The Need of Eugenics Movement and Other Radical Movements in Society

Historically, the eugenics movement was an idealistic crusade that sought to improve the genetic qualities of the human population for future generations to come. The concept of eugenics was first coined by the late English mathematician, Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin (a scientist known for his theory of evolution), who drew inspiration from his half-cousin’s theory of natural selection to conceptualize his own theories of heredity and selective breeding. Francis Galton first introduced the term eugenics in his 1883 book, “Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development”, in which he labelled his opinion of what constitutes as a genetically superior individual and even encouraged weaker individuals to practice celibacy.

In the turn of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the eugenics movement started to gain widespread popularity, and was considered by many to be a forthcoming foundation of social development in North America. By the 1920’s, the concept of eugenics was nearly universally accepted by educational and political figures across the country and was highly supported by federally supported foundations and research facilities that actively encouraged eugenic legislation. This movement continued to have its tenure throughout North America until ultimately the stigma associated with Nazi Germany’s involvement in eugenic development caused the local scientific reputation of eugenics to suffer and caused the abandonment of America’s discriminatory eugenic laws. During this approximate half-century period, the perception of eugenics went through radical shifts in both a social and academic point of view.

However, there is no denying the extent that the eugenics movement reached, and how American history textbooks rarely mention the topic and if mentioned, it is usually very briefly discussed or is concentrated around Germany’s involvement rather than America. During the height of the eugenic movement, social mechanisms such as the authoritative status of political policies and the reproduction of information in the form of propaganda caused the movement to move at a tremendously momentum. There are common misconceptions around the origins of eugenics and accordingly, there are polarizing views that conflicted both public and top academic minds during the relatively short span of the eugenics movement. Although eugenics is almost a forgotten past of America’s history, its everlasting and downright terrifying effects still linger on to this day and will continue to have important consequences for today’s generation.

The idea of eugenics began as an idealistic movement to improve the human genome. The basic goal was to simply create a smarter, stronger, society that had less likelihood of illness, criminality, or other undesirable traits. The word eugenics was derived from the Greek words eu (“good”) and -genes(“born”) and originally enveloped a broad spectrum of study, including heredity, fitness and even methods of sterilization. By taking statistical readings on scores such as the intelligence quotient (IQ), physical competence, financial health and “racial hygiene”, researchers were able to deem whoever was either “fit” or “unfit” to breed. Socially, during this time America was experiencing significant changes throughout its industrial and urban environments, with immigration laws being more liberal resulting in millions of southern and eastern Europeans migrating into the country. Middle to upper class Americans started worrying about how the shape of society will adapt, racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan were still prominent and there was always fear of a more competitive job market arising. Eventually, the concept of eugenics was sold as a way to find prosperity in the form of a new science that promised a brighter future to the average American.

As such, the eugenics movement began to spread in popularity, with initial supporters including Dr. William Goodell, renowned biologist Charles B. Davenport, and even African American intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Thomas Wyatt Turner and many others. The difference between the perspective of the African American eugenicists, is that they believed that the best blacks were as good as the best whites, and that the most talented of all races should mix. Nevertheless, as the movement gained traction, other support from foundations such as the Carnegie Institute, Rockefeller Foundation and others, helped by donating funds to the movement. In 1903, the organization the American Breeder’s Association (ABA) was the first eugenic association established under the direction of the biologist Charles B. Davenport. Charles B. Davenport was originally known for being an acclaimed professor of zoology at Harvard and personally helped pioneer new quantitative standards of taxonomy. Similar to Sir Francis Galton, Davenport became obsessed with the aspect of quantitatively measuring a human being’s ability into explanatory variables and took a biometrical approach to the hundreds of studies he directed and consequential books and papers he released.

The goal of the ABA was to “investigate and report on heredity in the human race and emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood.” The most prominent members of the ABA included Alexander Graham Bell (founder of AT&T), David Starr Jordan (founding president of Stanford), and Luther Burbank (known for creating a blight-resistant potato to help the Irish potato famine). Davenport continued to help direct the American eugenic movement and soon founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, 1910, which quickly became one of the most prominent organizations in the eugenics movement. The officials of the Eugenics Record Office quickly wanted to bring their solutions to the eugenics problem to the state and federal political offices and brought along ideas such as the concept of “fit” vs “unfit”, immigration restriction laws, sterilization, segregation and even the idea of extermination.

Davenport continued to show his passion in stopping the spread of “inferior blood” into the general public was even quoted to say “… that the biological basis for such laws is doubtless an appreciation of the fact that negroes and other races carry traits that do not go well with our social organization.” With the support of such influential figures, the eugenics movement quickly influenced state and national level politics, with over 30 state legislature laws involving involuntary sterilization within the general public being formed. Multiple presidents were known to host their support for the eugenics movement, including presidents Calvin Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. The Immigration and Restrictions Act of 1924 was highly influenced by eugenic theories and was passed due to the fear of millions of east and southern Europeans race-mixing their “inferior stock” into the American population. This act marked a pivotal point in eugenic history, as it clearly denoted the racial segregation between ethnic groups and indicated the racial superiority that North American “Nordic” individuals have over “inferior stock.” At around the same time, the eugenic ideology has started to influence the educational reform movements of the 1910’s.

