Essay About Early 1900S And American Eugenics Movement

The Controversy on Eugenics in the American Culture
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Heredity improvement by genetic control. Why would people want to control
heredity? What exactly is genetic control? These are some things that people have been
questioning for decades. Eugenics can not be ignored because it is suddenly coming up
everywhere. People are experimenting and taking huge risks not to their knowledge. At
one point in time it was said that eugenics could change the world for the better. That is
how some people could look at it, and others frightened that it would change the entire
universe. Early in the twentieth century science had to deal with the conditions that
improve the inborn qualities of a race. Eugenesists not only wanted to improve the
well-being of others, but enclose to fewer races and religions. This was all a part of the
American eugenics movement.
The eugenics movement advocated both positive and negative eugenics, which
referred to attempts to increase reproduction by fit stocks and to decrease reproduction by
those who were constitutionally unfit. Positive eugenics included eugenic education and
tax preferences and other financial support for eugenically fit large families. Eugenical
segregation and usually, sterilization restrictive marriage laws, including
anti-miscegenation statutes, and restrictive immigration laws formed the three parts of the
negative eugenics program. From the beginning, the eugenics movement was a racialist
and elitist movement concerned with the control of classes seen to be socially inferior. In
proposing the term eugenics, Galton had written, “We greatly want a brief word to
express the science of improving the stockto give the more suitable races or strains of
blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise
would have had.
Modern eugenics was rooted in the social Darwinism of the late 19th century, with
all its metaphors of fitness, competition, and rationalizations of inequality. Indeed, Francis
Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and an accomplished scientist in his own right, coined
the word eugenics. Galton promoted the ideal of improving the human race by getting rid
of the “undesirables” and multiplying the “desirables.” Eugenics began to flourish after the
rediscovery, in 1900, of Mendels theory that the biological make up of organisms is
determined by certain factors, later identified with genes. The application of mendelism to
human beings reinforced the idea that we are determined almost entirely by our “germ
plasm.”
In the US, the eugenics movement started from a belief in the racial superiority of
white Anglo-Saxons and a desire to prevent the immigration of less desirable racial stocks.
In 1910, the Committee on Eugenics solicited new members with a letter that read, “The
time is ripe for a strong public movement to stem the tide of threatened racial
degeneracy….America needs to protect herself against indiscriminate immigration, criminal
degenerates, and…race suicide.” The letter also warned of the impending “complete
destruction of the white race.”
In the early 1900s when they were first discovering eugenics, they had a hard time
defining traits. Eye color and blood groups were an easy trait to measure, but eugenisists
looked for other things, such as behavioral traits, including epilepsy, intelligence,
alcoholism, and criminality. In the early years there problem was wrongly accusing some
traits, which sent some people to mental facilities, and in some cases prison. Not
necessarily because they were doing something wrong, but because they were different
from “normal standards.”
Eugenics today is defined as efforts to improve the gene pool in a particular
population. The word eugenics is very unfamiliar among intellectuals. So there might not
be that much opposition among the ordinary voter about the topic. However, there are
two different opinions when it comes to eugenics, and they are either for it or against it. A
legislator in Texas took a poll and found that 3,533 to 2,604 people were in favor of the
eugenics process.(Reilly, S., 1991, News in Eugenics). The Boston Globe also found, in a
call in telephone poll, that 49% supported sterilization of the mentally ill. Other people feel
that eugenics is what will in plain terms, make the world a better place. Its been said that
using a eugenics program will rid people of future diseases, and other illnesses. That is
why many think that using this procedure is good for all, but in fact it comes along with
many hidden deformities and abnormalities. Some people believe that improving genetic
control is a commendable idea, but others think that it seems a little immoral to try to
change something, that in the long run is better left alone.
This is where the arguments against eugenics