The Dark Side of the Golden Era
Ah the postwar boom. America’s Golden Era . . .
Several years ago I learned that the United States government carried out a program of forced sterilization on Puerto Rican women during the post-World War II era. Initially, I was shocked and appalled. Why would the government of Puerto Rico with the support of the U.S. government force sterilization on women?
The primary motivation behind this was eugenic. Puerto Rico was overpopulated (it still is) and birth rates were high. The government couldn’t get people to emigrate fast enough and Uncle Sam was worried about another few million people in one of its colonies. Basically what happened is what happens in China today: poor women were tricked or coerced into having abortions or being sterilized. Sometimes it was the only family planning option offered. At others there was no consent.
This came crashing down to me about fifteen minutes ago when I got a call from my father. My grandmother, his mother, died about a year ago. My father had always been very close to her and so, when she died, he took some of her personal effects, mostly letters, back to California with him from New York. He was nearly in tears and bitterness clung to every word. He skipped pleasantries and simply began speaking.
“Sometimes” he said “I am so pissed off at what the government has done.”
I was rather confused and asked him what he meant.
In a mere five minutes he related to me the following. By 1949 or 1950 my grandparents had three children: my father and his two brothers, one older, one younger. Around this time my grandmother got pregnant again, this time with a girl. When she went in for a prenatal exam, she was either forced or deceived into taking medication that would induce abortion. Apparently three children was enough. My grandfather found out about this and was quite understandably pissed. They were offered $200 to sign a waiver form and shut up. At the time he earned about $5 a day, so $200 was what he earned in a couple of months. They signed and took the money.
This wouldn’t have come off quite so bad in my mind if I didn’t know anything about history or them personally I suppose, but I do. Up until 1951, all education, and likely all official documentation was in English. I have no idea how much (or I should say little) education my grandparents had, but I would guess that sixth grade might be pushing the envelope. Even in their twilight, when they had been living in the United States for fifty years, they never spoke more than relatively basic English. I would rate it around that of a ten year old. In all likelihood it means they signed a piece of paper that said fuckall as far as they were concerned and got $200 to not talk about it.
My grandfather had served in World War II in the Pacific and returned to a country that didn’t really want him because he was Puerto Rican. Apparently they didn’t want his children either. He never got the GI Bill. He never owned a home. In fact, he lived his entire life in poverty. The government not only screwed him on benefits, it deprived him of the right to have a child because he happened to speak the wrong language, be poor, and be Puerto Rican.
But hey, don’t get me wrong. The government has screwed lots of other people in the same way, mostly poor minorities. So Tom, Ragnar. You can tell me all you want about how great America was when you were kids. I still call bullshit.
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 13 January 2009 at 10:48 pm:
I have never said that it was great, Brandon, unless you were white and male. Even then, it was hell if you were rural poor like my family.
It was apartheid, plain and simple.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 14 January 2009 at 12:54 am:
Great post, Brandon. Thank you for honest history.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 14 January 2009 at 12:55 am:
Some how I think this relates to Revolutionary Road, a movie I saw tonight, but I can barely describe how.
Comment by Brandon Ruiz on 14 January 2009 at 9:32 am:
Actually Tom, I was expecting you to explain to me the difference between the people and their government and proceed to tell me government is evil :-). I know you don’t see it all starry-eyed, but you do tend to wax nostalgic. Besides, calling on you by name ensured a response. :-D
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 14 January 2009 at 2:02 pm:
In a democracy, Brandon, people elect the government they deserve. Many white people in the 50s were racist because they simply didn’t know any better. Even twenty years made a huge difference.
Tom
Comment by Stubear on 14 January 2009 at 3:12 pm:
Tom – “In a democracy…people elect the government they deserve” IF they’re playing on a level playing field in a fair game. As this pertains to racism, the America’s owners recognized the value of xenophobia in keeping the white fear of people of color alive and actively cultivated it in any number of ways as a distraction from more important matters. The entire cold war was, at its heart, little more than a creation of the owners of the west and the owners of the SU to provide an excuse to make themselves even more wealthy and powerful. By the time Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, it was WAY too late to do anything about it.
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 14 January 2009 at 5:58 pm:
Stu, in my culture, we were not afraid of people of color because there were none. I didn’t see a black person until I was five years old. They just…never…entered our thoughts.
