To the editor: So, former President Trump thinks criminality is genetic, a notion that displays the racist ideology of nineteenth century Italian doctor and criminologist Cesare Lombroso, as recounted in Benjamin Carter Hett’s op-ed article.
What caught my eye was Lombroso’s characterization of Africans and Indigenous People, amongst others who’ve darkish pores and skin, as born criminals. They’re “not of our species however a species of bloodthirsty beasts,” he stated. Tragically, this line of thought was revived by the Nazis earlier than World Conflict II.
As an Indigenous American, I’m reminded of an excellent earlier, principally unknown historical past.
Within the fifteenth century, the Catholic Church implied by way of papal decrees that dark-skinned Indigenous individuals have been inferior to light-skinned Europeans. This turned often known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave authorized and theological justification for the brutal colonization of this continent. That is mirrored in our Declaration of Independence, which refers to “cruel Indian savages.”
We have been considered not totally human, missing good genes and subsequently inferior. Clearly, some in our inhabitants nonetheless echo that sentiment. Fortunately, there are those that imagine in any other case — greater than the previous, I hope.
Harold Printup, Mar Vista
