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Buck Vs Bell

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Imbeciles by James Cohen talks about the eugenics movement that swept the nation during the early 1900s. Cohen talks about court cases within the subject, more specifically Buck v. Bell. Eugenics is defined as the science or belief of bettering the human population by regulating breeding of those deemed “unfit” to improve the genetic quality of humans. Cohen leads with describing well known figures that were in support of it to help demonstrate the so called mania that occurred across the United States. Such figures included John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Graham Bell and even Theodore Roosevelt. The author also described the numerous scientific organizations formed as well as naming several political, elite and even religious groups that joined in. The eugenics movement also infiltrated the pop culture of the time, making its way into bestselling novels, magazines and even into Hollywood movies. Cohen also discussed how many prestigious universities actually taught eugenics to students including: Harvard, Cornell, Berkeley and Columbia.
James Cohen brought forth the idea that this movement might have been spurred by “the collective fears of the Anglo-Saxon upper and middle classes about a …show more content…

Bell case. He talks extensively of how this is most certainly a class issue and how it is yet another tale in American history where the powerful take advantage of those below them and make the wrong decision. The Buck v. Bell case was a tragic one. Carrie Buck had been sent to Virginia’s Colony of Epileptics and Feeble-Minded even though she wasn’t actually unstable. Nonetheless she was placed at the center of the eugenics movement because of her family history. A spotlight was shown on her past of having a child out of wedlock at seventeen, as well as having a mother and other relatives institutionalized. Even though her school performance showed that Carrie was actually at normal levels of intelligence, this was ignored in

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