Eugenics
Kayla Krucher
What is Eugenics?
The idea of improving the human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics
The history and growth of Eugenics in the 1920s
It was developed largely by Francis Galton who read Charles Darwin, his half cousin's, theory of evolution and desired to apply it to humans. He popularized it and the phrase "Nature and Nurture". It was internationally organized by the International Federation of Eugenics Organization and was researched by many research bodies including Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, Eugenics Record Office, and many more. The idea became global and became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources.
Eugenics Policies and Programs
Many countries enacted policies and programs such as genetic screening, birth control, promoting different birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation, compulsory sterilization, forced abortion, forced pregnancy, and genocide.
The "degenerate" or "unfit"
People with certain characteristics or disabilities and their families were considered "degenerate" or "unfit" to live. To be considered this you could be poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, a promiscuous woman, homosexual, or in certain racial groups, such as Roma or Jews in Nazi Germany. These ideas in the minds of many had caused segregation, institutionalizations, sterilization, euthanasia, and mass murder.
Social Impact of Eugenics in the 1920s
Eugenics is an idea that is very much related to other ideas in the 1920s. At this time there was a lot of Nativism, where many hated immigrants and anyone that wasn't American. Americans feared that immigrants would bring over communism and anarchism so they figured more Americans plus less everyone else equaled a better human race. This, consequentially, fueled the originally weakening hold America had on racism.
The Death of Eugenics
When something is socially accepted by the majority of a country, it is often times hard to get rid of it. Many people blindly follow what most people think is right. Usually it has to be found to go against something that is thought of as morally wrong or used by someone who is infamous for doing something against those morals. That is exactly what happened to Eugenics. People began to pull away from the Eugenics theory when Adolf Hitler (left) used it as reasoning for the Jewish genocide in WWII, causing people to begin to see what's wrong with Eugenics.