Segregation was just that complete in the mid-50s rural North. As a matter of fact, I remember that a car full of black people that stopped at Al Smith’s service station in 1958 was a curiosity that was a conversation topic for a week. I do not remember any worry whatsoever, no fear, just questioning looks–who were they, anyway?
You have to have at least some familiarity with a subject before you can be made to be afraid of it.
Tom
Comment by Joshua on 14 January 2009 at 11:55 pm:
Tommy, You and Stu have both been major influences on how I think about the world. I haven’t had time to read this post and thread, but you two engaging in the comments is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time! You met Stu briefly once at the Custard Cup, and you may see each other around downtown Champaign periodically. I really benefited a great deal from my three mentors in Champaign. Now that Stan Levy left town, and soon most of my friends on campus will have graduated, you two will be the main reasons I come back to town, perhaps we can all get together sometime for lunch.
Comment by Ragnar on 15 January 2009 at 2:20 pm:
Brandon, I will tell you how great America was when I was a kid. It wasn’t perfect maybe, although for the lucky and privileged it was. I suppose I do tend to remember my childhood like it was an episode of “Leave it to Beaver” or something. I think that is because I have blotted out the bad parts and just reflect mostly on the good. I just think that is the way one should choose to live. I remember years when my dad didn’t make enough to pay income tax, back then that meant less than 2K per year. But I never felt poor. I remember watching Nam on the TV news every evening and having the fear at the back of my mind that one day I would be there. Once my friend and I knocked the bottom out of an old pan, nailed it to a board in the middle of our barn’s hayloft, and spent glorious days playing a form of full contact tackle basketball. Years later my dad looked up into the hayloft and saw that old pan still hanging there. He looked at me and said, “I guess you never had much.” Heck I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. We had no air conditioning, microwaves, computers, seat belts, air bags, GPS navigation, and I have still never lived in a house that had more than one bathroom. But I have never wanted to live anywhere else.
And I hate to say it dude, but so your grandparents got screwed because they were poor and ignorant. Well that makes them members of the biggest club on the planet, but it is no reason to hate a country that was trying to grow and do better. My grandpa got drafted to WW1, went to a bootcamp that had such an outbreak of crablice that they just sent everyone back home. He got a lucky break during the depression when he got a job digging post holes for a dollar a day and was able to provide for his family and keep them from starving. My dad’s first cousin was sent to the Pacific to kill Japenese because he was second generation German and they thought his loyalties might not be as divided as they would of had he gone to Europe. All of my Grandparents’ had siblings they lost, not to abortion or sterilization maybe, but to disease and accident. End result was the same.
Bottom line, you can either be bitter and whine about how crappy things are, or you can fight injustice, be a great friend of the good and a terrible enemy of the bad, and try to be wise enough to figure out who is who. Meanwhile I am going to remember a long ago black and white summer afternoon, when my old Chow dog was sleeping on the porch, my dad and grandpa were out under a tree hammering on a John Deere tractor, my mom was cooking a roast in the kitchen while a noisy fan pushed around the summer air, and I am swinging on my swingset, and on that day things were pretty damn good. And Hell Yes, I think I was pretty lucky to have lived in a country that gave me that one damn good day. So, Brandon, I am sorry about the bad stuff that happened to your family and to the women of Puerto Rico, and to all the other great injustices of the last hundred years or so, but piss on you all the same. The government you are bitching about not only allows you to bitch, but will even let you pack up and hit the freakin road if you can find someplace a little better. Ragnar ps. don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
Comment by Brandon on 15 January 2009 at 3:21 pm:
Ragnar
God you’re an asshole. Never did I say I hated America or that I condemn thee forevermore. I simply pointed to one of a long line of absolutely terrible things this country has done to its own people. Every government does pretty shitty things to various segments of its population. In the broad scheme of things this is a really great place to have been born. Being glad for the accident of birth and slavish devotion to things that never were are different though. I can be thankful for being born here and for the many freedoms I have that the other 2/3 or more of the world doesn’t have. That doesn’t mean I can’t also look at things, past or present, and say “man that’s messed up.” Looking at something and saying it could be better is not hatred, it’s generally called constructive criticism. All I offered here was another example of why I still think you romanticize the America of your childhood. There are many things that were, in most people’s estimation, better back then. There were also many things that were worse. Just as today there are things that are better than they have pretty much ever been at the same time as other things are worse. The difference here is that I don’t think we’ve lost it all, I just think things are different, some for the better, some for the worse.
