Is it stupidity, or just Eugenics?

     In a recent assignment given to me by my teacher, I was most horrified.  It was  a tutorial of Eugenics.  E U Jenics.  Now you may be sitting there wondering what in the world this is and if you guessed "something to do with Genetics", your on the right track.  But you see, Eugenics wasn't just innocent observations of the many diversities of possible genetic combinations that people can make.  Rather than observe, they were forced experiments in a way.  Eugenics was the breeding of people.  Yes I said BREEDING.  There were scientists out there trying breed better humans for the future.  The humans that were up to par for reproduction mated with those of whom the scientists believed would make better humans.  This was all taking place around 1910-1930s or so.
     There was odd reasoning for the scientists to do the things they did.  Basically what they had in mind, was making most everybody in the US able bodied, mentally capable, and racially up the standard (white).  Now you tell me, didn't some crazy guy in germany try to do the same thing during WWII?  What did that physco call it?  Oh yeah, STERILIZATION.  The scientists were trying to be-rid of people they believed weren't up to their standards.  Only they didn't throw people into ovens, or line them up to be shot. They preformed medical operations on those of whom they believed needed to be sterilized.  Men, women, black, mentally disabled.  They would use certain tactics such as "inspecting" the subjects baby and seeing if they thought the baby was good enough to be made again.  The very first person to be sterilized, Cary, went under operation because of the fact that her baby she had didn't quite make it up to par with the scientists.  Some states even took it to the extremity of passing Acts that prevented blacks, male or female, from marrying whites.
      These measly scientists termed there studies with words like positive, and negative eugenics.  Positive Eugenics is when they would mate people that they believed would go on to produce and even better person.  Athletes, harvard grads, white predominancy people would produce positive results in the Eugenics experiments.  But, the mentally challenged, physically challenged, black, Jew, or any other type of social impurity would produce negative results.  Is this Science?  I think prejudice.
      They used certain experiment tactics such as phenotypical traits of chickens and pea pods.  Mixing Black and white and what not to see what all they could discover about the mixing and further processes of breeding.  They would mix the chickens just by what they saw on the outside and just see what happened.  But that is exactly what they were doing wrong.  You see, when they were doing all these experiments, they hadn't yet found out about DNA.  The genotype baby.  So while they were out thinking that they could just take any human of the desired trait they were looking for and make a reproduction, they failed by over looking the possibility of recessive genes.  So if momma was picked and dad was also picked, they weren't necessarily guaranteed the baby they were looking for because of the fact that either mom, or dad could be carrying the recessive trait.   Boo YA!  eat that you radical scientists.
     Eugenics tore a big fat hole in the social boundaries and norms of the US.  Trying to purify, or sterilize based on race really created tension.  Non-whites were extremely angry, and just the tension of having people be pretty much neutered because some dumb scientist didn't think that they were good enough to reproduce.  Thats bull.  Shoot, some states thought this was actually a good idea.  1924, Virginia passed an Act that restricted interracial dating/marrying.  By then, 3000 people had already been sterilized.  Eugenics had an obvious negative impact on american society.  Its one though that i do not believe allot of people know about, and should be publicized a bit more.  Maybe if more people knew about the Eugenics experiments, they would be a little less likely to be prejudice towards others.


These are my notes, nothing special.

o What is eugenics?  The “breeding” of new people based on parents

o What were the social origins of eugenics?  Scientists wanted the majority of the population to be able bodied and mentally stable

o What were the scientific origins of eugenics? Positive Eugenics, and negative Eugenics.

o What research methods were used to study eugenics and what were their flaws? Mendel used chicken color experiments, as well as pea pod breeding to demonstrated his genetic mixing.  But they failed to notice the genotypic traits of each subject.  Mental state, and brain capability was difficult to measure because back then, DNA wasn’t discovered yet.

o How did eugenics research impact American society?  The research Mendel did effected society in racial tensions.  In fact Virginia had an Act they put forth In 1924 that restricted inter racial dating.  By then 3000 people had already been sterilized in attempt to keep purity of race in the states.  People were actually tested by checking their children for signs of impurities for reason to sterilize. 


Source:  http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/