Park may not take Shockley name
ARD director seeking board support for court ruling on requirement
By Gus Thomson Journal Staff Writer Eugenics proponent and Nobel Prize winner William Shockley may not have his name attached to an Auburn park after all, an Auburn Recreation District director said. Director Scott Holbrook said that he’ll be pursuing the possibility, based on legal advice he has received from an attorney, that the district isn’t required to name the park “Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley and his wife Emmy Shockley Memorial Park.” Shockley won the Nobel Prize in 1956 for his pioneering work in electronics. But his controversial views on eugenics and genetics in an era of civil rights advances were viewed as racist. Shockley’s second wife, Emmy Shockley, died in 2007 — 18 years after her husband. She left 28 wooded acres off Shockley Road to the parks district, with a condition attached on the name she had chosen. While the parks board voted 3-2 on March 23 to accept the bequest, no discussion took place on naming the park after Shockley. In life, Shockley’s views on eugenics were controversial and that controversy followed him in death. A subsequent parks board meeting found seven speakers calling for a new name and nine speakers saying the gift of parkland trumped the requirement. Holbrook said he’ll be asking for board members to move forward with an effort to get a court ruling that would verify the restriction on the name is null and void. “Based on what I now know, it can be a request but it’s not legally binding but in the best interests of the district, we should have a court acknowledgment that it’s void,” Holbrook said. The debate is now moving toward a larger stage with Karen Tajbl, an opponent of the Shockley park name, interviewed last week by Science magazine, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Tajbl said she’s continuing to look at ways for the district to avoid a name she says would not necessarily reflect outright racism but certainly signal insensitivity – particularly to African-Americans. Shockley targeted blacks as genetically inferior and suggested people with an IQ below 100 be compensated if they underwent voluntary sterilization. “I don’t understand why there are not more than 57 African Americans in our community and it makes me wonder why they’re not moving here,” Tajbl said. “(The Shockley Park name) does send a signal that they’re not welcome and that’s insensitive.” Tajbl said she’s also looking into what can be done to change the name of three public roads – Shockley Court, Shockley Road and Shockley Woods Court – that are near the parkland. The Journal’s Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com.
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Good news. By all means.... change the name to something else.
To Ms. Tabil & Mr. Holbrook: Keep up the good fight.
Birch, Have you judged Shockley's soul and found it wanting?
Nobody knows what his heart had to say on the issues of race when he died. Nobody knows whether or not he had cleansed his heart.
I think that if they took the land under a condition, and then claim that the condition does not matter because the other party is now dead, they are going to find someone else on the other side of a judge and they will lose.
Sadly...Racial profiling among law enforcement has been well known among young people in the Auburn area. For many years we had only 5 black families, including Foresthill. Everyone knew them. It is time we have a change of heart, embrace diversity and start warmly welcoming people of all races and religions to the Foothills...
OP - This is not about Shockley's soul. This is about the people he was writing about and his views as to their dignity as human beings. This is about the children who will enter this park in the future. This IS about the insensitivity of Auburn and if we do not make the right decision now, we will surely suffer the shame of it in the future,
By now, I am absolutely sure that William Shockley has had a change of heart, if he didn't before he died...
This is about as ridiculous and dishonest as it comes. I don’t care much about the issue, but if the County accepts the gift, it shouldn’t be attempting to breach the agreement of the gift. Now, the county is going to spend money it doesn’t have to go to court to change the name because of a few “Nuts” that are bothered by it. This will leave the issue open to some relative to file future law suits because of the breach, how stupid!
Things around here never cease to amaze me....Growing up on Shockley Road as a kid and my parents having owned several acres of the Shockley land, there was never ANY racial conotation that I can recall. My childhood was rich with being able to tromp around with my friends (of all races) and my dog. There may have only been 5 black families in Auburn but they were our friends as was our white and hispanic Auburn neighbors. Racism is in the eye of the beholder!! Shockley Rd. was not spoken of being about racism. It was not polluted with people being offended by someones opinion years ago. Shockley was just property where people raised their kids and we all got along. I am saddened that a gift by someone is being turned into a costly fight. The past cannot be changed and the way the future is going it appears to me that there are more important things we should be concerned about other than what a man that is now dead did decades ago that some people found offensive. If people are so concerned about what the widow of the property wanted the property named then why not just give the gift back to the estate or to the State with a note saying "Thanks anyway but we didn't like Mr. Shockley so we cannot accept the land". How arrogant it is for people to take a gift and turn it into a nightmare. This is not the spirit of Auburn that I grew up with!! What next? Someone decides Robie Point isn't deserved of it's name? It's a name people...What is important is the memory that those of us natives of Auburn still living had growing up. Fond memories of beautiful land that we grew up on. Please don't turn it into a controversy leaving negative juju on the Shockly Rd. residents past. We were not related to the Shockley family, my parents simply bought a part of the land and made it a beautiful place to be a kid. No negativety, just pure bliss of being blessed to play and dance and sing on a piece of beautiful land. Why not allow this to our future children and grandchildren? Please don't make this into something our children and grandchildren remember as a court battle. Allow them the same blessings that some of us had.
