RALEIGH – I suspect that the 2011-12 state budget Gov. Bev Perdue is about to propose will be missing about $20 million worth of new spending that is entirely justified.
The governor’s budget will probably contain far more than $20 million worth of spending that I won’t see as justified. Let’s cut that – and then some – but the General Assembly really ought to consider legislation filed this week by Reps. Larry Womble and Earline Parmon that would, among other things, give victims of North Carolina’s forced sterilization program $20,000 each in long-overdue compensation.
I wrote a column a few years ago about the issue. Please allow me to revise and extend my remarks.
As described in a 2002 series by The Winston Salem Journal, “Against Their Will,” the North Carolina Eugenics Program was the third largest of its kind in the nation, after similar initiatives in California and Virginia. From 1929 to 1974, state government engaged in an indefensible policy intended, apparently, to improve the “quality” of the state’s population by discouraging or blocking “undesirables” from having children. Some of these disabled or disadvantaged victims are alive today.
The issue hasn’t been completely ignored. Former Gov. Mike Easley issued a formal apology on behalf of the state. But that’s not a sufficient response.
Why do I think significant cash compensation is justified? Because state government willfully and wrongfully violated the rights of thousands of its citizens. Surely the vast majority of North Carolinians today would strongly disavow the actions of previous generations of state politicians, just as Easley did. But that doesn’t eliminate the moral responsibility. The state, acting (wrongly) on behalf of the public, committed a horrendous wrong that had real and painful consequences. Like it or not, the only practical way to finance compensation for such state misdeeds is through the appropriate of tax dollars.
This case is distinguishable from other, less-justifiable attempts to compel taxpayers to attempt to rectify the wrongs of the past. For example, some of the same folks pushing for the eugenics compensation also favor slavery reparations. But everyone associated with that institution is long dead – the perpetrators, the apologists, and the slaves. It was ended after a long, bloody, and expensive war.
Yes, there are some lingering harms, but identifying who should receive and who should pay some form of slavery compensation would be impossibly complex and convoluted. And efforts to do so would likely create far more social strife than they would alleviate.
Not so with the sterilization issue. Theses are events within living memory. The victims are identifiable and clearly deserving. Now is the time for the General Assembly to rectify the oversight, take up the legislation from Womble and Parmon (or some similar measure), and appropriate a significant amount of tax money to a compensation fund.
Doing the right thing can be hard – and sometimes it can be costly. The alternative will cost us more, though not necessarily in dollars.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.