Know your history: State should educate youth on dark history of eugenics

The N.C. General Assembly should pass a proposed bill that would ensure that children are educated about the atrocities that occurred under North Carolina's eugenics program.

Between 1929 and 1974 the Eugenics Board of North Carolina sterilized approximately 7500 people in an attempt to remove undesirable traits from the gene pool such as those with mental disorders or epilepsy.

The program also promoted the forced sterilization of black women. Many women were not aware that they were being sterilized at the time.

Eugenics is certainly not a word typically associated with North Carolina. Few probably even realize that eugenics was legally practiced in the U.S. at all. Yet it was practiced in this state as recently as 35 years ago.

And this is why we should be teaching it to our children.

The fact that such a horrendous practice occurred within recent memory and still so little is known about this period only stresses the urgency of why it should be incorporated into classroom curriculum.

This bill will accomplish just that.

It will also require UNC researchers to conduct interviews with survivors and document their experiences.

For future generations these records will make the appalling truth of North Carolina's eugenics practices more personal and salient.

Gov. Bev Perdue has allotted $250000 of her budget toward compensation for victims of the eugenics program.

It's a small remuneration for the loss of being denied he ability to have children at the hands of a state that blatantly disregarded the dignity of society's marginalized.

We often say that without education past mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves.

That's why passing this legislation is so important.