People forget what a totally openly fascist country America was before World War II. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis ruined it for everyone. Because until they came along and took their racist theories a little too far, everyone loved eugenics. Americans cheered human selective breeding programs, and the most respected members of society advocated for forced sterilization and the banning of immigrants deemed to be genetically unfit. It was seen as scientific progress — the wave of the future! Over thirty states passed legislation that regulated forced sterilization on genetic and social grounds. These laws were affirmed by the Supreme Court and are still on the books today.
Et de la big investigation, super intéressante:
The Racist Origins of America’s Tech Industry
Yasha Levine, le 30 avril 2019
►https://onezero.medium.com/the-racist-and-high-tech-origins-of-americas-modern-census-44ba984c2
A few years earlier, working for the U.S. Census Bureau, Hollerith had developed the world’s first functional mass-produced computer: the Hollerith tabulator. An electromechanical device about the size of large desk and dresser, it used punch cards and a clever arrangement of gears, sorters, electrical contacts, and dials to process data with blazing speed and accuracy. What had taken years by hand could be done in a matter of months. As one U.S. newspaper described it, “with [the device’s] aid some 15 young ladies can count accurately half a million of names in a day.”
As the 19th century drew to a close, census officials had started transforming what should have been a simple head count into a system of racial surveillance.
Immediately following the census, the states and the federal government passed a flurry of laws that heavily restricted immigration.
IBM’s German subsidiary landed its first major contract the same year Hitler became chancellor. The 1933 Nazi census was pushed through by Hitler as an emergency genetic stock-taking of the German people. Along with numerous other data points, the census focused on collecting fertility data for German women — particularly women of good Aryan stock. Also included in the census was a special count of religiously observant Jews, or Glaubensjuden.
By the time the U.S. officially entered the war in 1941, IBM’s German subsidiary had grown to employ 10,000 people and served 300 different German government agencies. The Nazi Party Treasury; the SS; the War Ministry; the Reichsbank; the Reichspost; the Armaments Ministry; the Navy, Army and Air Force; and the Reich Statistical Office — the list of IBM’s clients went on and on.
#USA #racisme #xénophobie #eugénisme #histoire #ordinateurs #recensement #Allemagne #Nazis #Adolf_Hitler #Herman_Hollerith #IBM
