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Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia. By Gregory Michael Dorr. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. xiv, 297 pp. $45-00, isbn 978-0-8139-2755-8.)
There is a deft symmetry in Gregory Michael Dorr's Segregation's Science: while exposing the conceptual weakness (but social strength) of scientific racism in Virginia from its inception until 2002, when the state's governor apologized to victims of its eugenic policies, Dorr has created a detailed "family tree" of eugenics in Virginia starting with Thomas Jefferson as first father and tracing his scientific progeny to the end of the twentieth century. This "pedigree" of eugenics in the state illustrates a disturbing racial justification for the extreme treatment of the poor, African American, female, disabled, or other designated "misfits" for over two centuries.
Dorr shows how science was used to justify...