, but lots of stories of her following her big brother around, buying a pickled pigs ear from the corner store for a nickel on the way to school (yuck), or Saturday night TV shows and her father fixing special Saturday night treats.

In 1942, she wrote again to Lasker, saying

I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor,
helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their
high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better
standards of health and living for those already born, and
to create better opportunities for those who will be born (Sanger, 1942).

This would almost sound OK except if she weren't racially motivated, why is her ambition not to help "people" (as opposed to "Negros") with their maternal and infant death rates period. End of story. If that is her goal, then that should be her goal. But those words are thrown in for good measure, in my opinion. Her main goal, because we are talking about "Planned Parenthood's" main goal in helping Negros control their birth rate.

When I hear people talk like this, I grab my kids and run.

Update:I found this from Annie Banno on the subect from like a month ago.

3 Comments

Then ya thrown in MLK...
"I am proud tonight to say a word in behalf of your mentor, and the person who symbolizes the ideas of this organization, Margaret Sanger. Because of her dedication, her deep convictions, and for her suffering for what she believed in, I would like to say that I am proud to be a woman tonight." ~ Mrs. Coretta Scott King accepting the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award in 1966
(http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/pub-martin-luther-king.xml)

Whose side was he really on anyway? Things that make you go "hmmm".

err, accepting the award on behalf of her husband, that is.

I do not understand why black leadership (MLK, WEB DuBois, the um, democratic party) have accepted this nonsense. I don't know of Margaret Sanger was that charismatic, or she was just a good political ally.

I actually think the Negro Genocide site has a page explaining this.

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