On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. Let's talk about something crazy you probably didn't hear enough about in school, eugenics. Now, eugenics sounds like a fancy science word, right, like, oh, that must be some tech that Elon Musk is cooking up. But no, it was a straight up evil plan to decide who was fit to have babies and who wasn't. Spoiler alert, if you were black, poor, or disabled, they decided you weren't fit. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know.
Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. So back in the day, from like nineteen twenty nine to nineteen seventy four, white folks was out here playing god. They sterilized over sixty thousand people in the United States forcibly, like imagine going to the doctor and instead of fixing your cough, they're like, yeah, you're never having kids. You're welcome. Out of the sixty thousand,
North Carolina alone sterilized over seventy six hundred people. And North Carolina was super nuts because they let social workers, not doctors, not judges, but social workers decide who should get sterilized. I mean they sitting there with their notepads, your poor check, your single check, you back talk to your teacher in third grade. Yeah, sterilized. And they loved throwing around this term called feeble minded, Like what even is that? They called folks feeble minded for being poor
or for not finishing school. One of the most infamous cases was a black girl named Elaine Riddick. She was fourteen years old, got pregnant after being raped, and instead of helping her, the state sterilized her. They called her feeble minded. It was a legit diagnosis. Cisors just trying to survive being black and poor in North Carolina. Here's the kicker. They claimed they were helping society, like sterilizing people would stop poverty or crime. Nah, fam it just
made them feel powerful while ruining people's lives. Families were destroyed, the legacies were cut off, and survivors like Elaine Riddick been fighting for justice ever since. And don't think this is ancient history. Forced sterilizations are still happening prisons, immigrant detention centers. Yeah, they didn't tried to find a wrap around for it. Y'all ain't slick, So let's keep it real. If you don't know your history, they'll run the same
playbook on us again. And let's all take a moment to remember Elaine Riddick and all the people who were brave enough to speak out because one thing's for show and two things for certain Black folks might be resilient, but we shouldn't have to bounce back from this. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I didn't know.