Elon Musk’s shoutout This is less surprising when you see him as a techno-eugenicist, with the so-called “efficient” American government already at risk, including his push to end work-from-home rights and disability accommodations for many.
In the early 20th century, eugenicists used medical violence, such as forced hysterectomies, in pseudoscientific campaigns to prevent “inferior” immigrants from entering the United States and to expel certain groups, especially the disabled, people of color, and marginalized people, from the gene pool. .
Big tech heirs like Musk and PayPal billionaire-turned-arms dealer Peter Thiel have openly promoted fraudulent race science, and Musk has amplified X users who claim that people of European descent are biologically superior. I ordered it. In response to another user’s since-deleted post implying that students at historically black institutions have lower IQs, Musk posted, “It’s going to take a plane crashing and hundreds of people dying to change this crazy DIE policy.” namely diversity, equity and inclusion. , misspelled. In 2016, Thiel befriended a prominent white nationalist, the same year a Stanford dormmate said he praised South Africa’s “economically sound” system of apartheid.
The data was “distributed by eugenics researchers not only to track and monitor the poor, but also to argue for their segregation.”
In her new book predatory dataAnita Say Chan, professor of information science and media studies at the University of California Press and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, examines the history and current use of data to devalue humans along eugenics lines.
I spoke with Chan about the history of predatory data in the United States, why the moral and ethical implications of data collection remain an important topic, and how we can fight against data misuse.
Can you share with us how your data is used?How does the historical relegation of many disabled people, immigrants, and people of color to being part of the ‘undeserved poor’ continue today?
For much of history, poverty was seen as an inevitable phenomenon arising from a general state of deprivation. While “softer” versions of poverty as individual failure might attribute poverty to laziness or immoral behavior, eugenics introduced a “harder” version of the biologically determined undeserving poor as the central object of data collection.
Eugenics researchers worked throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries to demonstrate that poverty was not the result of poverty or structural exploitation, as labor reformers of the time argued, but rather the result of genetic defects that directly limited intellectual potential, and global disinformation It grew the movement. , encoded harmful and immoral personal tendencies and limited economic achievements. In the United States, eugenics researchers have used a variety of data methods, from IQ tests and immigrant literacy tests, to criminal databases and biometric archives, to not only track and monitor the poor but also assert their separation from the so-called poor. But collecting the data that eugenicists claim will prove that the incidence of moral, physical, and mental “unfitness” is higher among the poor.
Our modern datafication system continues to do this today by not only fueling the growth of online platforms and social media systems that provide minimal protection for minority users, but also by amplifying political violence against minorities. Protect their interests.
The incoming Trump administration is very anti-immigrant. This country has not been purely pro-immigration. Going back nearly 100 years, how did interpretations of intelligence lead to a sharp increase in rejections at Ellis Island?
The Immigration Act of 1924 was a historic boon (for eugenicists), remembered for imposing a strict national quota system designed to expel non-Anglo European immigrants out of the United States. With the passage of this bill, immigration from Northern Europe increased significantly, while Jewish immigration decreased from 190,000 in 1920 to 7,000 in 1926, and immigration from Asia had already been severely restricted by the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1870s and continued until the 1950s. Almost completely blocked. However, the historic passage of the Act in 1924 was the result of direct lobbying by American eugenicists.
Eugenics introduced the “harder” concept of biologically determined.
Undeserved poverty as a central object of data collection.
American psychologist and eugenicist Henry Goddard played a particularly important role. He first introduced the term “idiot” into medicine to establish a multilevel classification of “feeble-minded people.” Together with his fellow eugenicists, he tried to prove that low intelligence was a key indicator of lack of self-control, crime, alcoholism, laziness, prostitution, and even political opposition. He advocated for intelligence testing of all U.S. immigrants to exclude so-called “unsuitable” arrivals. In 1913, he began his infamous study of immigration information with rating questions delivered to respondents in English. “What is Crisco?” (an American cooking product introduced as a replacement for butter just two years ago) Christy Mathewson?”—American (baseball) player.
