The
Science and Politics of Racial Research
by William H. Tucker
ALL the world knows of Adolf Hitler and the
atrocities committed under his leadership during the Nazi era. But were
he and his small band of accomplices alone? Psychiatrists supplied the
flawed theories and ideas of eugenics and biochemistry which provided the
justification for wholesale slaughter of the "inferior". Timely reading
because modern psychiatry is treading down the same path once again - forgetting
about healing and concentrating instead on biology, genetics, and brain
chemistry.
Reviews
The publisher, University of Illinois Press
/ UIP home page: http://www.uiuc.edu/providers/uipress, June 6, 1996
Honors and Praise
THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF RACIAL RESEARCH
was a 1995 recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award which recognizes
books which have made important contributions to the understanding of racism
or the rich diversity of human cultures. He joins such notables as Toni
Morrison, Gail Sheehy, Maxine Hong Kingston, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and Langston Hughes. Winner of the 1995 Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American
Political Science Association.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
- "This thought- provoking work chronicles the scientific studies on genetic
differences in intelligence and shows how such findings have 'been played
as a trump card in political arguments on the side of repression' for more
than a century . . . Intriguing. This book is a powerful consideration
of the proper relationship between science and society. Anyone who has
read THE BELL CURVE will find that Tucker's book sheds a chilling
perspective on what continues to be a raging controversy."
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER - "An antidote
to that much-publicized book, THE BELL CURVE. Take a couple of chapters
and call Jesse Helms in the morning."
Customer Comments
A reader from New Jersey,
August 23, 1999
Excellent resource for eugenics information
I was a student of Dr. Tucker when I purchased
this book for a course he taught in 1998. I did not realize then, as I
do now, how important it is to understand how the eugenics movement in
Germany and the U.S. had a profound effect on the involuntary sterilization
of the mentally disabled. I believe the history of the eugenics movement
must be reviewed in light of Tipper Gore's recommendations for changes
in community mental health care through PACT programs which the National
Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is now proposing to state legislators.
The PACT model is essentially a biomedical model, with specific social
control features, deciding the fate of people with severe mental illnesses.
The eugenics movement resulting in the involuntary sterilization of the
"feeble minded" for over a half century, is hauntingly resonant of this
proposed plan.
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