So think about the way eugenics arguments were used (and still are for that
matter) at the end of the 19th century. A racist could look at an
individual from an oppressed race and say, "it's nothing personal, but we
need to think ahead to the betterment of the whole race, and therefore you
should not reproduce, since you are (poor, unintelligent, of poor moral
character, of an inherently inferior race.....etc.)" By shifting the
rhetoric to a putatively longer time scale, it can put the burden of
justice effectively out of reach of immediate action. Thus, to fight this
kind of argument, you are forced to take on evolution as well as
face-to-face social justice issues. Gail Hornstein and I called this
process the invocation of invisible referents (Gail Hornstein and Susan
Leigh Star, "Universality Biases: How Theories about Human Nature
Succeed," Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 20 (1990), 421-36)
Lest this be thought of as only in the past: when my partner had to fill
out his application for a green card, he had to answer a long list of
questions, including "are you mentally retarded," "are you an alchoholic,"
and "have you ever sold your body for profit" (as an academic, of course,
he insisted the answer to the last question was yes). :-)
L*