If you don't like the conditions of the gift, don't take it or give it back. Be honest......until the Bee did an article on Shockley, how many people here ever heard of him much less knew of his beliefs?
You who are easily offended need to get a grip.
Now, Now Chacha:You may be expressing too much "common sense" Don't know if we have time for that kind of stuff
in these tough economic times! :)
chacha-You are right, racism IS in the eye of the beholder.
In my eyes, belief in eugenics is about as racist as you can get. While we could claim ignorance it was fine to have streets and subdivisions named after Shockley. Now that we have the information about him we can't ignore his beliefs. Maybe he did have a change of heart at the time of his death, unfortunately for him, after death our life's work is our legacy. Let's be honest, Shockley's beliefs are no different than Hitler or Margaret Sanger. He, like many other believer in eugenics was too brilliant for his own good. Their ego and arrogance brings about the belief that they are superior to other human beings and as such feel the need to weed out those not equal to their standards of intelligence, appearance, social class, etc. Please do some research on eugenics and you may feel differently. If Auburn accepts this gift, we are in effect declaring the truth of his beliefs.
"In 1970, I. I. Gottesman, a director of the American Eugenics Society, defined it in this way: 'The essence of evolution is natural selection; the essence of eugenics is the replacement of 'natural' selection by conscious, premeditated, or artificial selection in the hope of speeding up the evolution of 'desirable' characteristics and the elimination of undesirable ones.'
We were kind of neighbors, I grew up on Marguerite Mine Rd. , I grew up here and still wound up with (in your words) "polluted beliefs".
We may disagree with William Shockley's eugenics theory, but in his defense he was no anthropologist. He won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for co-inventing the transistor. Shockley's commercial ventures with his transistor in the 1950s and 1960s led to the founding of California's "Silicon Valley" as a world capitol of electronics innovation.
In later life Shockley was a professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Stanford, and it was at Stanford that he developed his controversial theory that higher rates of reproduction among less intelligent people were dumbing down humanity.
Anthropologists agree that intelligence is not determined by physical characteristics, such as the size or shape of your brain or the color of your parents' skin. The eugenics theory is also flawed because no living human being is purely the product of any single "race" but instead is a mixture.
Shockley's theories were also based on standard I.Q. tests. He may not have known it, but I.Q. tests produce notoriously biased results because they are unintentionally skewed in favor of the culture group that design them.
That's right, Skeptic. The Irish (perhaps one of the "whitest" races) are actually from Galatia in the Middle East. South-Eastern Turkey & Northern Syria. They migrated west sometime around 1,000 - 500 BC & bred with almost every Turk, Greek, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Austrian , Swiss, Italian, German, French, English & the Tuatha Dé Danann before "becoming" Irish. Let's not forget the Spanish "crossbreeding" in Southern Ireland (the Black Irish).
Hence the bagpipes (Middle Eastern), the banjo (Middle Eastern & the language (Non - Indo European).
There is no such thing as "a" race.
Excuse my history... the Tuatha Dé Danann are the Celts. The Fir Bolg were the local inhabitants prior to the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann (Celts - Galatians).
I knew something didn't look right.
I KNEW somehow, somewhere, an attorney could figure out a way to earn money off of this situation.
And then ANOTHER attorney could figure out a way to make money off of it, too !
Somebody give THEM the Noble Prize for ingenuity.
If the city excepts this property and changes the name, I hope the family or some one sues and takes back the property.
Shockley's views aren't particularly different to those of Abraham Lincoln in terms of race. Are you going to tear down the Lincoln Memorial?
