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The American Eugenics Movement: a Study of the Dispersal and Application of Racial Ideologies by Katherine Stolerman

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The American Eugenics Movement: a Study of the Dispersal and Application of Racial Ideologies by Katherine Stolerman The American Eugenics Movement: A Study of the Dispersal and Application of Racial Ideologies by Katherine Stolerman I. Introduction national problems (Schoenl & Peck, 2010). Under the As unthinkable as it may seem today, people Third Reich in Germany, race was meant to supplant from all walks of life supported the eugenics class as the primary organizing principle in society. movement in the United States in the late 19th and To this end, social policies were designed to remodel 20th centuries. It represented a public policy that society in accordance with racial criteria (Burleigh & promised to address the social mores of the time, Wippermann, 1991). and as such, it was taught in schools, exhibited at I aim to demonstrate that eugenics in the United the World’s Fair, propagated by scientific journals States was more than a harmless science blown out of and conferences, and condoned by prominent social proportion. The American eugenics movement was figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander political from its inception and necessarily a product Graham Bell, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. Yet many of racialist thinking, particularly white supremacy American schoolchildren today either have not (Quigley, 1995). Both in the United States and heard the term or else grow up believing that in Germany, eugenics became an agent of social eugenics was exclusively a piece of National Socialist control. It was an instrument designed to be used by ideology in Germany in the 1930s-1940s. This paper an economic, social, and racial elite. But in Germany, seeks to examine the largely unrecognized personal the emphasis on race became a platform for extreme and ideological connections between American anti-Semitism and subsequent systematic killing—a eugenics, particularly mass sterilization movements, feature that was to some degree present in American and extremist policies such as racial and ethnic discourse, but absent from policy. This difference extermination in Germany under the Third Reich. can be explained in part by the social and political Much of the literature supports the fact that environments of the two nations. However, I will through research, funding, and laws in the early conclude that the racialized nature of American 20th century, many experts in the United States eugenics facilitated the jump to extremist racial encouraged the scientific improvement of the human policies in Nazi Germany. race. I will argue that millions were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime because they found II. The American Eugenics Movement themselves labeled lesser forms of life, a gruesome According to Randall Hansen and Desmond classification that began in the laboratories of King (2013), there are four popular frames of American institutions and was thereafter verified reference through which one can analyze American by research grants and financed by special efforts eugenics. The first compares the movement to a in the United States. I will explore the so-called religion, describing eugenics as a comprehensive “Nazi Connection” as an illustration of the parallels ideological framework that both accounted for between the two movements in the United States and human differences and proposed social and in Germany, while also recognizing the questions left economic policies as solutions. In this view, the unanswered. movement is similar to a religion because it both I consider why eugenics was so popular in the offers an explanation for why things are the way early 20th century and find that despite evident they are and also provides a concrete path to change similarities, eugenics was popular in the United the status quo. Another framework sees eugenics States and in Germany for different reasons. In the as an offshoot of National Socialism based on the United States, eugenics proposed a scientifically- observation that German and American eugenicists backed form of social activism that promised to fix figured in the same academic associations, attended Aisthesis 13 Volume 8, 2017 The American Eugenics Movement: A Study of the Dispersal and Application of Racial Ideologies the same conferences, and exchanged congratulatory coined the term eugenics in 1863, twisting Darwin’s correspondence on policy victories throughout the evolutionary theories to prescribe the ways in which early 20th century. The third framework understands humans could potentially take control of their own eugenics as anti-feminism, referring to the way evolutionary processes (Burleigh & Wippermann, in which “feeblemindedness”—a trait that would 1991). Combined with Gregor Mendel’s recently qualify someone to be sterilized—became associated discovered principles of heredity, this groundwork with women rejecting their purely domestic role allowed eugenicists to advance that the same concepts and, more drastically, with the “illicit sexual that determine plant color, for instance, could be behavior of women adrift” (Hansen & King, 2013, applied to social and intellectual characteristics in p. 13). The final frame of reference views eugenics people. Galton stressed the inheritability of human as a racist policy designed to purge a nation (and to traits and effectively downplayed the importance some extent the world) of those who did not fit the of environment: “Social classes…are ordained by label of upper-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants nature; that it is…not the slums which make slum (Hansen & King, 2013). While I contend that all four people, but slum people who make the slums” frames of reference are valid and valuable for gaining (as cited in Quigley, 1995). By this token, Galton a thorough understanding of American eugenics, I believed that if we were to somehow improve upon propose that the first three frames can be understood or otherwise “deal” with the people that lived in as subsets of the racial nature of the movement. slums, automatically the slums themselves would In the early 20th century, eugenics was defined cease to exist. as “A doctrine that states that the fostering of good By ignoring environmental factors, which more genes and the elimination of bad ones will serve the often than not presented as social constraints, cause of national racial health by permitting better eugenicists assumed that people who were breeding of a nation’s stock of people” (Hansen & unsuccessful, monetarily or otherwise, were not able King, 2013, p. 4). American eugenicists thought to succeed by some fault of their own. And certainly, it was possible to distinguish between inferior and in the early 20th century, such a classification superior traits in a society’s people and combined applied disproportionately to minority races. this belief with a political agenda geared towards race Galton and likeminded eugenicists believed that the improvement. The resulting eugenic discrimination successful race needed to be protected from the less against “inferior” people was an expression of successful, and in this way, humanity would improve racism. While traditional ethnic racism applied overall: “We greatly want…to express the science hierarchical standards to human racial groups based of improving the stock…to give the more suitable on morphological and anthropological differences, races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing eugenic racism hinged on the potential of races speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise for procreation, preservation, and development. In would have had” (as cited in Quigley, 1995). other words, rather than creating a fixed system to Alongside scientists, respected scholars differentiate people based on qualitative differences, subscribed to racial theories. In Blood of a Nation, eugenicists focused on eliminating “negative” traits published in 1902, Stanford University President across all kinds of different people (Kühl, 1994, p. David Jordan wrote that qualities such as talent and 70). The movement can be broken up into positive poverty were passed through the blood, and on this eugenics, which promoted eugenic education, basis argued that minority races were tainting the tax preferences, and support for society’s “fit,” human blood line (Black, 2003). Others were more and negative eugenics, with included segregation, concerned with the mixing of the races. Harvard sterilization, restrictive marriage laws, anti- University Professor Louis Agassiz claimed that “The miscegenation statutes, and restrictive immigration production of half-breeds is as much a sin against policies (Quigley, 1995). nature, as incest in a civilized community is a sin Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, against purity of character” (as cited in Quigley, published in 1859, paved the way for racial discourse 1995). Agassiz was a proponent of the theory of in eugenics. Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, polygenism, under which non-white races such as Aisthesis 14 Volume 8, 2017 The American Eugenics Movement: A Study of the Dispersal and Application of Racial Ideologies “Blacks” and “Orientals” were construed as a genus (Hansen & King, 2013). Sterilization was welcomed of the human line, rather than as members of the by eugenicists in the criminal justice system and in human species. This was important because the the medical community as a simple and relatively scientific definition of a species centers on the ability painless approach for controlling select populations. to mate and produce offspring with its members. The majority of official sterilizations during these But in the wake of the aforementioned propaganda, years occurred within
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