Eugenics = “well-born” Coined by Francis Galton 1860s Genetic determinism.

Concern about which heritable traits are spreading thru the human population.

Cause of social ills is bad heredity. Policies to “rationally” improve biological

quality by controlling reproduction. Galton: “Science of the improvement of human germ

plasm through better breeding.” Fewer offspring from “unfit” people. More from the “fit.” What kinds of people do we want in the world?

How to improve the hereditary make-up of the “race”?

Voluntary & coercive policies. Positive eugenics

Encourage, educate “fitter” people to have more offspring.

Negative eugenics Persuade, pressure, or compel “unfit”

people to have no offspring, not pass on their “defective” genes. Compulsory segregation & sterilization.

Positive eugenics: Better Babies & Fitter Families Contests

Measuring up to eugenic ideals: what criteria?

Health IQ Education,

occupation Special talents,

tastes Church, politics Clubs, activities

Popularizing hereditarian science: for the sake of “health”

1920s publichealth poster

Eugenics movement 1900-1940s (and beyond WWII). 30+ countries had their own versions;

differing theories and policies. Considered politically progressive.

“Improvement” of health & fitness of population. Organizations of social reformers,

geneticists, doctors, superintendents. Valid science of human heredity at the time.

Pedigrees = supposed scientific evidence that “defects” are transmitted by genes.

Inherited and congenital defects, e.g. “results of conception when the father was intoxicated.”

Social Darwinism as human survival of the fittest

The human species evolved by natural selection.

Cruel, rigorous weeding out of the “inferior” individuals and races.

“Degeneration” of the species occurs when the “unfit” are permitted to survive and reproduce.

Darwin (1871) Descent of Man

With savages, the weak in body & mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick…. Thus the weak members of societies propagate their kind….

No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how want of care leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

Who were considered the innately “weak” or “unfit,” blamed for social problems?

Poor people (“social residuum”) Workhouse, prison, drunkards…

Disabled people Asylums for insane and feebleminded

Investigators claim these groups have excessively large families (differential fertility problem).

Degenerate family pedigrees The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and

Heredity (1877). Found 2800 family members in New York, estimated welfare costs $2 million.

1912 “Kallikak” family discovered by eugenicist Henry Goddard (good & bad heredity)

Charles Davenport, head of Eugenics Record Office

“It is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people should have to support about half a million insane, feebleminded, epileptic, blind and deaf; 80,000 prisoners and 100,000 paupers at a cost of over 100 million dollars per year.”

COSTS of hospitals, asylums, prisons, feebleminded colonies, poverty, unproductive citizens (State fair exhibits to promote eugenics awareness)

Negative eugenics

“Voluntary” measures Eugenic education, propaganda

aimed at general public, e.g. school textbooks, films.

Coercive policies Permanent segregation Sexual sterilization

Alexander Graham Bell 1872 founds deaf

school in Boston. Invents devices to aid

hearing. Studies heredity in

deaf families. 1883: “avoid creating

a deaf-mute variety of the human race” by intermarriages.

Becomes leader of eugenics movement.

Negative eugenics: 30 states had sterilization laws by 1930s

Why sterilize men & women? Began in 1899, Dr. Harry Sharp at

Indiana State Reformatory: “treatment” and punishment for criminals.

1909 WA state law: eugenic purpose? “Whenever a person shall be adjudged

guilty of carnal abuse of a female under 10 years old, or of rape, or shall be judged a habitual criminal, the court may direct an operation to be performed for the prevention of procreation.”

Eugenicist Harry Laughlin’s model sterilization law (1922) AN ACT to prevent the procreation of persons socially

inadequate from defective inheritance, by authorizing and providing for the eugenical sterilization of certain potential parents carrying degenerate hereditary qualities.

Persons Subject. All persons in the State who, because of degenerate or defective hereditary qualities are potential parents of socially inadequate offspring, regardless of whether such persons be in the population at large or inmates of custodial institutions, regardless also of the personality, sex, age, marital condition, race, or possessions of such person.

State's Motive. Purely eugenic, that is, to prevent certain degenerate human stock from reproducing its kind. Absolutely no punitive element.

Is forced sterilization Constitional?

1. Cruel and unusual punishment (8th Amendment)

2. Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment)

3.Due Process Clause

Supreme Court ruling, Buck v. Bell 1927“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”

Carrie Buck and her mother

Oliver Wendell Holmes decision 1927

“There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

60,000 legally sterilized 1907-1970s

Superintendent Walter Fernald (1893): “The brighter class of the feebleminded, with their weak will-power and deficient judgment, are easily influenced for evil, and are prone to become vagrants, drunkards, and thieves…. It is better and cheaper for the community to assume the permanent care of this class before they have carried out a long career of expensive crime.”

continued Immorality worst in the feebleminded

woman: “She has not sense enough to protect herself from the perils to which women are subjected. Often bright and attractive, if at large they either marry and bring forth in geometrical ratio a new generation of defectives and dependants, or become irresponsible sources of corruption and debauchery in the communities where they live.”

Gender bias? 2/3 of sterilization victims were women.

IQ testing 1905 invented by Alfred Binet.

“abnormal” children can be educated.

1910s US psychologists corrupt this goal. Intelligence is hereditary, unchangeable. Measure & label & institutionalize.

“Menace” to society. Moron – imbecile – idiot scale. By 1900, 328 institutions, with 200,000 people

labeled mentally ill or mentally deficient.

1918 IQ tests US Army For recruits who

were non-English speaking or illiterate.

Complete the picture.

40% found to be FM.

Actual Test Questions, Army Alpha

SAMPLE People hear with their eyes\ears\nose\mouth1. Pinochle is played with

rackets\cards\pins\dice2. Habeus corpus is a term used in

medicine\law\pedagogy3. Bud Fisher is a famous

actor\author\athlete\comic4. Velvet Joe appears in ads for

tooth powder\soap\dry goods\tobacco5. The number of a Kaffir’s legs is . . . 2\4\6\8

1913 Ellis Island mental testing“moron detectors”80% immigrants scored feeblemindedDeportation rate increased

WWI Army Mental Tests: Racial Rankings

Eugenicists’ expert testimony on race & IQ led to the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act (quotas).

Disability justified discriminatory policies since 1882, excluded undesirable “lunatics,” “idiots,” “likely to become a public charge.”

Most extreme: eugenics in Nazi Germany, 1933-45

Forced sterilization law for “hereditary defectives.” (400,000+)

“Lives not worth living,” “useless eaters”InstitutionalizationKilling programs (“euthanasia”) 200,000+ adults and children with

disabilities. Final Solution against the Jewish people.

US Eugenic “Euthanasia” and Disability

1917 eugenic film The Black Stork: “There are times when saving a life is a greater crime than taking one.”

Retitled “Are You Fit to Marry?”

Eugenics Image Archive, hosted by the HGP Cold Spring

Harbor Laboratory, formerly Eugenics Record Office: http://eugenicsarchive.org

Disability Studies analysis of eugenics

History of people with disabilities, esp institutionalized. Eugenics was based on medical model of disability:

individual is genetically flawed. We will argue for the social model of disability:

scientific knowledge claims, ableist attitudes, and racist/sexist ideologies label people “unfit.”

Overlap between disability and other human differences. Legacy today in pre-natal genetic testing.

Subjectivity of “well-born” and “improvement” Medical fix, eliminate people