Judging people of a different era by contemporary morals is absurd.
Also, Shockley's basic point was that more educated people, of whatever race, tended to have fewer children. This is a fact.
"Shockley's theories were also based on standard I.Q. tests. He may not have known it, but I.Q. tests produce notoriously biased results because they are unintentionally skewed in favor of the culture group that design them."
This is a bare faced lie. The tests have cross cultural validity and predict performance equally well for all groups. See the document 'Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns Report of a Task Force established by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association Released August 7, 1995.
Also, the idea they are designed in favour of the group who designed them is blatantly untrue. East Asians outperform europeans on average. This is the case even when raised in white households. If you look at twin and adoption studies all adopted children reached adult IQs that were equal to their biological peers and which had no correlation with their adoptive families. Transracial studies were not limited to Blacks adopted by Whites but included Asians adopted by Whites. The Blacks ended up with lower IQs than their adoptive families and the Asians ended up with IQs higher than their adoptive families. http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html
In relation to race, It has been known for some time that major continental groups ("races") form distinct clusters. This clustering is a natural consequence of geographical isolation, inheritance and natural selection operating over the last 50k years since humans left Africa. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to possible group differences.
There are readily identifiable clusters of points, corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.).
What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution. In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).
The rate of evolution has sped up over the past 10,000 years. For example, you see new versions of SLC6A4, a serotonin transporter, in Europeans and Asians. There’s a new version of a gene (DBA1) that shapes the development of the layers of the cerebral cortex in east Asia.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html
Also, note that intelligence, like all behavioural traits is significantly hereditary. See the recent discussion in New Scientist:
" By comparing brain maps of identical twins, which share the same genes, with fraternal twins, which share about half their genes, the team calculate that myelin integrity is genetically determined in many brain areas important for intelligence. This includes the corpus callosum, which integrates signals from the left and right sides of the body, and the parietal lobes, responsible for visual and spatial reasoning and logic (see above). Myelin quality in these areas was also correlated with scores on tests of abstract reasoning and overall intelligence (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed-brains-are-in-the-genes.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
"In healthy adults, greater intelligence is associated with larger intracranial gray matter and to a lesser extent with white matter. Variations in prefrontal and posterior temporal cortical thickness are particularly linked with intellectual ability." Cerebral Cortex 2007 17(9):2163-2171
The differences are seen in children's brain development:
"The researchers found that the relationship between cortex thickness and IQ varied with age, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, seat of abstract reasoning, planning, and other "executive" functions. The smartest 7-year-olds tended to start out with a relatively thinner cortex that thickened rapidly, peaking by age 11 or 12 before thinning. In their peers with average IQ, an initially thicker cortex peaked by age 8, with gradual thinning thereafter. Those in the high range showed an intermediate trajectory (see below). While the cortex was thinning in all groups by the teen years, the superior group showed the highest rates of change."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/40646.php
The lead article in the June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law, a journal of the American Psychological Association, examined 10 categories of research evidence from around the world to contrast "a hereditarian model (50% genetic-50% cultural) and a culture-only model (0% genetic-100% cultural).
"The Worldwide Pattern of IQ Scores. East Asians average higher on IQ tests than Whites, both in the U. S. and in Asia, even though IQ tests were developed for use in the Euro-American culture. Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; for Whites, about 100; and for Blacks about 85 in the U.S. and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa.
Race Differences are Most Pronounced on Tests that Best Measure the General Intelligence Factor (g). Black-White differences, for example, are larger on the Backward Digit Span test than on the less g loaded Forward Digit Span test.
The Gene-Environment Architecture of IQ is the Same in all Races, and Race Differences are Most Pronounced on More Heritable Abilities. Studies of Black, White, and East Asian twins, for example, show the heritability of IQ is 50% or higher in all races.
Brain Size Differences. Studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) find a correlation of brain size with IQ of about 0.40. Larger brains contain more neurons and synapses and process information faster. Race differences in brain size are present at birth. By adulthood, East Asians average 1 cubic inch more cranial capacity than Whites who average 5 cubic inches more than Blacks.
Trans-Racial Adoption Studies. Race differences in IQ remain following adoption by White middle class parents. East Asians grow to average higher IQs than Whites while Blacks score lower. The Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study followed children to age 17 and found race differences were even greater than at age 7: White children, 106; Mixed-Race children, 99; and Black children, 89.
