Frank Dikotter's Race Culture

groups of people. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that federal legislation passed a sterilization policy

In Pages 11 and 12 in Laura Hildebrand's book Unbroken she talks about eugenics in the way that America was infatuated with eugenics. Eugenics promised strengthening of the human race by taking out people that were unfit. One of the tools of eugenics was sterilization which were procedures that rendered people unable to reproduce . when Louie the main character of Laura's book, was around his teenage years the state in which he lived California, Was overwhelmed with eugenics and ended up sterilizing around 20,000 people. As you can see why Louie, a troubled teenager, who never really was the type to make the honor roll, had a minority background, and was a notorious troublemaker may have had a reason to fear his life. Once he realized what he was risking he

The idea of eugenics made it possible for involuntary sterilization. In order to improve the human race, it meant regulating reproduction. 1907 Indiana passed to sterilize the mentally insane and inmates. Their plan was to eliminate “defective” genes. By 1960 63,000 people were involuntary

Chapter 8 of Kitcher's novel, Inescapable Eugenics, identifies past abuses of eugenics resulting from inaccurate, misleading information; abuses that include dominant groups using eugenics to discriminate against other undesirable groups.

It is almost impossible to think that there was a time in American history where eugenics was something that a large mass of the public thought was actually a great idea. But, when it comes time to face reality, one must realize that this was not just a fabled tale of time of the past and that it actually happened. When researching historical events or movements, nothing is more beneficial to find evidence than through popular literature of the specific time period. The novel that sums up what this entire movement is about the best would be Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road.

The United States and Nazi Germany, an unlikely pair. The disparity of values and beliefs of the two has set them as polar opposites in many people’s minds. However, when Eugenics and the 1927 Supreme Court come to mind the distance between the two seem to diminish. Yes, today’s topic is the infamous Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell; a 1927 case which upheld a Virginia statute that permitted the compulsory sterilization Carrie Buck and other intellectually disabled individuals for the purpose of improving the genepool . This shocking 8-1 ruling is no doubt one of the Supreme Court’s greatest errors as it failed to acknowledge that the statute in question aside from being immoral and cruel, was a clear violation

In England, which gave birth to the eugenics movement, it is interesting to note that sterilization laws never took hold. Bertrand Russel, a British philosopher at the time published Marriage and Morals (1929) in which he wrote “I say only that our scientific knowledge at present is not adequate for this purpose, and that it is very dangerous when a community allows its moral reprobations to masquerade in the guise of science, as is undoubtedly happening

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

Like many I was aware of the eugenics movement in the United States in the 1920’s. However, after reading the story of Carrie Buck and learning more about the nature of the procedurals involved in these sterilizations I have a new found understanding of the roles Power and Othering played in the unlawful tests conducted on Carrie buck and many members of her family. The way in which those elite of the 1920’s mimics the party and the thought police in George Orwell’s 1984, is incredibly interesting to ponder. There are even instances of power and othering having the exact effects among nations today as well. The similarities between these major themes that we have continuously

Eugenics is very controversial. It is important to be informed on the subject to avoid making rash and hasty decisions on whether or not it is right or wrong. It is up to each individual to gain the knowledge necessary to determine the moral correctness or incorrectness of any topic. Often decisions are made without information to back them up. You must understand the term before understanding the action. In this way, we must understand eugenics in a general sense and in detail. We must start with defining the term eugenics.

In 1833, Francis Galton coined the word eugenics, which means “good in birth” or “noble in heredity” in Greek (Selgelid 2013:3). Galton stated that those who were more suitable would prevail over the ones who were less suitable (Yudell 2011:4). The term eugenics is split into two different categories, positive and negative. When you are classified in the positive eugenics it means that you have desirable traits and they would want to use those traits to reproduce and increase the overall status of human beings. However, if you were in negative classification of eugenics, that indicates that the traits that you obtained as a human were not seen as “suitable”. Because those traits were not then as suitable, you were denied the right to reproduce by the force of sterilization, it generally affected criminals and those with mental disorders. This movement was prominent in North America. However, in Nazi Germany, they applied this ideology to create a desired civilization and as a result millions of people died (Yudell 2011:4). This horrific use of eugenics demonstrates how it was used to enforce prejudice attitudes and discriminating behaviours. Genetic testing for prenatal screening is used for the parent’s knowledge if their child will have a genetic condition or impairment. If it turns out the fetus does, the parents have the choice to abort the fetus or not. Some argue that this has the same premise as eugenics and it discriminates against individuals

The theory of Eugenics can be dated back all the way to 400 B.C. but was not popularized until the mid-1800s by an English scientist, Francis Galton. He researched and published the theory that aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding (NC Office of Archives and History). As the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton applied the Darwinism science (survival of the fittest) to heredity characteristics. Two types of Eugenics stemmed from the theory, positive and negative. Positive eugenics is encouraging the “best” people in the society based on financial and personal features to have more children while negative eugenics is picking people with flaws and defects from the population

Let’s retrace this article’s path. There exist distinctions between disease traits and other – e.g., culturally-influenced – traits. The value of culturally-influenced traits change; thus, parents cannot always be morally obligated to “what [they] have the most reason to do” when selecting children, because what is most reasonable in one time/place can be morally abhorrent in another. It is also problematic to claim that people should recognize and implement social institutional reform, instead of genetic selection, when social institutional problems are present – history points to the implausibility of this suggestion. Finally, allowing unfettered, private genetic selection is likely to lead to adverse or unknown outcomes: a) It could lead to the selection of traits that are by no justifiable means ‘best,’ traits that drive homogenization, or both; and b) New genetic technologies have the potential to permit near-unlimited manipulations, the implications of which we don’t know, and thus, cannot allow

This interpretation of eugenics paved the way for this “Final Solution.” Following these events, the United States became increasingly concerned over its support of the practice. In 1939, after considerable reflection, the Eugenics Research Organization dropped this practice and stopped using the word in their publication name. (Eugenics-Meanings) Following those events, Eugenics was still studied but very quietly due to the new overall judgment by the people.

The term Eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883. When eugenics was originally created it was not intended to rid the gene pool of the unfit; it was only supposed to encourage people with good traits, such as intelligence or superior physical abilities, to breed with each other. The theory was, if the people with exceptional