The theories behind eugenics were quickly accepted within the U.S academic curriculum and it became commonplace to see an eugenics section in a high school biology textbook. By 1928, leading schools such as Stanford and nearly 400 other colleges hosted classes involving eugenic studies and curriculums. With the introduction of eugenics in the classroom, a byproduct that was used to measure a quantitative score of a student that is still commonly in use today is the Intelligence Quotient test. By using a standard IQ test throughout the country, teachers and officials were theoretically able to measure the intellectual abilities of their students and have a baseline to determine which students were gifted. Consequently, this meant that they were also able to differentiate the “slow” students and started to segregate these students into their own special classes, and even special schooling facilities. During this period, it was common to assume that this sole, hour-long, intelligence test was able to encapsulate a person’s current and future capabilities and potential into a single numerical value. Naturally, minorities such as Mexican’s and African American’s who typically scored less than their Nordic counterparts were commonly segregated into their own communities. Before long, minority groups and other critics started opposing the theories of IQ and eugenics in general.

Unfortunately, the eugenic movement was growing at such a rapid pace that academic and political figures were quick to dismiss any critics they thought would potentially undermine or discredit their ideas. By the early decades of the 20th century, the social crusade of eugenics had reached it’s peaked, and it was commonplace to practice eugenics throughout both the government and state legislative levels. Altogether, the eugenics movement was considered to be a massive success with North America as one of its earliest adapters. The term eugenics quickly became a household name that was further encouraged by posters, pamphlets and other pieces of propaganda that supported choosing partners that are genetically fit. This systematic racism was further promoted by the top academic minds in the country, who consistently released their own papers and documentations that gave credibility to the science of eugenics. It was clear that both the public and academic perception of eugenics were at an all time high, and it seemed that this would continue to be case for the foreseeable future.

Despite its popularity, there were a number of problems with the eugenic research studies conducted by researchers such as Charles B. Davenport. Human genome studies were based off previous studies such as Gregor Mendel’s demonstration of dominant and recessive inheritance in plants, and the ability to selectively breed healthier livestock in animals. Scientists thought that they simply had to apply these same principles but to the human gene pool. However, one of the main problems was that most of the traits that were studied by eugenicists had very little genetic and scientific basis to determine if they were actually hereditary. Traits such as mental illness, poverty, criminality, blindness, deafness, and “feeblemindedness” were studied and virtually considered as hereditary traits in the minds of researchers. Rather than considering externals environmental factors such as poor housing, poor nutrition, lack of adequate education, researchers directly attributed these complex traits to a person’s gene pool.

Furthermore, they systematically associated these traits with entire groups of people including Southern Europeans, Jews, Africans, Mexicans and Latinos. It was clear that most research studies were tainted by the researchers own prejudices against their subjects. Scientifically subjective terms such as “criminality”, or terms with ambiguity such as “feeblemindedness”, could virtually determine any individual to be categorized as an “unfit” person. Another main issue with the scientific procedure performed by eugenicists, was that they were quick to attribute complex biological traits to a single genome, thus felt that they could develop a predictable model to determine inheritance. They failed to consider that even in Mendel’s study of the dominant and recessive traits in plants, the majority of attributes seen in the plant offspring could not be categorized and thus were unable to predict. It is clear that the majority of this “scientific” research were based off of assumptions that simply were not true. Yet, the scientific community continued to push forward with their research, and soon the concept of an “unfit” individual progressed into more extremist measures, including the involuntary sterilization of entire groups of individuals.

Other research studies that supported claims that prisons and psychiatric hospitals commonly housed individuals that were related to each other, came to further support the eugenic movement. The last provocation was when eugenicists started documenting the potential cost savings that can be had by hypothetically reducing the number of individuals housed in these facilities and in other problem sectors of the municipal environment. At this time, many city governments were overwhelmed with the massive influx of immigrants and combined with the high crime and poverty rates throughout the city, officials were considering any methodology to reduce their fiscal load. With the science of eugenics emerging, officials were quick to support the idea of sterilization and soon incorporated it into their own policies. In 1896, Connecticut was the first state to enact marriage laws that prohibited anyone who was “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded from marrying.” Indiana was the first state to enact legal sterilization in 1907, followed soon by other states such as Washington and California. Eventually, over 30 states have adopted their own eugenic sterilization laws which mainly targeted criminals, lower IQ individuals and generally whoever else constitutes as an “unfit” individual. By 1960, California had already preformed over 20,000 sterilizations, which was almost a third of the entire country’s total sterilization count.

