The Importance Of Eugenics In The United States

From the reading, the one thing that stood out the most is how eugenics came about and how poor white trash were seen as having an illness and disease to justify their social class status. The whole concept of eugenics just doesn’t quite sit well with me due to the fact that it believes there is a set of individuals who are superior to others, what justify that? Under what conditions does society have the right to make a reproductive choice for someone else? Chapter 3 talks about how three generations of imbeciles is enough, but in my opinion, it is not up to society to cut reproduction, especially when family and heirs have such an importance to people, regardless of social class because it has become a norm, to have a family. Although eugenics

Chapter 8 of Kitcher's novel, Inescapable Eugenics, identifies past abuses of eugenics resulting from inaccurate, misleading information; abuses that include dominant groups using eugenics to discriminate against other undesirable groups.

As the title of the event suggests, the panel talked about the practice eugenics and scientific racism in the Pacific Northwest. More specifically there were three panelists: Dr. Kristin Johnson, who gave a brief overview of the Eugenics Movement in the United States; Michael Dicianna, an OSU 2012 graduate, who spoke on the Oregon State College’s history of eugenics; and Dr. Linda Richards, who presented on Linus Pauling, and whether he was a eugenicist. Overall, all three panelists did an amazing job in presenting their topics, and in an order that had a nice flow to it.

However, there were definitely a lot of moments where the eugenics movement seemed to be more concerned with proving past prejudices rather than actually looking for ways to improve future generations. All of the Craniometry tests and IQ tests seemed to be more concerned with proving what America already believed: that it was the superior group of people. The idea that these classifications of people could help produce a better society is the main part of the eugenics movement that seemed to be the most forward-looking. The Fitter Families contests Selden discusses are a good example of the eugenics movement attempting to be more focused on the future (Selden 2005, 221). Even with this focus on the future, it still seemed as though the eugenics movement was concerned with fixing the mistakes of the past.

The United States and Nazi Germany, an unlikely pair. The disparity of values and beliefs of the two has set them as polar opposites in many people’s minds. However, when Eugenics and the 1927 Supreme Court come to mind the distance between the two seem to diminish. Yes, today’s topic is the infamous Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell; a 1927 case which upheld a Virginia statute that permitted the compulsory sterilization Carrie Buck and other intellectually disabled individuals for the purpose of improving the genepool . This shocking 8-1 ruling is no doubt one of the Supreme Court’s greatest errors as it failed to acknowledge that the statute in question aside from being immoral and cruel, was a clear violation

call in telephone poll, that 49% supported sterilization of the mentally ill. Other people feel

Forced sterilization and Eugenics are terms you would associate with Hitler's heinous World War II crimes. Those terms were not isolated to war time Europe. From 1929 until 1977 Eugenics was a terrible part of North Carolina History that used selective breeding to extinguish lower class mentality and guarantee future generations. The State is trying to make amends to the victims of the past. For almost 50 years over 7,600 victims were evaluated harshly and then coerced or sterilized against their will. Eugenics scientists have used this method to target what they consider as the “undesirables,” mainly unwed, black females, and also the mentally disabled in North Carolina. This was done under the pretense to make future American generations stronger and smarter. Eugenics still negatively affects the people of North Carolina today.

Eugenics is the scientific belief that through “selective breeding… and [the] restriction of reproduction by birth control or surgical procedures” (Thomson), a ‘better’ and more productive society could develop. Similar to the ideas of Social Darwinists, Eugenicists used medical intervention to weed out the unfit members of society(anyone who was not white), and continued to grow the population of the ‘fit members. People believed that ‘unfit’ members of society had genes that would bring society down as a whole, and “race mixing, or crossbreeding, would deplete the national fitness of Anglo-Saxon Americans” (Thomson). Eugenics during the progressive Era: Although most progressive thinkers were against the Social Darwinist theory, there

Race matters! Race has been probably the most dominating factor beneath the eugenics movement and the pseudo scientific experiments the Europeans physicians and scientists conducted on people of African origin and other races since the 18th century. The foundation for these studies can be associated with ancient Greece, the roots of today’s western values of knowledge, civilized, and democracy which are considered to be the basis for human development. Similarly to today’s Europeans, Ancient Europeans mustered enormous armies and naval forces that conquered and destroyed more advanced civilizations in the Near East, Asia Minor and Africa during which they destroyed records and stole ideas from the conquered people. Hence, the Europeans rewrote the history books to advance their concept of race superiority, which have been essential in the Atlantic world for the last five hundred years.

The world is well aware that the acts of the Nazis were atrocious. This is not something one has to affirm, and is due, in large part, to an understanding of World War II and Hitler’s attempts to achieve “Aryan” purity. Germans have taken responsibility and shown remorse for their government’s actions. The United States’ role as leaders in the eugenics movement of the early 1900’s remains unknown by most Americans, even to many American scholars. The American eugenics movement, is at least partially responsibility for Hitler’s actions, at it laid

We have all heard of concentration camps, but we think about the Germans and the Jew. We usually never think of the Native Americans as being part of any type of concentration camps. But unfortunately they were. Back when the Germans started construction on their own camps in 1933 they based some ideas of them on some of the United States Civil War camps, the ending resolution was based on American Eugenics programs that were already working in the United States. You can obviously see there have been camps in the country for nearly 170 years. Even back before the Civil War we did the same exact thing to Native American Indians. One of the first "Happy Camps" was called Oklahoma.

Plastic and/or cosmetic surgeries became safer and much easier once anesthesia and antiseptics were presented in the 19th century. The practice of this field ensued significantly during the wars. Surgeons were able to learn new skills and new techniques to help improve the appearance of those wounded during both world wars. It would not be long until Westerners began to recognize a significant growth and demand for these surgeries. Many American surgeons performed the surgeries to correct the physical appearance of patients with deformities, due to automobile and industrial accidents. The first modern rhinoplasty was performed in the United States after World War II in 1923. The American eugenics movement was a period, intended to improve

The second reason why eugenics became popular in the United States has been strongly based on race, with its history of slavery and a majority German and English population, the United States had strong views against southern Europeans, Irish and other races and ethnicities. At the time, the nation wanted to keep the American gene pool the way it is and not mixes it with new populations. At this time people also though that there was a legitimate deficiency in the genes of a certain race and a ethnicity. However, we not know that mental illness and disorders can be caused by a poor environment and

This idea of controlling the spread of “inferior blood” was called eugenics. “Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally” (Stoskopf, 1999, p. 1). Eugenics is rarely discussed in modern school systems; American’s often want to forget this harmful experiment. However, eugenics “has had an insidious effect on the lives of students and the organization of public schools” (Stoskopf, 1999, p. 1). The eugenics movement believed that “criminality, intelligence, and pauperism were passed down in families as simple dominant or recessive hereditary traits” (Stoskopf, 1999, p. 1). Eugenicists decided to sterilize many families who may carry these traits. They argued, “America must be kept American” (Stoskopf, 1999, p. 2). This concept “provided the guiding ideology behind

Families across the country rushed to be tested and deemed genetically fit, or otherwise. While all this was going on, eugenics fans blazed across the country toting such propaganda as "Some Americans are born to be a burden on the rest" (Carlson 4), while claiming that it is the duty of the superior to ensure that the "feebleminded" did not over-run them. The hype among the higher upper class was to prove yourself worthy of being especially genetically adept, no matter what background you hailed from (the hypocrisy of this is terrible). Only when eugenicists began to actively sterilize patients did an opposite reaction to eugenics present itself.