The Origin Of Eugenics

Eugenics was introduced by sir Francis galton who, interestingly enough, was a cousin of Charles Darwin. It began as a way to better the human race and stop negative genetic traits from continuing on generation to generation. Eugenics may have started out as a way to better humans but it became something much worse.

Eugenics is the pseudoscience of obtaining desired traits in a population through controlled repopulation, specifically by preventing those deemed “unfit” by “Nordic stereotypes” from breeding. Most modern day Americans do not realize the origins of eugenics, which was planted by Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton and bloomed in America, and what effect it had on the attempt to create a master race in Nazi Germany. America played a very influential role in German eugenics by collaboration between scientists and funding from American corporations. The negative connotation associated with this science is usually directed towards the scientists of the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler, and not towards American scientists who also partook in horrific experiments and performed inhumane acts as well. This is absurd when you consider that the United States was the backbone of the eugenics movement internationally and only developed a negative perspective of the research when it became affiliated with the holocaust and the troubling actions of Nazi Germany.

Eugenics is the scientific belief that through “selective breeding… and [the] restriction of reproduction by birth control or surgical procedures” (Thomson), a ‘better’ and more productive society could develop. Similar to the ideas of Social Darwinists, Eugenicists used medical intervention to weed out the unfit members of society(anyone who was not white), and continued to grow the population of the ‘fit members. People believed that ‘unfit’ members of society had genes that would bring society down as a whole, and “race mixing, or crossbreeding, would deplete the national fitness of Anglo-Saxon Americans” (Thomson). Eugenics during the progressive Era: Although most progressive thinkers were against the Social Darwinist theory, there

The Oxford University Press defines eugenics as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics” with a further—and rather illuminating—explanation which states, “Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis”.

Eugenics is a taboo science, but back in 1883 it was a modern advancement, discovered by Francis Galton (Carlson). Galton’s original mission was to improve humanity by encouraging the best and healthiest couples to simply have more children; Galton created positive eugenics (Carlson). However, with the positive comes the inevitable negative. Negative Eugenics was more set on preventing the least able from reproducing, in order to preserve the fitness of the

The eugenics movement was a very influential movement in America that was very prevalent during the early 1900’s. The premise of the eugenics movement was that society could be scientifically improved by classifying ranking members of society and trying to prevent those who were ranked low from reproducing. The eugenics movement was born out of the desire for the upper and middle classes of society to try and prove, scientifically, that they were superior to those who were in the lower classes. The people who typically made up the lower classes were usually immigrants and those who were of a different race. Eugenics was essentially the method that was used to try and exert control over the lower classes while validating the idea that those in the upper and middle classes were superior.

Eugenics came from an era where Social Darwinism was used to explain many social inequalities. Social Darwinism was created by Herbert Spencer and was based off of the work by Charles Darwin. Darwinism contains the ideas of survival of the fittest and the capability of an individual to survive in an environment. Spencer took Darwin’s idea and applied it to society, and explained that social inequalities came from the fact that the wealthy are genetically wired to be better off. Eugenicists noticed that government money was being funded towards the poor and degenerates. They didn’t understand this and they believed it was a waste of money because those people were destined to be impoverished. Eugenicists believed sterilization was the solution. Eugenicists believed anyone with the traits of poverty, feeble-mindedness-including manic depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, rebelliousness, criminality, nomadness, and prostitution in their lives should be sterilized. Before WWII, eugenics was very popular in the United States. People such as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were in support of eugenics. They both supported the sterilization of the feeble minded and insane, but did not support the killing of these people. Once Hitler’s atrocities had been discovered, the eugenics movement had a large decrease in popularity

Hansen and king go over several reason why eugenics became popular in the United States but not in the United Kingdom. Supporter of eugenics in England were mostly focused on people with mental illness and mental disorders. Though there were many supporters of eugenics, the idea did not catch on. One of the reasons being the European connection with the Nazis and their system of eugenics on people with mental illness in addition to people of other races and religions.

Race matters! Race has been probably the most dominating factor beneath the eugenics movement and the pseudo scientific experiments the Europeans physicians and scientists conducted on people of African origin and other races since the 18th century. The foundation for these studies can be associated with ancient Greece, the roots of today’s western values of knowledge, civilized, and democracy which are considered to be the basis for human development. Similarly to today’s Europeans, Ancient Europeans mustered enormous armies and naval forces that conquered and destroyed more advanced civilizations in the Near East, Asia Minor and Africa during which they destroyed records and stole ideas from the conquered people. Hence, the Europeans rewrote the history books to advance their concept of race superiority, which have been essential in the Atlantic world for the last five hundred years.

The Eugenics movement was an act of getting rid of traits that were considered unwanted. The word “eugenics” was first conceived by Francis Galton and it comes from Greek, meaning “good birth”. The purpose of Eugenics was to improve the human race by sterilizing people with “undesirable” traits such as mental disability, dwarfism, etc. In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded by Charles Davenport to improve qualities within the human family. The ERO existed for three decades and this movement began to lose power in the 1940s.

Eugenics is the social construction of the human race by controlling reproduction. “Reducing the number of unfit people the term refers to the effort to improve a human population by either encouraging the reproduction of desired traits or preventing the reproduction of undesirable one” (Bethel University). The eugenics movement in America support laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage, family planning, sterilization of the poor, disabled and education about human reproduction. They are in favor of reproduction among those thought to be the most genetically fit with characteristics such as hardworking, intelligent and physically fit. On the other had the movement discourage reproduction of the unfit considered to have

In late nineteenth century on into the early twentieth century America was going through a change. A change may in society thought was for the best. Slavery was ending, and the upper class was worried about the estimated four million African Americans and immigrants introducing themselves in the economy with little or no education. These people were worried the overload in population would negatively affect the economy they have worked so hard to create. It was felt something had to be done to prevent the impregnation of “bad genes” into the American community. Eugenics seemed to offer that solution. Eugenics still implements their version of “population control” and/or “family-planning” in our society today and we don’t even know it. We play along and support without even knowing why we’re playing along or what we are supporting. To help open the eyes of the majority, we need to go back in time and show how the “Eugenics Movement” started. How the country we love so much, did not love us back and how the support of this movement is stronger today than when it started.

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.

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

The roots of eugenics can be traced back to Britain in the early 1880’s when Sir Francis Galton generated the term from the Greek word for “well-born”. He defined eugenics as the science of improving stock, whether human or animal. According to the American Eugenics Movement, today’s study of eugenics has many similarities to studies done in the early 20th century. Back then, “Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes.” (www.eugenicsarchive.org) According to Merriam-Webster, the modern day definition of eugenics is, a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of