The current federal government has slashed resources for public health and for people with disabilities, and in doing so has suggested that vulnerable people are social burdens, "waste" to be cut. In her article "The Eugenics Logic Behind Running a Government Like a Startup Under the Trump Administration" on the Disability Visibility Project, anthropologist Valerie Black argues that techbro oligarchs have brought a "survival of the fittest" logic into para-governance. Black holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco's Decision Lab. Frann Michel here talks with Black about colonialist fantasies of startup culture, the merits of remote work, ableism, capitalist fetishization of productivity, and the history, paradoxes, and continuation of eugenics in the USA.
Valerie Black also refers to Johanna Hedva's 2016 essay on "Sick Woman Theory," republished here.
The audio linked below is a longer version than is included in the April 14, 2025 episode.
Find Ziwé's "Universal Healthcare" here.
Image: Glackens, L. M. (Louis M.), 1866-1933, artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustration shows a well-dressed, grey-haired man wearing a top hat and spats, lying on his back, bouncing the earth precariously on his feet; there is a doctor's bag with various instruments in the foreground (he may have given himself an injection), and on the left is a weeping cherub, holding a bow with a broken bowstring, with arrows fallen on the ground. The caption reads, "Eugenics makes the world go 'round."
- KBOO