Are Your Parents Cousins or Just Undesirables?

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I managed to catch an episode of The Kardashians the other night and I was instantly consumed by a single thought:  Why are stupid people allowed to breed?  It’s an intriguing thought, not letting stupidity beget yet more stupidity, and I know many that jokingly (most of the time) often suggest things like IQ tests, or basic reasoning skills test that should be given to prospective parents.  What most people don’t realize is that, just about a century ago, that was a thing.  It was seriously more involved, and focused on things other than simple stupidity, but it was definitely a thing, and it was called Eugenics.  

 

On paper Eugenics really doesn’t sound all that bad:  the promotion of more favorable genetic traits over less favorable genetic traits in an effort to elevate the human race.  So where did it get all screwy and shitty and Nazi–y? Good question!  Lucky for you, I’m an unemployed history major that has the answer!  Here we go: 

Eugenics can, arguably, be described as starting with Charles Darwin.  Contained within Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species, published in 1859, was the idea of natural selection.  This theory, that things evolve to, preferably, a higher quality form through the breeding out of weak traits and proliferation of strong traits (seriously, if you didn’t know that, put the lap top DOWN and read a goddamn book), has since been extrapolated to everything from finches, to middle management assholes that need an excuse for being assholes (they often say things like, “only the strong survive” before rechecking their email and pounding a five hour energy shot).  So it isn’t completely surprising that Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, would take this theory one logical leap further:  That natural selection does not, necessarily, have to be “natural”.  He first expressed this view in the 1880s, most agree in 1883 to be exact. 

Galton’s theory melded the theory of natural selection with the work of Gregor Mendel, who is considered the father of modern genetics.  Galton maintained that humans were not physically prepared for the civilization they had created and that, if we were to breed out undesirable characteristics, we could push evolution along at a quicker pace for the human race.  This new science Galton had established could then be broken down into two separate forms:  positive eugenics (encouraging those with desirable characteristics to breed more), and negative eugenics (the impeding, or, more accurately, all out prohibition, of the breeding of undesirables).  It’s not necessarily a heart–warming thought, but at this point didn’t necessarily conjure up pictures of Nazi’s killing babies, either.  But, as with most new theories, there’s always an asshole ready to take it too far.  In this case, that asshole was Charles Davenport. 

Charles Davenport is the father of American eugenics (Galton was English).  Davenport was a prominent biologist who’s most prominent works would include Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), as well as the establishment of the Evolution Research Institute and the Eugenics Record Office (the records of which can still be found at eugenicsarchives.org.  If you really need to be creeped out).  Davenport’s science was flimsy at best and outright lies at worst, however, he told an American public deeply entrenched in the anti–immigration ideas of the post WWI era and the “you can be black but please stay over there” atmosphere of the Jim Crow south exactly what every backwoods, rebel flag waving degenerate hillbilly wanted to hear– some races were superior to others because science.  And, shockingly, the white European races were the most superior of all of them while those races with darker skin tones were low on intelligence but evolutionarily streamlined for hard work and manual labor.  Are we all shocked that this caught on yet?  Eugenics societies started to spring up nearly everywhere and compulsory sterilization laws were enacted in over 20 states. The movement pulled some serious proponents including Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and H.G.Wells, among others.  And the Supreme Court even decided, in Buck v. Bell, that states had every right to draft, institute and enforce forced sterilization laws at their discretion (good jobs, guys).  Across the country doctors performed forced sterilizations on men and women, sometimes without their knowledge, for being not white, poor, mentally ill, less than smart, lazy, mildly alcoholic (those fuckers!), and any reason some white, middle class, presumably male, doctor could come up with.  Scary, scary shit, my friends. 

Around the world eugenics was catching on predominantly in Russia, Sweden and Germany.  Sweden was the first to jump on the “sterilize everyone that is icky” boat and in 1922 they established the first government run race biology lab.  However, they were small fish compared to those wily Russians and Germans.  After the death of Lenin, Russians at the Moscow Institute became obsessed with finding the biological foundations of intelligence and they found in eugenics a blueprint for creating a nation of geniuses.  Germans, for their part, were more focused on the body and aesthetics– they saw eugenics as the answer to creating an aesthetically pleasing, strong, hard working, compliant master race (sound familiar?).  In Russia, prominent geneticist Alexander Serebrovsky emerged with a five year plan that can only be described as….. far reaching…. Serebrovsky stated that Russia could realize their eugenics dream nation by abolishing the family, instituting infanticide for weak or undesirable infants and having women employed as breeders by artificial insemination.  All of this Aldous Huxley–esque planning garnered cries of “dude, too far” by the average Russians and eugenics began to fall out of favor by the mid–thirties.

Germany, however, was another story.  As most know (again, if you don’t, put DOWN the laptop and Read. A. Fucking. Book.), Hitler’s final solution (the Shoah, or Holocaust) included the extermination of Jews.  However, that’s really only the biggest part of the Shoah; in reality many people were put to death– Jews, Poles, gays, the physically and mentally handicapped and anyone who really didn’t fit the picture of the white, beautiful, strong, chiseled German.  Hitler, along with Goebbels and Mengele, et al were huge supporters of eugenics early on and when Hitler came to power as chancellor in 1933 his eugenics based views of racial superiority came with him.  These views took hold in Germany and persisted into the forties until the Allies kicked their racist, genocidal asses back to Munich and took all their fucking tanks.  (For real, we outlawed their military and took their fucking tanks)

Not surprisingly, after some 400,000 Americans died fighting against fascists espousing eugenicist principles (which is only slightly true, but that’s a different blog for a different day), the movement began to fall out of favor in the US.  But not before some 70,000 (the most commonly cited estimate) people were sterilized in the name of race hygiene before 1970.  By 1945 eugenics was basically a relic of the past (the final sterilization laws weren’t repealed until the 1970s, however), though you can still see it rearing its ugly head here and there, though it’s now called “scientific racism”, which is seriously more accurate. 

I humbly make my case for a name change for The Kardashian’s TV show: “The Kardashians: The Case For Eugenics”.   

**Disclaimer:  I do NOT actually support Eugenics, however, do they really need six kids and nine friggin’ seasons?  Seriously?**

For further information there are some seriously fantastic websites, including the above mentioned eugenicsarchive.org.   Also, PBS did a great, albeit very brief, write up on the basics, which can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh23eu.html. 

A great source of info is Kevin Nisson’s University of Dayton paper found here: http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Eugenics/eugenics.htm. 

If you really want to go in depth, Homo Sapiens 1900  is a very boring, horrifically creepy documentary on Netflix that focuses primarily on the Swedish, Russian and German eugenics movements and has been nominated for the “Creepiest Sounds You Can Make With Bells and Put In A Movie” award.   That’s not true.  But it should be.