From pnews@igc.apc.org Ukn Jan 24 01:35:01 1993 Received: from totalrecall.rs.itd.umich.edu by css.itd.umich.edu (5.67/2.2) id AA28623; Sun, 24 Jan 93 01:35:00 -0500 Received: from log.css.itd.umich.edu by umich.edu (5.65/2.2) id AA07100; Sun, 24 Jan 93 01:34:58 -0500 Received: from redspread.css.itd.umich.edu by css.itd.umich.edu (5.67/2.2) id AA28619; Sun, 24 Jan 93 01:34:42 -0500 Received: from cdp.igc.org by redspread.css.itd.umich.edu (AA00306); Fri, 22 Jan 93 18:36:15 -0800 Received: by igc.apc.org (4.1/Revision: 1.56 ) id AA24275; Sat, 23 Jan 93 22:37:10 PST Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 22:37:10 PST From: Hank Roth Message-Id: <9301240637.AA24275@igc.apc.org> To: radical@redspread.css.itd.umich.edu Subject: Violence Initiative Status: RO X-Status: /* Written 5:02 pm Nov 11, 1992 by pnews@igc.apc.org in igc:p.news */ /* ---------- "Violence Initiative" ---------- */ <<< via P_news >>>> From: Hank Roth To: odin@world.std.com /* Written 7:55 pm Oct 23, 1992 by hrcoord in cdp:gen.racism */ /* ---------- "NL11 Racism, Genetics and Roots of" ---------- */ From: Human Rights Coordinator Subject: NL11 Racism, Genetics and Roots of /* Written by asta.unih@oln.comlink.apc.org in igc:gen.newsletter */ Racism, genetics and the roots of crime By John Catalinotto When the bankers and bosses who make up the ruling class are threatened with social unrest, they often find it useful to promote theories that claim race and biology, not social conditions, determine people's behavior. A 19th century Italian doctor, Cesare Lombroso, spent years making minute measurements of what he considered "criminal skulls." His ideas got backing. Someone wanted people to believe that the shape of the skull, not the squalor of the slums, drove people to steal. Nazi Germany took such ideas to their illogical extreme, using them first for social control and then to justify mass murder. Heidelberg University had a collection of skulls available for study. Even before the wholesale slaughter known as the holocaust, Hitler and company set up a "scientific" program to first sterilize and then kill most of Germany's mental patients. In the United States today no one measures skulls to determine criminal type. Science has advanced. Now, with the discovery of genes, a new approach has replaced Lombroso's skull shapes--one that seeks to blame biology for things like the Los Angeles rebellion. Government psychiatrist Dr. Fred Goodwin has become a major spokesperson for this approach. At a talk on the future of federal mental health policy last Feb. 11 to the National Mental Health Advisory Council, Goodwin pushed a program to find genetic factors marking children as violence-prone, and then intervening with these 5- to 9-year-olds. He called this program the "violence initiative." Goodwin exposed the racist content of his program when he described the violent behavior of young male rhesus monkeys, then immediately discussed behavior in the inner city. As he put it, "maybe it isn't just the careless use of the word when people call certain areas of certain cities jungles." Protests over these racist remarks cost Goodwin his job directing the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration. But the federal government still wanted him and his program. Goodwin was appointed to direct the National Institute for Mental Health. Protest stops racist conference This coming Oct. 9-11 the National Institutes of Health were set to sponsor a conference at the University of Maryland called "Genetic Factors in Crime: Findings, Uses and Implications." This was part of the violence initiative. A mass protest from the Black community stopped the conference before it could take place. Loren Love, director of WPFW-Pacifica radio and an activist in Washington's Black community, spoke to Workers World on Sept. 15. She explained how a grass-roots protest against the conference began in her city. "I heard a talk last April by Dr. Peter Breggin at a counter-convention to the American Psychiatric Association meeting [that] exposed and opposed the NIH policies," Love said. "Invited on my show, Dr. Breggin spoke of the October conference. I asked him to talk in the Black community." Then Dr. Ron Walters of the Political Science Department at Howard University, a former aide to Jesse Jackson, circulated Breggin's information at the college, where a meeting was held. Those involved formed the Committee to Stop the Violence Initiative, of which Love is co-chair. They then brought the struggle to the NAACP convention in Tennessee. Before long the NIH was getting a huge number of letters protesting the October conference. "That's why it was called off," said Love, who credits Black-owned and -directed media with building the protest movement. Violence initiative still a threat On Sept. 15, Breggin told Workers World he had word that "Goodwin is still talking about the violence initiative within the NIMH. We were able to shut down the conference, but the conference was just the tip of the iceberg. It's only the beginning of our work to combat this attempt to blame biology for society's problems." >From an office in Bethesda, Md., Breggin and Ginger Ross-Breggin run the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, which he describes as "a non-profit network of more than 75 individuals devoted to reform in psychiatry." In the Summer 1992 issue of The Rights Tenet, Breggin analyzed the violence initiative. Some excerpts from his article follow: "According to ... Goodwin, the initiative specifically rejects any examination or focus on social, economic or political issues such as racism, poverty, unemployment, the degradation of inner city schools and the deterioration of urban life in general. ... "While the following analysis of the violence initiative focuses on Fred Goodwin, the program is much larger than Goodwin himself. Millions of dollars are already being pumped into the federal establishment for bio-chemical and genetic research on violence, while psychosocially oriented research has been largely gutted. ... "This biomedical approach directly threatens civil liberties, oppresses Black children and their families, masks racist intentions, and distracts the nation from the true sources of pain, suffering and violence within the inner city. "Much of the research focuses on the highly theoretical role of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin in violence. This corresponds with the current financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, since several drugs affecting serotonin neurotransmission have been submitted for approval to the Food and Drug Administration. ..." No slip of the tongue The article continued: "Far from being a slip of the tongue, Goodwin's racist remarks [on Feb. 11] came in the context of justifying the hitherto unpublicized violence initiative. Goodwin's comparison between monkeys and young inner city men was used to justify the violence initiative with its aim of identifying and treating an estimated 100,000 people. In later remarks made in defense of himself, Goodwin declared that the target population would be 5-year-old children. "The violence initiative is the most recent example of a remarkably consistent viewpoint that has recycled in modern history at critical periods of social conflict in the United States and Europe. It rationalizes social ills in biomedical terms that blame the victim--in this instance the young inner city Black man--by declaring him genetically and biologically unfit. "Claims for a biological and genetic basis for any form of human conduct are flawed to the extreme. ... These claims have been made for several hundred years despite an utter lack of evidence. The claims survive scientific disproof because they are fundamentally political rather than scientific." (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".) The N.Y. Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683 nyxfer@panix.com * All the news that doesn't fit * nytransfer@igc.org