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  • Title: Perpetuating neo-colonialism through population control: South Africa and the United States.
    Author: Kuumba MB.
    Journal: Afr Today; 1993; 40(3):79-85. PubMed ID: 12286951.
    Abstract:
    Third world women in the global economy are valuable as a cheap source of labor and as producers of additional cheap labor sources (children). This discussion focuses on the interrelationships between race, class, and gender bias in international population programs and the unequal power relationship between colonizers and the colonized. For example, USAID directs over 33% of its family planning (FP) service delivery funding and 50% of policy funds to Africa, and African women and women of color in general are blamed for their own poverty and underdevelopment. Madi Gray is cited as suggesting that African FP is the cure for "illegitimacy, misery in the ghettos, and rising crime." The paternalistic and racist population policies of the US are traced to a 1905 speech of President Theodore Roosevelt, who expressed concern about the Yankee stock being overwhelmed by immigrants, non-Whites, and the poor. In 1933, the US Birth Control Federation targeted Black women. Birth control and eugenic practices were integrated before the Second World War and shared the goal of reducing the immigrant and Black populations. The current South African equivalent to this situation is the White power rhetoric of "Black peril" which is said to threaten White power, safety, and profits. Structural changes in both the US and South Africa are creating large surplus labor pools comprised largely of Black Africans. When labor reserves are too large, poverty and underemployment are identified as the result of overpopulation. Unhealthy and unproved birth control technologies have been distributed to Africans while health care, economic resources, and social security have been neglected. Population control is used for selective population reduction.
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