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 Struggle II.
As an Indigenous American, I’m reminded of a fair earlier, largely unknown historical past.
Within the fifteenth century, the Catholic Church implied by means of papal decrees that dark-skinned Indigenous individuals had 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 had been considered not absolutely human, missing good genes and subsequently inferior. Clearly, some in our inhabitants nonetheless echo that sentiment. Fortunately, there are those that consider in any other case — greater than the previous, I hope.
Harold Printup, Mar Vista