You should be careful about pissing on me. There’s the remotest possibility that I might like golden showers.
Comment by JayBandit on 16 January 2009 at 7:56 am:
Brandon,
I really liked your post; however, you completely tried baiting Tom & Ragnar with your last paragraph. So, I honestly don’t think you get the right to call Ragnar an asshole for defending himself while you attack him.
I think the difference here is that Ragnar is romanticizing his own youth, while you are complaining about the past of your parents & grandparents. People always try to remember the good times of their own past, it is only natural. So, why do we attack Ragnar or Tom for doing what is perfectly natural and harmless? Everything doesn’t have to be a political event…people can just “remember” and leave it at that.
I don’t see why your post couldn’t have simply stood on it’s own, without a dig on other people at the end…which I personally feel cheapened it.
That’s my two cents.
Comment by Ragnar on 16 January 2009 at 8:53 am:
wow brandon, if you backpedal much more we will mistake you for Harry Reid! And we know that twinkie likes golden showers!
Comment by Marcey on 16 January 2009 at 11:25 am:
I’ve been asked to write a piece for Urbanagora, but the reason I won’t is because the comments afterwards often become a pissing contest (and I chose that term on purpose, given the last few comments).
Comment by Brandon on 16 January 2009 at 12:21 pm:
Marcey,
You’re absolutely right. We’re all quite guilty of it and it tends to cheapen what is done here.
Jay,
You’re also right. I don’t mind saying to Ragnar what I did because he told me to get out of the country for criticising something. But I did invite the comments specifically.
Ragnar,
There’s no backpedaling in contrasting my views with the over simplified ones you imputed to me. It’s about defining the conversation. You know you actually had me with your response right up until you insulted me. I got what you were talking about with your mother’s roast and the tractor, my sympathies died the second you told me to get out of the country for critique.
Comment by Joshua on 16 January 2009 at 12:32 pm:
In fairness, Ragnar didnt tell you to leave the country, he said if you can find somewhere you like better you’re free to leave. And the piss on you bit, was a little unnecessary, but you baited him.
Marcey, sure I wish we were always more civil, and I think in general we try to be, but this is after all a blog, and on blogs spirited back and forth can slip into insults, especially in a place where we’ve sparred for years. Don’t let a little schoolyard insult make you “take your ball and go home.” Write with us. If people treat you harshly and you decide to stop, fine. But please don’t refuse to even bother for something as silly as Brandon and Ragnar ruffling each others feathers. Thing is – they both like it!
Comment by Stubear on 16 January 2009 at 2:49 pm:
Ragnar: “The government you are bitching about not only allows you to bitch, but will even let you pack up and hit the freakin road if you can find someplace a little better. Ragnar ps. don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
Bzzzzzt. You have just abandoned any remaining shred of credibility you may have had.
That “love it or leave it” crap went out with Spiro Anew.
For any institution (or individual) to move forward, it has to first accurately understand where it is. If you think you’re in Pittsburgh and want to fly your plane to Philladelphia, you take off and fly about 250 miles east and a little south. But what if you were actually in Baltimore when you started? Whoops. Water landing anyone?
The same is true of America. Until we can handle the duality of being both a wonderful country and a country that has done and continues to do horrible things to our citizens and to the citizens of the world, we’re doomed to keep splashing down somewhere in the Atlantic (and wondering how we got there).
If we citizens of Urbanagora can’t make room for the pain and anger of the freshly disillusioned, we’re doomed to irrelevance (at best). They are the ones most likely to keep us firmly in mind of where we really are.
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 16 January 2009 at 3:56 pm:
How about those of us who have been disillusioned for forty years?
Comment by Joshua on 16 January 2009 at 4:02 pm:
Rangar: You almost nailed it right before you started insulting Brandon, but it’s really about the patriotism of believing in perfecting our country. This requires speaking candid truth about past abusive mistakes, and collectively trying to improve, to move forward.
Comment by Stubear on 16 January 2009 at 6:01 pm:
Tom – What about us? I suppose one role for us (besides continuing to speak the truth) is to stand up for those relatively new to disillusionment and make sure they aren’t silenced by the simplistic minded “love it or leave it” crowd. (Not that I think there’s ANY danger of that where Brandon is concerned!) There is no greater patriotism than speaking up when your country does wrong.
Comment by Joshua on 16 January 2009 at 8:39 pm:
Cept maybe dyin’ for it.