We’re publishing this book at work that is about the Oportunidades program in Mexico, which is one of the programs Campfield claims to have based his starve-the-kids legislation on. I haven’t read the book yet, since it doesn’t exist, but I’m curious about the author’s claims that this program has strong ties to the eugenics movement in Mexico.
I tried to do some research on Campfield’s bill, to see if there were other bills like it at state level, because I have a hard time believing he wrote it. I think he’s advancing it on some group’s behalf. And I’m curious about that group. One of the things that’s obvious from the discussion surrounding it–even the discussions Campfield claims to be having on his blog–is how closely this bill is tied to the idea that there is some set of people who are “right” and other groups of people that have to be either abused or bribed into acting right, because they, intrinsically, are just wrong acting. The teachers, for instance, that Campfield claims have been calling him up in support of the bill because poor people just aren’t good parents.
You see how insidious it is–this idea that you have the standard for what good parenting is and people who fail to achieve it deserve to suffer. Especially because there’s no reporting if these are the parents of children doing poorly or if these parents are hurrying off to work or what. Always the assumption that, since they aren’t like the viewer, they are up to something wrong.
That push to make people act like you, even if–especially if–how they’re doing is working for them, is a wrong against them, is attempting to strip them of something that is recognizably them. You can see how that feeds into a lot of nasty shit.
Tiny Cat Pants 