Talk:Race suicide

Coined by?

The term race suicide was evidently being used rather earlier than 1902, according to This summary of “The Wrath to Come: Gone With the Wind and the Lies America Tells” by Sarah Churchwell

an 1884 editorial railed against anyone who “approves of miscegenation” for tolerating “the great shame and crime of race suicide”

I don’t have the book so can’t source this editorial. Can anyone help? Chris55 (talk) 17:17, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Roosevelt

I read the speech by Roosevelt, and although it definitely contains the term "race suicide", he doesn't appear to be referring to actual human racial classifications. There is no hint in the text whatsoever about white, black, or any other ethnicity of people. The material that is quoted is preceded by the following:

[...] if the average family in which there are children contained but two children the nation as a whole would decrease in population so rapidly that in two or three generations it would very deservedly be on the point of extinction, so that the people who had acted on this base and selfish doctrine would be giving place to others with braver and more robust ideals.

This doesn't sound racist at all. It sounds to me like he uses "race" here to hint at Americans as a nation. This is corroborated by him interchangeable using "people" and "race" throughout the speech, which can be explained by this being from 1906. Prinsgezinde (talk) 15:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Do any secondary RS describe what Roosevelt may have meant? Llll5032 (talk) 01:16, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

@Llll5032: I looked up some sources and most don't delve into what he might have meant by race. This article was the most useful I could find. It claims that he was initially motivated by a 1890 census of New England that he believed, as he wrote in 1892, showed that French Canadians might "in many places supplant the real American stock." The article also says "It should be said, of course, that Roosevelt’s remarks were intended essentially for one class, the “higher” class who were not, to his mind, replenishing themselves." It also says he later stated that “criminals should be sterilized” and “feeble-minded persons should be forbidden to leave offspring behind them.” It's unclear who exactly he meant when he talked about race, but it was definitely not white people in general. Although Roosevelt has said things about other races that would justly ring a lot of alarm bells today, any mention of race by him in this context seems to refer to his "ideal" non-immigrant American citizen. It was absolutely eugenic and nativist in nature though. Prinsgezinde (talk) 00:41, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Expanding to Racialized Women

I would like to add a “racialized women” section to this page. I feel that the entry as it stands now largely overlooks, first, the way race suicide implicated Black, Asian, and Latinx communities, and more specifically, the women within these communities.

I'd initially ground the discussion by outlining the hypersexualization of women and how the stereotype contributes to their racialization. Such racialization hardened fears of race suicide.

Hypersexualization was not only socially perpetuated but was systemically ingrained into U.S. institutions. Legislation from the Page Act of 1875 to the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act provides such evidence. Upon the establishment of incarcerating institutions, jails imprisoned women for deviating from norms of sexuality, and black people, especially during the Jim Crow era, were sent to prisons at disproportionate rates. When women of color were incarcerated, they were not sent to reformatories like white women, but rather, they resided in custodial prisons like men. Further, influential scientific figures like Harry H. Laughlin testified before Congress, warning of a race suicide if such dynamics prevailed and immigration law failed to be strong enough. Case law provides additional evidence for hypersexual racialization and race suicide anxieties. Rhinelander v. Rhinelander (1925), for instance, painted a Black woman as a hypersexual “vamp” who took advantage of her white husband, echoing societal fears of race corruption. On the cultural side, films like Black Stork crafted images of seductive enslaved women, while Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom villainized Asian American women as temptresses.

After outlining the foundations and perpetuations of the women of color as hypersexualized people, I will transition into a more detailed conversation on hysteria and its racializing dynamics, including how the exclusive diagnosis played into, and contributed to, fears of race suicide. Specifically, white, upper-class women were most commonly diagnosed with a disease called “hysteria.” The sickness purportedly caused (white) women to not reproduce and thus endangered the longevity of the white race. It played into racializing dynamics largely because the chief cause was “overcivilization,” which was put in a binary opposition to “savage” — a category for women of color. The categorization and diagnosis were founded in societal and “scientific” ideas that women of color, savage women, were robust, strong, fertile, and threatening — partly related to their hypersexuality, partly related to their innate “savagery.” Thus, conversely, upper-class white women were weak, fragile, nervous, and infertile. These dynamics, where women of color were fertile and birthing while hysteriacal white women were not, exacerbated race suicide concerns. Mkf51 (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Eugenics

This article, as it stands now, largely overlooks the concept of "Race Suicide" as a tool for Eugenic white supremacy.

I aim to, through hefty research, contribute to this section by expanding on the ways in which white supremacy and Eugenic propaganda has shaped the way "Race Suicide" is posed as a pressing concern by dominant institutions. Moreover, I will discuss how the concept of Eugenics intersects with "Race Suicide" through a variety of oppressive tactics against marginalized and/or disabled individuals. I will touch on "Population sciences" and "birth rate" studies as a mechanism for white supremacy, forced sterilizations, and eugenic infanticide.

I will further discuss the implications of this inherent comradery between Eugenics and "Race Suicide," especially as it concerns black and brown women and disabled folk. MeghanBedi (talk) 04:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Introduction

I hope to update the current "Introduction," consolidating information presented in the "Coined by?" section and the "Roosevelt" section. I hope to provide a concise, yet comprehensive definition/introduction to this concept, while both preserving existing work and leaving room for additional sections on Racialized Women, Eugenics, and Political/Linguistic Propaganda. MeghanBedi (talk) 04:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Political Implications & Language

I'm hoping to add a section that focuses on the use of language and how it might be used with a more political agenda to oppress certain groups. I’m planning on expanding on how race suicide has been manipulated for political gain and/or motivations and also how the use of its language has been used in academia and other areas to further a political stance, such as with 'political linguistics', 'media linguistics', and 'language politics'. The current article has some discussion surrounding Roosevelt and his speech, so I may tie it into that section and related examples from history. It appears that as the article is now, it does not fully address the these potential implications of "race suicide" and related terms, and I think it would be helpful to fill the gap on how word choice can explicitly or implicitly affect the way people view certain things. Thus, I am planning on touching briefly on how language can influence perception or thought, such as with 'linguistic relativity/determinism', as well. Joyy.c (talk) 15:34, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Race, Gender, and Medicine

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2024 and 30 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MeghanBedi, Joyy.c (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Clr127, Vidyabhargava.

— Assignment last updated by Liliput000 (talk) 00:02, 12 April 2024 (UTC)