Racial Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for example, average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the African 70 and White 100.
IQ Scores of Blacks and Whites Regress toward the Averages of Their Race. Parents pass on only some exceptional genes to offspring so parents with very high IQs tend to have more average children. Black and White children with parents of IQ 115 move to different averages--Blacks toward 85 and Whites to 100.
Race Differences in Other "Life-History" Traits. East Asians and Blacks consistently fall at two ends of a continuum with Whites intermediate on 60 measures of maturation, personality, reproduction, and social organization. For example, Black children sit, crawl, walk, and put on their clothes earlier than Whites or East Asians.
Race Differences and the Out-of-Africa theory of Human Origins. East Asian-White-Black differences fit the theory that modern humans arose in Africa about 100,000 years ago and expanded northward. During prolonged winters there was evolutionary selection for higher IQ created by problems of raising children, gathering and storing food, gaining shelter, and making clothes.
Do Culture-Only Theories Explain the Data? Culture-only theories do not explain the highly consistent pattern of race differences in IQ, especially the East Asian data. No interventions such as ending segregation, introducing school busing, or "Head Start" programs have reduced the gaps as culture-only theory would predict."
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx
Ms. Tajbil: Ignore the naysayers, Mamm... too may people are complacent & we need people like you to do the right thing.
Dangit... I misspelled Ma'am.
Josh017 - OK, so there are different theories on measuring intelligence. What's your point?
Josh017 - calm down. Nobody said I.Q. tests were a nefarious plot.
Why do you call me a liar? Have I done something to injure you?
It should not be a costly or lengthy process to find if the restrictions on the gift of real property are valid or not. At that point the naming of the park can go through the standard process, if the community and board find it in the best interest to maintain the name as requested in the restrictions of the gift then so be it, wether legally required or not. It makes sense that there can not be restrictions on gifts of real property, I can see it now - We will leave this property to you but you have to put a statue of _________ in the middle of it, or perhaps it can only be used for __________ people. Knowledge and information has arisen "after the fact", a discussion and review of how to proceed only seems proper. As it is shown in this series of comments on this story, there are different opinions on the subject. One way or another the subject of how best to name this property are not going to go away any time soon.
William Shockley was a great man. He accomplished far more than any of his critics have accomplished, which was EXACTLY his point. The list (from "Shockley on Eugenics and Race" by Roger Pearson)
BSEE from California Institute of Technology
PHD from MIT
Appointed to the US Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group in WWII where he was an expert consultant to the Secretary of War.
Awarded the Medal of Merit by Truman, Citation of Honor by US Air Force, Certificate of Appreciation from the US Army, Maurice Liebman Memorial Prize byt the Institute of Radio Engineers, Oliver E. Buckley Prize from the American Physics Society, the Cyrus B. Comstock Award from the National Academy of Sciences, in addition to a dozen or more other highly respected scientific awards from around the world.
Collaborated with two other researchers at Bell Labs to create the point contact transistor (obsolete) and PERSONALLY invented both the Bipolar transistor and Field Effect transistor, both still widely used in every microchip, today. It is estimated that there are billions of trillions of transistors in the world today, all thanks to Shockley. He was awarded 90 major patents on semiconductor devices. He started Shockley Transistor, the first company that began the Silicon Revolution, which spawned Silicon Valley (San Jose) Silicon Gulch (Austin) Silicon Glen (Glasgow), Silicon Forest (Portland OR), and on and on.
Shockley was a far better man than the people who judge him today, and that was exactly his point. No one can match is intelligence and his integrity, he was totally commited to the truth. The people calling him a racist are cowards and contributed nowhere near what Shockley did to mankind.
I found out about this debate last week.
In response to this article, the name is not null and void, but the gift of the land to Auburn Rec is.
The Shockley estate was seized in June 2002 when the widow Emmy was abducted into a false incompetency by Greater Bay Trust, Stanford, county agents, and other professionals. The elderly widow was effectively placed under house arrest in her own home at Stanford from June 2002 until she died in April 2007. Emmy had previously selected me to be her estate trustee. Despite my best efforts, Emmy and I were trampled in the courts in a set of sham, dishonest proceedings and rulings.
The transfer of the property to Auburn Rec was made later while Emmy was still under duress and undue influence. There were other legal problems with the general estate distribution.
