Latest news with #ImmigrationActof1924
Newsweek
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Sydney Sweeney's 'Great Jeans' Illuminate the Dangerous Resurgence of Eugenics
American Eagle came under fire recently for an ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney. In one ad, Sweeney fiddles with her jeans, saying, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My genes are blue." A male narrator finishes with, "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans." It's a play on homophones, but the wordplay reveals a more sinister element: Sweeney does not just have great American Eagle jeans, she has great American genes. Picking a blonde, blue-eyed, able-bodied all-American girl was not an accident. It was about showcasing what are "good genes," and thus what are "bad genes." It's a modern eugenics movement proudly re-emerging amid a welcoming political climate. A window display of actress Sydney Sweeney is seen on a window of an American Eagle store on Aug. 1, 2025, in New York City. A window display of actress Sydney Sweeney is seen on a window of an American Eagle store on Aug. 1, 2025, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images The American eugenics movement has historically promoted the superiority of Anglo-Saxon, able-bodied, wealthy people, leading to harmful policies from the Immigration Act of 1924 barring immigrants from Asia to a practice of unnecessary and undisclosed hysterectomies performed on Black women in the South so widespread it was coined the "Mississippi appendectomy." Eugenicists promoted anti-miscegenation laws and forced sterilization of those in prison and in poverty and of those with disabilities or mental illness. These practices have not died. In 2020, low-income immigrant women detained by ICE in Georgia were forcibly sterilized. As we hear rhetoric from the current administration about immigrants "poisoning the blood" of our country, it invites horrifying thoughts of what may be happening to immigrants currently being detained by ICE. Even more sinister, however, is a modern eugenics movement camouflaged by in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF is increasingly popular, and rightfully so. Couples with fertility issues can conceive. Women can freeze eggs. Queer couples can have genetically related kids. IVF can also ostensibly prevent harm. IVF clinics might screen embryos for sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, BRCA1, and Down syndrome. Things get confusing and uncomfortable, however, when we try to define what harms are worth preventing. In a world where whiteness and conventional beauty are tightly coupled with success, couldn't selecting for these features be a way to minimize a child's future suffering? Most sperm donor companies have a height minimum of 5'9". Harvard graduate egg and sperm donors are highly sought after. While it's hard to fault parents for wanting the best for their children, as a geneticist, it is concerning to me how much stock people put into the inheritance of such complex and environmentally influenced traits. With biotech companies explicitly offering genetic testing, I am even more concerned. Last October, Helios Genomics offered to boost a couple's future child's IQ via genetic screening. Nucleus Genomics recently took this a shocking step further by announcing it is offering genetic testing for traits like eye color, hair color, height, BMI, and IQ. Companies perform these screens with polygenic risk scoring, which makes use of genetic mutations identified from large scale population studies to be associated with a complex trait like intelligence. But these findings are just that: associations. We barely understand the true, context-dependent function of all the genes and mutations associated with complex traits. The idea that a company could confidently boast a six-point increase in a trait as socially and environmentally modified as intelligence is naïve at best and deceptive at worst. It also plays directly into the ideals of eugenics: that all social disparities and ailments are genetically determined, and that there is one correct way to be. Amid devastating cuts to everything from Medicaid to education, it is curious that one of the few spaces the Trump administration has pledged to increase federal funding is in vitro fertilization. Is this a random act of kindness amid an onslaught of cruelties? Or is it one of several strategies for breeding a homogenous generation of nationalistic Americans—ones with "good genes" and predetermined allegiances to the regime (thanks to $1,000 savings accounts established in their name from birth)? In this modern era of eugenics, as immigrants are expelled while neo-Nazis spew hateful theories of "great replacement," it is no wonder American Eagle felt bold enough to declare that Sydney Sweeney has great genes. America must reject this renewed, government-endorsed eugenics. Scientists must think deeply about ramifications: Just because we can, or think we can, does not mean we should. IVF companies should be barred from making false promises about the heritability of traits like intelligence, BMI, and hair color. While fatal diseases like breast cancer are fair to select against, prospective parents should think twice about what is lost when selecting for subjective social norms. We all have great genes and we all deserve a society that embraces us, that makes us feel whole, and bold, and beautiful—like a pair of great jeans. Tania Fabo, MSc is an MD-PhD candidate in genetics at Stanford University, a Rhodes scholar, a Knight-Hennessy scholar, a Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, and a Public Voices fellow of The OpEd Project. Her PhD research focuses on the interaction between genetics and diet in colorectal cancer risk. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Chicago Tribune
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Production of Model T ended
Today is Monday, May 26, the 146th day of 2025. There are 219 days left in the year. This is Memorial Day. Today in history: On May 26, 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan. Also on this date: In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually. In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress. In 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II. In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors. In 1967, the Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' was released. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow following the SALT I negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (The U.S. withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.) In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida. In 2009, California's Supreme Court upheld the state's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.) 2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, Ratko Mladić, the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands, Mladić was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.) Today's Birthdays: Sportscaster Brent Musburger is 86. Singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks is 77. Actor Pam Grier is 76. Country singer Hank Williams Jr. is 76. Celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto is 70. Actor Genie Francis is 63. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait is 63. Musician Lenny Kravitz is 61. Actor Helena Bonham Carter is 59. Actor Joseph Fiennes is 55. Actor-producer-writer Matt Stone is 54. Singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill is 50. Singer Jaheim is 47.
Boston Globe
26-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Today in History: May 26, the World War II Dunkirk evacuation begins
Advertisement In 1775, 250 years ago, the Second Continental Congress resolved to begin preparations for military defense but also sent a petition of reconciliation, the 'Olive Branch Petition,' to King George III. That action took place one day after British generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne arrived in Boston with reinforcements for military commander and governor Thomas Gage. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory. In 1869, Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually. In 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Mich. Advertisement In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress. In 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II. In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors. In 1967, the Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' was released. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow, following the SALT I negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union. (The US withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.) In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida. In 2009, California's Supreme Court upheld the state's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban, but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.) 2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court. In 2011, Ratko Mladić, the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands, Mladić was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.)