Based on the answers to those questions, he classified more than 80% of respondents as retarded. This confirms, as Goddard wrote when the study was published in 1917, “the fact that a surprisingly large proportion of immigrants are of comparatively low mental ability.” Goddard concluded his article by proudly sharing the dramatic expansion in deportations of Ellis Island’s mentally defective population that his research had prompted, with increases of 350% and 570% in 1913 and 1914, respectively.
Data has also been used to imagine what the future will look like. Futurama Exhibition At the 1939 New York World’s Fair. How did America’s acceptance of eugenics lead to smart city design with only non-disabled people in mind?
Futurama was General Motors’ celebrated “smart city” exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair. It was also an homage to how streamlined principles applied to urban planning and design could inspire passion and awe for a eugenic utopia. This was a sublime perfection that could be scaled when designers and engineers controlled growth and design to ensure perfection. This was true not only of the functioning of the future city, but also of the eugenic and social future in which it would develop. It is no coincidence that a 1939 Life Magazine article featuring Futurama exposed the proud, tanned heterosexual masculinity standardized at the center of streamlined societies.
This was a future utopia driven by the benefits of intelligent planning and evolutionary progress by eradicating problems of excess, uncertainty, and wasteful heterogeneity not only in technology but also in society at large. And that promise attracted an unprecedented number of visitors, some 44 million, the largest attendance of any world’s fair to that time.
Even during the rise of the eugenics movement in North America, data was used as a tool of resistance. Can you tell us about Chicago’s pioneering work? Hull HouseAnd how can that be a model today?
Although largely overlooked today, Hull House was widely recognized at the turn of the century for its leadership of the 19th-century urban settlement movement that helped grow more than 400 other settlements in the United States. Major legal reforms include the eight-hour workday, minimum wage, and elimination of child labor and workplace safety laws. We are also committed to building a research community and advancing community-driven data methods.
An intelligence test for aspiring immigrants required answers about Crisco, then a novelty, and baseball star Christy Mathewson.
Books published by women and immigrant authors, such as Hull House Maps & Papers in 1895, not only documented the impact sweatshop labor had on immigrant families on Chicago’s West Side, but quickly placed them at the forefront of society. Introduces new social science techniques by demonstrating the use of innovative data methods, from social surveys to color-coded regional wage maps. These methods later helped establish standard data collection methods for the social science profession. That approach helped change public understanding of poverty by emphasizing that its roots lie in labor exploitation and political disenfranchisement.
But Hull House’s unique success rests on a critical foundation in its commitment to developing social coalitions and its numerous collaborations with labor unions, civic groups, working families, and immigrants based in Chicago’s 19th District. This reminds us not only of what can be gained when we explicitly reject predatory forms of eugenic data practices, but also of the power of alternative data traditions long rooted in justice-based coalition work.
With people like Elon Musk taking on a major role in the incoming Trump administration, do you think conversations about how data is used have become more important?
I’ve already seen an increase in communities working to pass new laws at the local level requiring increased public oversight of police and city agencies’ acquisition of new surveillance technology. Our community in Urbana, Illinois has now submitted an ordinance to the city council to do just that.
This was a common-sense approach to maintain public transparency and protect civil rights, civil liberties, and due process. However, this stems from a growing recognition that, even under normal circumstances, it is not impossible to imagine that data collected by public authorities on targeted individuals with the intention of promoting safety and health could be reused for malicious and discriminatory uses.
Dozens of U.S. cities have begun passing laws to prevent the capture of facial recognition data after a 2019 report found that hundreds of millions of driver’s license photos stored in state Department of Motor Vehicle databases were being used by ICE to search for immigrants of interest.
Many universities, including ours, refuse to keep records of data points such as students’ DACA status to prevent undue risk to students and the educational environment. And, of course, eugenics researchers in the United States have a long history of monitoring populations, leveraging the pool of data they can collect through public agencies to pass a variety of anti-immigration and forced sterilization laws targeting the “unfit.” Public health and safety.
I’m excited to see the conversation about the political implications of data collection already being reinvigorated, and new coalitions forming around what resources we can leverage protectively at the local level. Building these kinds of alliances across diverse constituencies and leveraging the tradition of building coalitions based on justice is something we need to do well.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity..
