Eugenics and You Part 1
Eugenics and You Part 1
Junious Ricardo
Stanton
“Eugenics
is the philosophy and social movement that argues it is possible to improve the
human race and society by encouraging reproduction by people or populations
with “desirable” traits (termed “positive” eugenics) and discouraging
reproduction by people with “undesirable” qualities (termed “negative”
eugenics).” What is Eugenics https://pged.org/history-eugenics-and-genetics/
Eugenics
was a philosophy and movement by Europeans that called for the elimination of
society’s “undesirables” via sterilization, birth control and in extreme
cases mass murder. Adolf Hitler was a eugenicist as were people like John
D. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller,
Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, John Harvey Kellogg, Herbert Hoover, John
Maynard Keynes and surprisingly W.E.B. Dubois.
In
the early twentieth century the eugenics movement blossomed in the United States having been imported from England where
it was championed by Francis Galton a cousin of Charles Darwin. The notion was
based upon class and race, Galton looked the British upper crust and concluded
their position and success were hereditary and the result of breeding. To his
mind it would benefit English society if certain traits were cultivated via
breeding and birth while undesirable traits were eliminated via birth control
methods such as sterilization!
“The
English eugenics movement, championed by Galton, promoted eugenics through
selective breeding for positive traits. In contrast, the eugenics movement in
the US
quickly focused on eliminating negative traits. Not surprisingly,
‘undesirable’ traits were concentrated in poor, uneducated, and minority
populations. In an attempt to prevent these groups from propagating,
eugenicists helped drive legislation for their forced sterilization (Norrgard
2008). The first state to enact a sterilization law was Indiana
in 1907, quickly followed by California
and 28 other states by 1931 (Lombardo n.d.). These laws resulted in the
forced sterilization of over 64,000 people in the United States (Lombardo n.d.). At
first, sterilization efforts focused on the disabled but later grew to include
people whose only ‘crime’ was poverty. These sterilization programs found legal
support in the Supreme Court. In Buck v. Bell
(1927), the state of Virginia
sought to sterilize Carrie Buck for promiscuity as evidenced by her giving
birth to a baby out of wedlock (some suggest she was raped). In ruling against
Buck, Supreme Court Justice Wendell Holmes opined, ‘It is better for all the
world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to
let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly
unfit from continuing their kind....Three generations of imbeciles is enough’
(Black 2003). This decision legitimized the various sterilization laws in
the United States.
In particular, California’s program was so
robust that the Nazi’s turned to California
for advice in perfecting their efforts. Hitler proudly admitted to following
the laws of several American states that allowed for the prevention of
reproduction of the ‘unfit’” America’s Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement by Teryn Bouche
and Laura Rivard https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/
The global
eugenics movement looked to the United States because the US pushed and
popularized the notion and backed it with funds from extremely wealthy patrons,
“Less stingy than Mr. Force, wealthy families of the old ‘robber barons’
financially supported eugenics in the early years of this century. Mrs. E. H.
Harriman, widow of the railroad king, was an early supporter of eugenics; so
was the Rockefeller Foundation at the direction of the senior John D.
Rockefeller, the oil baron. A whole flock of Rockefeller foundations, as well
as individual family members, eventually gave huge sums to eugenics projects.
The 1930 membership list of the American Eugenics Society included
Vincent Astor, Bernard Baruch, George Eastman, Thomas Lamont, John D.
Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Margaret Sanger.” Eugenics and the
Power Elite Mary Meehan https://www.meehanreports.com/elite.html
Nazi Germany under Hitler, and
the oppressive apartheid regimes of Rhodesia,
South Africa and Mozambique
all based their systems on American socio-political structure and eugenics.
Eugenics is alive and well in
twenty-first century U.S.A..
Next week I will show you how eugenics is embedded in much of what is currently
going on in this country and the future plans of the movement so we can be
prepared and not get snookered by the propaganda and lies.
-30-
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home