Margaret Sanger

While recently touring the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC with my wife I noticed in the "Nazi book burning" exhibit that a book by Margaret Sanger was burned at one of the Hitler Youth book burning bonfires. Unfortunately the exhibit did not mention the title of the book which was burned so here is a list of Ms. Sanger's books since this "unknown" intrigued me:

The Pivot of Civilization
Woman and the New Race c.1920
What Every Girl Should Know (1920 ed.) (GIF facsimile available)
What Every Girl Should Know (1922 ed.) (GIF and PDF facsimiles available)
"The Case for Birth Control" (first published in the Woman Citizen, February 23, 1924)
Correspondence between Sanger and Katharine McCormick
Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg
The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College


Margaret Sanger? The same Margaret Sanger -- founder of Planned Parenthood -- who shared the Nazis' hate for the "inferior races" ? Background on Ms. Sanger's racist views and promotion of eugenics are noted here:

http://www.nrlc.org/bal/sanger.html

I just had to wonder -- since Sanger and the Nazis were both focused on the extermination of the "inferior races" why would a book written by Sanger be burned by the Nazis? Well either Ms. Sanger's views were too moderate for the Nazis and/or clearly NO one is safe from the book burners of the world.

If any readers out there care to defend Ms. Sanger's work I would love to hear from you. Given the popularity of black Americans like -- Oprah, Michael Jordan, and Tony Dungy -- aren't we glad that people like Ms. Sanger did not achieve all of their personal objectives?

Live and let live,

Todd

The "k-word"

The "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is under attack again -- earlier this year it was in the Lakeville, Minnesota school district -- in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Concerned parent, Ken Gilbert, read this book while he was a student in the 1960's in segregated North Carolina thus he does not want his child required to read the book in her 10th grade honors class.

As I noted in my original posting -- this type of censorship destroys the opportunity that Twain provided us to mock the racists in our world, yes the "n-word" is used extensively in this book but if people like Mr. Gilbert solely focus on that fact then they miss the entire point of the book.

No racism is never a good thing but black/African-Americans are not the only victims as noted in this story regarding how German immigrants were called "krauts" which was the k-word/n-word of the day so this racism inspired them to learn English --

http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/opinion/1160555732105360.xml&coll=2

Now my German ancestors and I were never enslaved like black Americans but I feel no offense when I hear the word "kraut" used today so the evolution of this term into a "neutral', even archaic one is encouraging. As Bill Cosby has said repeatedly today's black youths need to speak English not "ebonics" so perhaps the German experience in the USA is a lesson to consider -- if only HISTORY not Social Studies was taught in our public schools.

Todd