I understand quite well that the name William B. Shockley is problematic. His reputation has been problematic for me and for everyone else involved in the situation. But I support Emmy's use of his name along with hers for any park that comes of this controversy. I worked with her and her husband for a long time. She told me about her hurt feelings over the unfair criticisms and smears against her husband. She weathered through all that and was by her husband's side until his death, and afterwards she held firm her feelings towards him, her marriage, and her life with him. She held firm about her husband through the abduction until her own death. The name she chose for a park reflects this.
My thoughts when I first saw the name “Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley and his wife Emmy Shockley Memorial Park.” in the court documents of the abductors was that if Emmy and I had not been forcibly prevented from working together I would certainly have questioned whether a public entity such as Auburn Rec would be obligated to keep the name. In either case we would have surely sought options other than giving the land to Auburn Rec. As it is, the putative trust document, which is currently in force, clearly stipulates a "no contest" clause that should easily nullify the transfer to Auburn Rec if the name is changed. After reading the above news story, I know if Emmy had found out that Auburn Rec had been seeking ways to change the name she would have told me to write up a revocation of the transfer.
In the meantime, if Auburn Rec hadn't voted to accept the land and the name, then high density housing and other commercial activity would obviously be one of the likely options for Greater Bay Trust Company and their attorney Rebeccah Miller who helped with the abduction and estate seizure.
A 1995 trust document stipulated that the Auburn land would be sold upon Emmy's death. Among the estate planning papers was an early 1990's estimate of about three million dollars market value for the Auburn land, envisioning about 99 houses at one-quarter acre per house. I presume the valuation estimate was solicited by the then-attorney, and that sale and profitable development were what the attorney and Greater Bay minimally planned to do after Emmy's death. Emmy was bravely able to change that original trust document and she vested me with discretion over the fate of the Auburn property if she didn't have a chance to decide for herself.
I disfavor(ed) development for reasons related to quality of life issues for the surrounding neighborhood and region. For all the years Emmy and her husband owned the property they could have easily sold or developed it. She apparently chose not to. In fact I was at some point thinking as a possible option that the park could be open to a limited constituency only, similar to Palo Alto Foothills Park that admits only Palo Alto residents and their guests. As trustee, I would not proceed on that idea without adequate consultation. If an estate tax exemption were available, then having it as a privately owned non-profit park might have been the best way of going about things and may still be. Because of the abduction I was never able to extensively discuss or implement these or any other final options with Emmy.
It all still needs to be remedied in the federal courts under an unusual loophole against state court probate jurisdiction. The lawsuits have been closed for a while but they need to be reopened. If anyone is concerned enough about the park name, this would be a good subject for an amicus curiae argument to encourage the federal 9th Circuit to reopen the case. At the moment I still have to raise funds for their filing fee and I need to find a decent attorney for the job who himself can overcome the "Shockley name" barrier, the "well respected colleague" barrier, who won't take bribes from Greater Bay, etc. I should caution Auburn Rec and everyone that any lawsuit that accepts the abduction as legitimate will result in more attorney laundering of estate assets and risk possible housing or other commercial development to cover the estate losses.
A park should still be a strong and likely option for most of the Auburn property, but Auburn Rec should not feel entitled to anything at this point. It is possible that Auburn Rec could nonetheless manage the the property as park land without ownership but in doing so they would have to accept the name.
Insofar as moral outrage is concerned over the property transfer and the name, I look at the abduction, theft, and the wrongful prevalence of Greater Bay, Rebeccah Miller, et al. I hope others will too.
danny, displaced estate trustee, Shockley estate
personal GPG Key: F39BD8FC
Danny, Thanks for the information. Scott Holbrook just lost my vote. It will be a pleasure to facilitate in removing a worthless, deceitful politician as he.
OMG -This whole thing is ridiculous. I guess some people have nothing better to do with their time than making a stink over a park and street names. I live on Shockley and while I don't agree with Shockley's racism - I couldn't imagine trying to change the street name. If Tajbl thinks that African Americans aren't moving to Auburn because of a few names......... Oh please! This family is making a generous donation, if the price of this donation is a tiny condition of putting his name on a placque - so be it. If you don't like it, then don't use the Park. Iif this piece of property goes back to the owners - who knows what will happen to it. I do not want to see a developer coming in and making it a new housing or commercial development - I have to look at this piece of land everyday, I like the country setting, I want to keep it that way. Hmmmm...is there a developer behind all this mess?