The American Eugenics Movement Essay

It is almost impossible to think that there was a time in American history where eugenics was something that a large mass of the public thought was actually a great idea. But, when it comes time to face reality, one must realize that this was not just a fabled tale of time of the past and that it actually happened. When researching historical events or movements, nothing is more beneficial to find evidence than through popular literature of the specific time period. The novel that sums up what this entire movement is about the best would be Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road.

Part Two covers the years 1900-1950. It describes the rise in popularity of eugenics, and the resurgence of physical therapies and remedies for mental disorders. Whitaker stated that the rise of eugenics caused a degradation in moral treatment of mentally ill patients, and eventually gave way to forced sterilization of patients deemed to be mentally incapacitated to prevent the spreading of the genetic disorder of insanity. The American public as a whole seemed to embrace forced sterilization by the 1920’s.

The Oxford University Press defines eugenics as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics” with a further—and rather illuminating—explanation which states, “Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis”.

History throughout the United States has multiple positive and negative attributions that reflect onto today’s society. One circumstance that has been partially neglected was the eugenics movement in America; the notion of eugenics occurring in the United States is infrequently brought up today. According to Dr. Laura Rivard, the average person most likely does not even know what eugenics is. An English intellectual named of Francis Galton is responsible for starting this movement. Eugenics can briefly be defined as exploiting the fundamentals of genetics and heredity for the benefit of superiorizing the human race.

The eugenics movement was a very influential movement in America that was very prevalent during the early 1900’s. The premise of the eugenics movement was that society could be scientifically improved by classifying ranking members of society and trying to prevent those who were ranked low from reproducing. The eugenics movement was born out of the desire for the upper and middle classes of society to try and prove, scientifically, that they were superior to those who were in the lower classes. The people who typically made up the lower classes were usually immigrants and those who were of a different race. Eugenics was essentially the method that was used to try and exert control over the lower classes while validating the idea that those in the upper and middle classes were superior.

During those 43 years the government decided that the Sexual Sterilization Act was too restrictive, therefore they started sterilizing people without their consent. However in the 1930s it became less population with the introduction of positive eugenics, nonetheless, just under three thousand people were sterilized in

The idea of eugenics made it possible for involuntary sterilization. In order to improve the human race, it meant regulating reproduction. 1907 Indiana passed to sterilize the mentally insane and inmates. Their plan was to eliminate “defective” genes. By 1960 63,000 people were involuntary

Eugenics, developed by an eminent scientist, Francis Galton, is the science of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by controlling breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristic traits and decrease the occurrence of undesirable characteristic traits or genetical defects (Bergman, 2000.) Eugenic sterilization refers to the involuntary sterilization of certain categories of individuals without their need for consent by those subjected to the procedure (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Individuals classified as mentally deficient, feeble-minded, epileptic, promiscuous, sexual deviants, or persons classified as habitual criminals were mainly targeted (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Eugenicists argued degenerate traits tainted society through the reproduction of the lowest class and sterilization was to keep the "handicapped" from perpetuating themselves (Kaelber, 2014.) In addition, eugenicists also argued that "feeble-minded" individuals were believed to be financial burdens to society by overcrowding prisons, hospitals and living off welfare (Kaelber, 2014.) Sterilization was seen as a way to prevent the spending of tax dollars on the "feeble- minded" (Kaelber, 2014.) These arguments allowed Eugenics to become an acceptable practice. Advocates believed that getting rid of the "feeble-minded" and mentally deficient would decrease the undesirable characteristic traits within the human gene pool and ultimately improve the human population.

