Introduction
The problem of eugenics is very important in the context of modern studies, I would like to discuss it refer to such books as Alexandra Minna Stern’s “Eugenic Nation” and Laura Pulido’s “Black, Brown Yellow and Left”.
If we are talking about eugenics within the United States during 1890 – 1945, then we need to say that one of the well-known modern inventors of eugenics was Alexander Graham Bell. He studied the grade of deafness on Martha’s Vineyard from Massachusetts.
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According to Alexandra Minna: “From this he concluded that deafness was hereditary in nature and, through noting that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children, tentatively suggested that couples where both were deaf should not marry, in his lecture Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race presented to the National Academy of Sciences on 13 November 1883” (Stern, 2005).
Another author, Pulido, mentions these: “However, it was his hobby of livestock breeding which led to his appointment to biologist David Starr Jordan’s Committee on Eugenics, under the auspices of the American Breeders Association. The committee unequivocally extended the principle to man” (Pulido, 2006).
So we can say that Bell suggested controlling immigration for the aim of eugenics; he admonished that boarding schools for deaf people may be considered as places of a certain deaf human race.
Another scientist who supported eugenics was Woodrow Wilson. According to Stern’s book: “In 1907 he helped to make Indiana the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilization of certain individuals; although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927” (Stern, 2005). Many states established laws about marriage with certain eugenic criteria. Such scientists as Davenport and Laughlin were great promoters of eugenics.
During the 20th century, scientists were involved in the research connected with the idea stated that mental illness could influence and run in families. A lot of studies were made on such illnesses as depression, bipolar disorder, and also schizophrenia. Results of such research were used by the movement of eugenics as evidence for its cause. State laws prohibited the marriage of the mentally ill and forced them, motivated these as a means of preventing the “passing on” of mental disease to next generations.
It is written in Pulido’s book: “These laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 and were not abolished until the mid-20th century. By 1945 over 45,000 mentally ill individuals in the United States had been forcibly sterilized. All in all, 60 000 Americans suffered from sterilization” (Pulido, 2006).
We can read such information from Minna’s book: “In years to come, the ERO collected a mass of family pedigrees and concluded that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds. Eugenicists such as Davenport, the psychologist Henry H. Goddard and the conservationist Madison Grant (all well respected in their time) began to lobby for various solutions to the problem of the “unfit”. (Davenport favored immigration restriction and sterilization as primary methods; Goddard favored segregation in his The Kallikak Family; Grant favored all of the above and more, even entertaining the idea of extermination.)” (Stern, 2005).
Nowadays we can state that such methodology was really flawed, but at the time it was considered lawful scientific research. Scientists were focused on the idea of a hierarchy of the human characteristic, but not on the idea of eugenics itself.
Some states did the sterilization of “imbeciles” for a large part of the 20t century. State authorities were able to sterilize those they considered “unfit”. We can find very interesting information in Stern’s book that says: “The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963. A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, the state with the most sterilizations by far, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified the mass sterilizations (over 450 000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration” (Stern, 2005).
If we regard William Graham Sumner’s idea of “genius” and “talent”, then we need to say that its key points stated that if governments of the state would not interfere in the laissez-faire policy of the social order, then those considered as defective ones: mentally retarded and handicapped people, would have a negative influence on the progress of the society because they would drain off certain resources needed for the life of “genius” and “talent” people.
This situation was mentioned in Pulido’s book: “They should be left on their own to sink or swim. But those in the class of delinquent (criminals, deviants, etc.) should be eliminated from society” (Pulido, 2006).
If we are talking about such scientists as Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, then we need to say that they greatly supported ideas of resembling eugenics with the aim to lessen African American suffering. However, ideas of eugenics were used to outline white racial purity; state “anti-miscegenation” laws banned marriage between different races. We can read such information in Pulido’s book: “The most famous example of the influence of eugenics and its emphasis on strict racial segregation on such “anti-miscegenation” legislation was Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned this law in 1967 in Loving, Virginia, and declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional” (Pulido, 2006).
If we regard the Immigration Act of 1924 with the respect to our issue, then we need to mention that eugenicists made a great influence on Congress in the question of the threat of certain “inferior stock” from the regions of Southern and Eastern Europe.
Facts from Sterns’ book show us: “This reduced the number of immigrants from abroad to 15 percent from previous years, to control the number of “unfit” individuals entering the country. While eugenicists did support the act, the most important backers were union leaders like Samuel Gompers” (Stern, 2005).
Assured by the eugenic belief of the racial supremacy of white Americans (“Nordic race”), this act strengthened existed already laws about prohibiting race-mixing. Eugenic views also lay behind the issue of the adoption of incest laws all over the United States; these were also used in order to authorize most of the anti-miscegenation laws.
Various scholars asserted such immigration restrictions were authorized by the aims of eugenics. Such eugenicists as Harry Laughlin and also Lothrop Stoddard argued that immigrants would “contaminate” the national gene pool. Alexandra Minna notices in her book that: “It has been argued that this stirred both Canada and the United States into passing laws creating a hierarchy of nationalities, rating them from the most desirable Anglo-Saxon and Nordic peoples to the Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who were almost completely banned from entering the country” (Stern, 2005).
We can say that before the Nazi’s “death camps” during the period of World War II, nobody took seriously the possibility that eugenics could cause genocide.
Nowadays the situation seems better, but there are still some states where a blood test is required before marriage. Such tests are usually restricted to the revelation of sexually transferred diseases Syphilis, but some partners may voluntarily test for genetic incompatibilities.
The 1986’s and the 1992’s Harris polls showed that the majority of the public goes for restricted forms of germ-line intervention, especially with the aim of preventing fatal genetic diseases inherited by children.
Conclusion
In 1971 The International Association for Voluntary Sterilization, generally called AVS, suggested to politicians and authorities that the special organization – Office for Equal Opportunity may pay for the voluntary process of sterilization of Americans with low income in order to improve birth control.
AVS organization also suggested their solutions on the International community’s issue. This initiative led to a certain foreign policy of the United States: funding from the American’s Agency for International Development to stimulate developing countries, generally called “Third World”, to use abortion and sterilization with the purpose of better control on their population growth.
Works Cited
Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
Pulido, Laura. Black, Brown Yellow and Left. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006.