Eugenics,Then and Now

One of the sorriest episodes in the 230-year history of our country is the eugenics craze that swept through America in the early decades of the last century. Endorsed by the intellectual elite and our most prominent citizens, the eugenics movement was responsible for racial, class and ethnic intolerance as well as civil rights violations that would be totally unconscionable in today’s politically correct American culture.

They Breed Horses, Don’t They?

Yet we rarely write about it, don’t talk about it, and, as best I can tell, Hollywood has never dramatized the horror of eugenic influence on our society when the craze was at its peak 80 years ago. My guess is the average American never heard of the eugenics movement. Why is that? I suspect it’s because eugenics, operating under a variety of names, is still very much alive and well in our society.

Eugenics was a term invented during the 19th century by an Englishman, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton believed that much of the world’s societal problems — criminal activity, sexual promiscuity, even poverty — were inherited traits passed from one generation of unfortunates to another. Using statistical data to prove his theories, he argued that the weaker classes were reproducing themselves at faster rates than responsible citizens, and that if we didn’t do something about them their alarming fecundity would soon weaken the human race.

To stem the tide of rapidly reproducing unfortunates, Galton argued that the same techniques used to produce thoroughbred horses and efficient hunting dogs should be applied to the human race. Fortunately for the British, Galton’s eugenic theories did not fall on fertile soil in his native land, but across the Atlantic, American scientists and social reformers took Galton’s eugenics pronouncements very, very seriously.

By Any Other Name

Alarmed by the influx of non-Nordic immigrants to our shores, by rising crime rates and growing slums in American cities, many in the American “better classes” fell for the new “science” hook, line and sinker. The result was a 1924 immigration act designed to keep non-Nordic types from our shores, laws in 30 states that permitted the forced sterilization of so-called “feebleminded” unfortunates who found themselves wards of those states, the awful 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision that affirmed the constitutionality of the sterilization laws, and a stain on the American soul that has yet to disappear.

Thanks to the enthusiastic embrace of eugenics by the Nazis prior to and during World War II, very few Americans and no politicians dare refer to themselves as supporters of eugenic theory these days. But though the word is rarely spoken, eugenic by-products, ranging from the positive to the very negative, are still very much a part of our culture.

On the positive side, eugenicists were the first to look for hereditary causes for diseases like alcoholism, cancer and Huntington’s chorea. Francis Galton’s statistical methodology, including development of the bell curve, revolutionized scientific research in a variety of disciplines.

On the “jury is still out” side, eugenicists were the first to think of intelligence testing. Of course, their reason for the testing was to determine whom to sterilize. Their targets were “morons.” “Moron” was a term first employed by the eugenicist Henry Goddard to distinguish “idiots” (people so retarded they couldn’t talk) and “imbeciles” (adults who functioned at the level of a 4-year-old) from seemingly normal adults with a mental age raging from 7 to 12 years old. Eugenicists believed that “morons,” while passing for normal, were incapable of making intelligent life choices, especially on matters related to procreation.

An Attack on People of Color

On the negative side, the Buck v. Bell decision, according to Harry Bruinius in his excellent book, Better for All the World, has never been overturned. In fact, following World War II, after many states had repealed their sterilization laws, a number of lawsuits were filed by the victims of those laws. None of them succeeded, thanks to Buck v. Bell.

Still on the negative side, eugenic thinking has permeated the abortion movement from its earliest days. Planned Parenthood, founded by the raving eugenicist, Margaret Sanger, targeted black neighborhoods for her “family planning” clinics 80 years ago, and her evil empire has been doing it ever since. This is probably why African-American women account for a disproportionately large share of all abortions performed in this country, and why the focus of Planned Parenthood’s international “family planning” efforts are Third-World countries.

Inherent in this country’s concerns about overpopulation, in the growing euthanasia movement, and in the “unwanted child” rhetoric of the abortion industry, is the eugenic concept that the world would be a better place if the most unfortunate among us were not in it. That is a very unfortunate worldview.

Ken Concannon is a freelance writer from All Saints Parish in Manassas, Virginia.

(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)

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