I'm sure you've been to a restaurant at least once when a little kid is screaming their head off at the table behind you. His older brother and sister are pulling each other's hair and bickering and your dinner is hardly an enjoyable event, but the parents of these little hellions aren't doing anything to intervene. Have you ever thought to yourself, "People like that should NOT be allowed to have children - it should be illegal!" Well, not so long there were laws about who could have children and who couldn't - and if you haven't guessed by now these laws, known as the Eugenics movement are what's on the menu for today's article.
Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of the Eugenics movement is the example of Germany under the reign of Adolf Hitler who dreamed of the "perfect" Aryan race. Even if you're not much of a history buff, I'm sure you know that Hitler believed that white people with blonde hair and blue eyes were superior human beings, while "lesser" groups (Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and homosexuals among others) were forbidden to reproduce, sometimes by drastic and horrific means such as genocide. Now, it might some completely outrageous to us that something like this was allowed to happen, so how did Hitler and his government justify ideas like these?
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the idea of evolution became fully accepted in modern society, and as policies perceived to be scientific were appealing to the public, ideas of Social Darwinism began to emerge. Evolution is the process by which natural selection acts on the physical traits of a species so that the fittest individuals of a species survive to reproduce, and thus over time the characteristics of the species change. Now, humans had long ago realized that they could act to "influence the process of evolution," so to speak; farmers were breeding the best cattle through artificial selection, and new types of produce were created by selectively breeding certain plants. So why not apply this concept of artificial breeding to humans as well?
The word eugenics means "good in birth," and it attempts to preserve desirable physical and social traits in future generations, but in order produce these "ideal" human beings, we first need to establish which traits we wish for them to inherit - which characteristics do we wish to preserve and which ones do wish to essentially eliminate from the population? Well, the traits that you possess are likely the ones you deem admirable - and this is exactly what the people in power did: they valued intelligence and education and they sought to eliminate insanity, "feeble-mindedness", criminality, alcoholism and pauperism. I'm sure then, that you can imagine how these policies were nothing but widespread, institutionalized racism against already marginalized groups of society. It may be more difficult to accept that these policies were not restricted to Nazi Germany, nor were they a short lived affair.
If we associate Hitler with eugenics how can his seeming opposite, Winston Churchill, support the same beliefs? Although history certainly portrays Churchill in a favorable light, he too, openly supported eugenics - he served as a vice-chairman on the British Board of Eugenics, and he supported a bill that would see the introduction of compulsory sterilization of people who were considered to be "feeble-minded".
Likewise, in both Canada and the United States, eugenics acts which provided a legal basis for sterilization of certain individuals were passed in the early 20th century. Now, you might be thinking that these acts were made with good intentions: after all, who wouldn't want to eliminate criminality and pauperism? But is poverty a genetically inherited trait? No, it most certainly is not! And who do you think made up the poorest groups of society? Generally, it wasn't English-speaking white men.
These laws were also demonstrably cruel in other ways - people who were deemed to be "mentally defective" were confined to "hospitals" or "schools" where they could not interact with society. How were people deemed to be mentally defective or "feeble-minded"? In the famous American case of Carrie Buck, a seventeen-year old single mother was chosen to be sterilized, prompting a Supreme Court Justice to famously proclaim, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
Buck was the perfect target for a eugenics act: her mother was locked in a mental asylum, she had a child but was unwed, and though her baby was only eight months old at the time, her baby was diagnosed as showing signs of feeble-mindedness. You should be able to pick out the discrimination and pseudo-science of the case, after all, how many babies can be diagnosed as mentally deficient at the tender age of eight months? If you need proof that these laws were unfounded, you should consider evidence that Buck's daughter received As and Bs once in school, and Buck was not some sort of teenage whore - her daughter was conceived as the result of a rape.
In Canada, the cruelty and bias of the Eugenics movement is also illustrated in Alberta, where men with down syndrome underwent surgical sterilization against their will - despite the fact that men with down syndrome were sterile to begin with, a fact that had been known for over a decade. And The Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act which legalized these actions? It was in effect until 1972 - that's nearly 30 years after the fall of Nazi Germany! During 1972, 55 involuntary sterilizations took place before the act was finally repealed for violating fundamental rights.
Thankfully, the "science" of eugenics has been debunked - or has it? First of all, we must recognize that the thousands of individuals who were sterilized as a result of Eugenics acts will never be able to have children, whether the laws have been repealed or not. Secondly, we need to deal with the problems which led to the creation of eugenics acts - problems such as poverty and crime can not be solved by ignoring the problem, but rather we need to take steps to help and support people who live on the fringes of society. Finally, we need to approach the idea of eugenics with a keen eye - it is easy to condemn these actions in hindsight and pat ourselves on the pact for the tolerance of modern society, but we need to be aware of our own actions so that history does not repeat itself.
Author's Note: Sources:
"Introduction to Criminological Thought"
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Eugenics-Cursed-Concentration-Camps.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/racism-history.shtml
http://www.canadiancontent.ca/issues/0299sterilization.html