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

At the beginning of the 20th century, power and prestige was held by the majority of (if not only) White people. African Americans were living under Jim Crow laws, Native Americans were forced into reservations and all of the new immigrants were in crowded ghettos. Those that were a race other than White were at “the bottom of the social and political hierarchy.” One of the aims of the Eugenics Movement was racial purification. Using the concept of Mendelian genes, scientists would try to breed the best, smartest, most talented, most beautiful and always white individuals and breed out the worst and weakest colored individuals. Mixed race people were seen as not put together because it was a combination of the best and worst traits someone could have.” Frederick Hoffman, presented data, statistics and a theory that claimed African Americans would become extinct because of high death and disease rates that were caused by African Americans being biologically lesser than Whites. However, his analysis was flawed because it failed to mention how systematic poverty and social neglect could be affecting the health of African Americans.

The beginning of the Eugenics Movement all started at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The United States coined the term Eugenics from Great Britain in the early 1900s. In the year 1910, a man by the name of Charles B. Davenport founded the Eugenics Records Office (ERO). The funds for this building came from Mrs. E.H. Harriman (“Eugenics: Did the Eugenics Movement Benefit the United States?”). The movement was initially meant to purify the Gene Pool. One of the ways

In 1833, Francis Galton coined the word eugenics, which means “good in birth” or “noble in heredity” in Greek (Selgelid 2013:3). Galton stated that those who were more suitable would prevail over the ones who were less suitable (Yudell 2011:4). The term eugenics is split into two different categories, positive and negative. When you are classified in the positive eugenics it means that you have desirable traits and they would want to use those traits to reproduce and increase the overall status of human beings. However, if you were in negative classification of eugenics, that indicates that the traits that you obtained as a human were not seen as “suitable”. Because those traits were not then as suitable, you were denied the right to reproduce by the force of sterilization, it generally affected criminals and those with mental disorders. This movement was prominent in North America. However, in Nazi Germany, they applied this ideology to create a desired civilization and as a result millions of people died (Yudell 2011:4). This horrific use of eugenics demonstrates how it was used to enforce prejudice attitudes and discriminating behaviours. Genetic testing for prenatal screening is used for the parent’s knowledge if their child will have a genetic condition or impairment. If it turns out the fetus does, the parents have the choice to abort the fetus or not. Some argue that this has the same premise as eugenics and it discriminates against individuals

Due to Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory, a prejudiced distinctive form of Social Darwinism developed known as eugenics which is the study that all inferior social groups should be sterilized to prevent the increase in inferior population. Eugenics is the belief that people who are unfit continue to reproduce more unfit offsprings, creating a unfit population, therefore needs to be sterilized. Eugenicists believe that the masses of people who were deficient in intelligence are a real “danger to the human gene pool and should be institutionalized, serialized, or both” (Ruggiero 21). Panicked and alert by this eugenics study psychologist and eugenicist Henry Goddard wrote: “we need to hunt them down in every possible place and take care of them, and see to it that they do not propagate and make the problem worse, and that those who are alive today do not entail loss of life and property and moral contagion in the community by the things they do because they are weak-minded” (Ruggiero 21). In result of President Theodore Roosevelt promoted that America should have “good breeders as well as good fighters” he supported the “Rigid System of Selection” which was the sterilization of “an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless racial types” (Ruggiero 21). Based on Darwin 's theory the

The name of the law was “An Act to Benefit the Moral, Mental, or Physical Conditions of Inmates of Penal and Charitable Institutions”. This law was never enforced and sterilization was still being practiced heavily in North Carolina. According to Paul, “many feared that the law was unconstitutional and therefore the state feared putting it into practice (Paul, p. 420). According to Paul “after this law was declared unconstitutional by the state's Supreme Court in 1933 due to a deficient appeals process, North Carolina in the same year enacted a new sterilization law that “provided for notice, hearing, and the right to appeal” (Paul, p.

The roots of eugenics can be traced back to Britain in the early 1880’s when Sir Francis Galton generated the term from the Greek word for “well-born”. He defined eugenics as the science of improving stock, whether human or animal. According to the American Eugenics Movement, today’s study of eugenics has many similarities to studies done in the early 20th century. Back then, “Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes.” (www.eugenicsarchive.org) According to Merriam-Webster, the modern day definition of eugenics is, a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of