Race and Science : Galton and the Definition of Eugenics
Eugenics Defined: As he studied his cousin's theories, Galton came to believe that natural selection does not work in human societies the way it does in nature because people interfere with the process. As a result, the fittest do not always survive. So he set out to consciously "improve the race." He coined the word eugenics to describe efforts at "race betterment." It comes from a Greek word meaning "good in birth" or "noble in heredity." In 1883, Galton defined eugenics as "The study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally."
Sir Francis Galton
Early efforts to breed better human beings have not been uniformly successful. Darwin's half-cousin, the English scientist Francis Galton, is widely regarded as the founder of eugenics. "Eugenics", a term Galton coined, comes from the Greek roots for "good" and "generation" or "origin". Eugenicists seek methods to improve the hereditary characteristics - both physical and mental - of the human species. However, eugenicists have not agreed upon which heritable traits should selected - nor by whom. Nor have they agreed on whether to use encouragement or coercion.
Eugenics Improving the Inborn Qualities of a Race
Eugenics
The American Eugenics Society was founded in 1926 by Harry Crampton, Harry H. Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn with the express purpose of spearheading the eugenical movement. With a peak membership of around 1,250 in 1930, the AES worked at both the scientific and popular levels, becoming a highly effective organization at disseminating practical and scientific information on genetic health, drawing attention to eugenics, and promoting eugenical research. The history of the Eugenics Movement was chronicled through more than 1,200 materials, primarily from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which, under the direction of Charles Davenport, was the center of American Eugenics research from 1910-1940.
michiganimc.org/feature/ display/8936/index.php
The Road to Auschwitz: Eugenics and the University of Michigan
All the justifications that German physicians and eugenics advocates used to rationalize their programs were already extant in America. Even the most heinous of German eugenic actions had its American counterpart.
--Jeffrey A. Hodges, "Dealing with Degeneracy: Michigan Eugenics in Context
http://www.sfu.ca/~wwwpsyb/issues/1996/winter/keenan.htm
A Brief Analysis of 'The Bell Curve'
The Bell Curve (Hernstein & Murray, 1994) has continued to elicit sharp reaction and criticism. The messengers and the message have both been challenged on empirical and moral grounds and the debate continues to rage on. This article will attempt to briefly review some of the challenges, while admitting that a full analysis of the subject would require another volume, or series of books, which have begun to emerge in response to The Bell Curve. The issue of race is discussed, as are the possible influences of funding and the danger of such motivation in public policy. The size of the heritable effect of IQ is discussed, as is the effect of the environment
Eugenics and the Welfare State
Preaching Eugenics
Preaching Eugenics tells how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders confronted and, in many cases, enthusiastically embraced eugenics-a movement that embodied progressive attitudes about modern science at the time. Christine Rosen argues that religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists-those who challenged their churches to embrace modernity-became the eugenics movement's most enthusiastic supporters. Their participation played an important part in the success of the American eugenics movement.
Elaine Riddick is the new face of the Eugenics Movement. She was secretly sterilized by the government.(ABC News) Eugenics
WINDFALL, N.C., May 15, 2005 —
Beneath the surface of this Southern town, with its lush evergreens and winding riverbanks, is a largely forgotten legacy of pain, secrecy and human indignity.
"My heart still bleeds, and it will forever bleed, because of what had happened to me," local resident Elaine Riddick said.
Riddick was one of thousands of people secretly sterilized by the state between 1929 and 1974.
From the early 1900s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing.
"The procedures that were done here were done to poor folks," said Steven Selden, professor at the University of Maryland. "They were thought to be poor because they had bad genes or bad inheritance, if you will. And so they would be the focus of the sterilization."
There is so much that needs to be added to this topic I thought it best to begin with references to both the history as well as how it looks today on the face of a victim. It is my intent to follow up with posting that disclose the operations of modern day Agents of EUGENICS.
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What is it they say about Great Minds?
In the late 1840s, Dr. Samuel Cartwright published a study in a southern Medical Journal intended to report on the "diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race" (Tucker 13). Cartwright, mimicking the type of scientific rhetoric that was only then beginning to gain credence and popularity, and foreshadowing the type of discourse that underlies much of racist ideology even today, theorized that the black skin of African-Americans in conjunction with a deficiency of red blood cells led to smaller brain sizes in blacks, which resulted in both less intelligence and less morals. This theory led Cartwright to postulate that slavery was a cure for the physiological illnesses of blacks, because it "makes the lungs perform the duty of vitalizing the blood more perfectly than is done when they are left free to indulge in idleness" (14).
This was only the first in a long line of racially-motivated "scientific" studies. Throughout the entire second half of the 19th century, it was common to see numerous publications referencing differences in skeletal structure, facial features, and physical ability as "causes" behind the so-called racial inequality. Researchers mixed pieces of Darwinism with anatomy studies and phrenology to create tables of correlation between intelligence level and scientific composition. Aimed initially at blacks, the scientific method was also widely used to discuss how new immigrants, especially Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe, had a "higher percentage of inborn socially inadequate qualities than do the older stocks" (Larson 101). If they had actual "proof" of White, American superiority, they could rationalize not only their own personal bigotry, but also governmental discrimination in terms of voting rights, job availability, and neighborhood segregation.
"Scientific Racism" played a prominent role in the foundation of the Harvard Immigration Restriction League in 1895. Supported by many of America's upper-class males, including Carnegie and Rockefeller, this league perpetuated the application of "science" to racially-motivated development of eugenics, proposing that because blacks, Jews, immigrants, and other racial "undesirables" were scientifically inferior, it was necessary to utilize "scientific" practices such as sterilization and abortion to promulgate what they held to be a superior race. While this in itself led to a number of atrocities at the time, it set an even more horrendous precedent for Nazi Germany and other scientifically-based racial purity movements.
The picture above depicts a scientific exhibit comparing white and black fetuses. Copyright 1999, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, American Philosophical Society, and Truman State University. Cold Spring Harbor, E.06 Eug-2, Exhibits Book-Second Int.Ex. Of Eugenics,pg 109.
Regarding the difficulties posed by the 'problem' of Negro population, Myrdal states on page 170 that....
In our further discussion of the means in Negro population policy we ought start out from the desire of the politically dominant white population to get rid of the Negroes. This is a goal difficult to reach by approved means, and the desire has never been translated into action directly, and probably never will be. All the most obvious means go strongly against the American Creed. The Negroes cannot be killed off. Compulsory deportation would infringe upon personal liberty in such a radical fashion that it is excluded. Voluntary exportation of Negroes could not be carried on extensively because of unwillingness on the part of recipient nations as well as on the part of the American Negroes themselves, who usually do not want to leave the country but prefer to stay and fight it out here. Neither is it possible to effectuate the goal by keeping up the Negro death rate. A high death rate is an unhumanitarian and undemocratic way to restrict the Negro population and, in addition, expensive to society and dangerous to the white population. The only possible way of decreasing Negro population is by means of controlling fertility. But as we shall find, even birth control -- for Negroes as well as for whites -- will, in practice, have to be considered primarily as a means to other ends than that of decreasing the Negro population.
After a lengthy discussion of the reasons for promoting birth control among people of African descent (and to a lesser extent among poor people generally), Myrdal then endorses, on page 178 of the book, 'extreme' measures in this direction:
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