Eugenics…Another form of discrimination
Eugenics is the practice of improving the human species through reproduction where people are selectively mated to produce desirable traits in a population. It was carried out to ‘breed out’ disease, and other traits such as mental illness and poverty which were rendered undesirable traits based on the assumption that they were hereditary. It is an ancient Greek word that means “good creation.” Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, propounded this idea in one of his literary works, The Republic, where he proffered that a superior society could only be created by encouraging procreation among highly privileged people and, disregarding reproduction among people who were socially disadvantaged.
Eugenics encouraged reproduction among people who were associated with the desirable characteristics and hence were referred to as being ‘healthy, intelligent and superior’ on the one hand. People who exhibited the undesirable traits, on the other hand, were segmented from the rest of the population through sterilization and segregation to prevent them from reproducing.
The idea has had an interesting history that dates back to the 19th Century. Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, through his studies on the upper-class Britain coined the term “eugenics” in his 1883 book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. He believed that the British elite could be propagated by selectively breeding individuals with ‘desired traits.’ Neither did the idea gain legitimacy in Britain, his home country nor did it succeed in the individual countries that adopted it, for example America and Germany. Due to the human catastrophe in the latter, eugenics lost its credibility and has been replaced by modern human genetic engineering.
America commenced the idea of eugenics through marriage laws of 1896, where Connecticut restricted marriage between people with epilepsy or who were ‘feeble-minded.’ This law led to the creation of the American Breeder’s Association in 1903 to study genetics. Eugenics was not entirely a successful idea, it took a dark turn where over 20,000 sterilizations were carried out in California state mental institutions to protect society from the offspring of people diagnosed with mental illness. Justice Oliver W Holmes of the US Supreme Court ruled that the forced sterilizations did not violate the country’s constitution. The sterilization program in California targeted Latinos, especially Latina Women, as it was deemed beneficial to the physical, moral or moral condition. They were put on sterilization underwent surgical procedures without consent. Mexicans faced prejudice and bias as they were regarded as ‘immigrants of an undesirable type.’
Adolf Hitler advanced the eugenic ideology in Germany through his 1934 book, Mein Krampf. He wrote that the Non-Aryan races such as Jews and Gypsies were inferior compared to their Aryan counterparts. In 1993, the Nazis had enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring that led to numerous forced sterilizations. Dr. Josef Mengele oversaw the eugenic experiments by using chemical eye-drops aimed at creating blue eyes, injected prisoners with diseases and performed surgeries without anesthesia. It is reported that almost eleven million people died during the holocaust while others were left with permanent disability.
REFERENCES
Journalist’s resource. Forced sterilization in California targeted Latina Women. https://journalistresource.org/studies/society/race-society/eugenic-sterlization-california-latina/
American Journal of Public Health. Disproportionate Sterilization of Latinos under California’s Eugenic Sterilization Program, 1920–1945. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5888070
Vice. California’s Dark History of Forcibly Sterilizing Latinas. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gy339b/california-forced-sterilizations--latina-women-history
History.com editors (2019). Eugenics. https://www.history.com/.amp/topics/germany/eugenics
Genetics Generation (2015). Introduction to Eugenics. https://knowgenetics.org/history-of-eugenics/