The media continued to portray unfit individuals as colored or ethnic, lower-class individuals that did not deserve to procreate. Meanwhile, upper-class white females were highly encouraged to bear more children and adapt a “family minded” mindset for the sake of the human race. Men were also sterilized but typically due to their physical aggressiveness and past criminal behavior. However, eugenicists typically had the assumption that since women were the ones who bore children, that naturally they would be held more accountable to have children. Thus, most efforts to control the birth rate were directed towards women. Sterilization was also accepted within the majority of the general public as a 1937 Fortune magazine poll found that nearly 2/3 of respondents supported sterilization of mental defective individuals, and 63% supported the sterilization of criminals.

Nearing the middle of the 20th century, perceptions regarding the scientific validity of eugenics started arising. Educated critics such as G. K. Chesterton, argued that eugenicists highly overestimated the power of biology. Others expressed their disbelief that sterilization or artificial selective would simply eliminate any possible genetic defects or undesirable traits. In addition, issues regarding defining inherited traits and poor scientific methodology plagued most of the research studies. Eventually, the scientific community started doubting the validity of eugenics, and gradually the eugenics movement started to see less promotion from its previous highly vocal influencers. Soon after, public perceptions started to drift during the events of the second World War, and specifically due to Nazi Germany’s involvement.

A common misconception within the public is that most extremist eugenic theories originated from Germany, but rather Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that he took great inspiration from the American eugenics movement and later incorporated its theories into shaping his own Germany eugenic movement. The 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws were largely based off of American researcher Harry H. Laughlin’s Model Eugenic Sterilization laws and the researcher was even set to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on “racial cleansing” awarded by the Heidelberg University in Germany. These ideas ultimately led to the Holocaust, history’s deadliest euthanasia program which resulted in the death of millions of Jews and other non-Aryan individuals. Once the North American public and officials learned of the horrors of Nazi Germany from the war and the Nuremberg trials, massive policy changes regarding the ideologies of eugenics took place.

Within a decade interval, North America made a total reversal in their eugenic practices and even so far as to camouflage or flat out deny parts of this history. Scientists such as Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, who released a book on the class structure in American, started to rewrite their own history when they claimed that eugenic tests had no biased toward immigrant or non-white groups. The previously mentioned Eugenics Record Office (ERO) quickly rebranded themselves to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and to this day continues to be a thriving research institute that is focusing on cancer, neuroscience, biology and genomics. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory still has the previous eugenic record available but are reluctant to mention any of this information in their “About Us” section.

Modern developments in genome technology have slightly revived the interest in eugenics sometime during the late 20th century. Notable scientists from U.C Berkeley, and at Hampshire College support the research and development of modern-day eugenics, claiming that “a new era of eugenics” can be had that is consumer and market driven. Even the United Nations International Bioethics Committee assured that the ethical problems of human genetic engineering should be confused with the 20th century eugenic movements. However, due to the lasting stigma of Nazi misconduct, discussions regarding eugenics are still debatable in the eyes of the public. Nevertheless, modern genetics has started to evolve into what is called, new eugenics or neo-eugenics, in which rather than segregating groups of individuals, individual genes or selected and are edited. Future potential for this technology is boundless, but researchers must take always take into consider the potential of abuse.

The public perception regarding the eugenics movement in America has went from rapidly polarizing viewpoints in a relatively short period of time. From its idealistic beginnings, to its irreplaceable consequences, eugenics has influenced the landscape of not only North America, but other countries that took influence from its ideologies as well. One of the most terrifying aspects of this experience is how the widespread acceptance of eugenics was achieved in the span of less than half a decade. One of the main reasons for this is because of the multiple social mechanisms that affected the population during this time. Due to the high schools and colleges that adopted this ideology quickly within their curriculum, eulogy theories managed to reach a massive audience of students. These students will continue to reproduce their knowledge, causing the reproduction lifecycle to continue. Another social mechanism that caused the widespread belief of eugenics is that authorities behind the eugenics movement. From the beginning of the movement, eugenic ideologies originated from highly coveted researchers. From our modern-day perspective, it may seem ludicrous to accept these theories as fact, but the average person would be inclined to believe in the statements of the minds of the top academic researchers in their country. In addition, with multiple American presidents supporting the idea of eugenics, the average American would likely have had no doubt in their minds of the science of eugenics.

Essentially, for the average person, disputing the case of eugenics during this time period would be an extraordinarily difficult proposal. The argument to go against what society values and believes, in order to support your own believes would be a life-threatening task. However, these types of radical, and courageous ideologists are needed for the sake of humanity and though the eugenics movement seemed extremely immoral to today’s standards, it was commonly accepted just a decade ago. Many individuals must have considered the systematic racism but due to the pressure of civilization they could not speak their truth and ignored their own moral judgement. On the opposite spectrum, remnants of the eugenic movement are still here, in the form of racism and prejudice. Though in modern day, these voices are not as significant as they once were, society as a combined entity must work to ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again. Though the potential benefits of eugenics are limitless, societies must always consider the assumptions and consequences of such a movement can bring.