Social Darwinism and Eugenics

How and why have people misused Darwin’s ideas?

Social DarwinismCoined in the late 19th century to describe the idea that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a struggle for existence in which natural selection results in "survival of the fittest."

Some social Darwinists argue that governments should not interfere with human competition by attempting to regulate the economy or cure social ills such as poverty.

Instead, they advocate a laissez-faire political and economic system that favors competition and self-interest in social and business affairs.

Social Darwinists typically deny that they advocate a "law of the jungle." But most propose arguments that justify imbalances of power between individuals, races, and nations because they consider some people more fit to survive than others.

Eugenics

The History of Eugenics

Eugenics and Anti-Miscegenation

Anti-Miscegenation: laws that enforced racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races.By 1900, 38 states already had bans on marriages between “whites” and African Americans, Asians, and Native Americans.

Eugenics and Anti-Miscegenation

In the 1920’s eugenics is used to make some of these laws even more stringent.Virginia’s 1924, Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, is eugenic inspired and not overturned until the 1967 Loving v Va. Supreme Court Decision.Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany as part of the Nuremberg laws, and in South Africa as part of the system of Apartheid.

State Sterilization Laws

The United States becomes the first country to sterilize people in the name of “racial purity.Indiana passes the first law in 1907. By 1935, 30 states pass sterilization laws.By 1929, approximately 8,500 sterilizations occurred. By 1940: 35, 000… by 1968: 65,000Some reasons for sterilization included epilepsy, blindness, feeblemindedness, sexual deviancy, deafness, and alcoholism.

Buck v Bell Supreme Court Decision(1927)

“Three Generations of Imbeciles are Enough!”

Supreme Court Justice – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Eugenic Health Exhibit(Topeka Kansas, 1927)

Eugenics and Immigration Restriction

The Johnson-Lodge Immigration Act of 1924 is an eugenic law.Racial quotas are established: based upon a ceiling of 2% of a defined ethnic group’s population according to the 1890 census.The law is not substantially revised until 1965.

There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.

President Calvin Coolidge Signs the Immigration Restriction Act into law

in 1924

He writes:

Eugenics and Academics

By 1928 more than 3/4 of all colleges had courses on eugenics.Between 1914 and 1950 more than 90% of all biology textbooks had a section on eugenics.Prominent educational researchers subscribed to eugenic notions of intelligence. (Lewis Terman, E.Thorndike, and E. Cubberly)

Eugenics and Educational Policy

By 1921, more than 2 million American children took IQ tests to determine educational tracking.Some of the most influential creators of standardized tests in the 1910’s and 20’s saw them as eugenic tools of measurement: Lewis Terman (Stanford), Carl Brigham (Princeton), and Edward Thorndike (Columbia)

The American/German Connectionbefore 1933

“What we racial hygienists promote is not new or unheard of. In a cultured nation of the first order, in the United States of America, that which we strive

toward was introduced and tested long ago.”

German public health official in Saxony referring to the sterilization laws passed in the United States.

( 1923)

Eugenics and Nazi Germany

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. It is in this book that Hilter lays out his plan for a Master Race.

Black, Edwin. “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics." San Francisco Chronicle. September 2003. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from History News Network: http://hnn.us/article/1796

The Downfall of Eugenics

However, as German measures against the Jews became even more radical, including deportation and summary executions, relations between the American and German eugenics movements cooled considerably. Nazi abuses of eugenics in the name of anti-Semitic policy tainted the term and might have contributed to the toning down of American rhetoric in the field. The rise of genetics as an established field of biology also dispelled eugenic myths.

"The Decline of the Eugenics Movement." American Decades. 2001. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from Encyclopedia.com:http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468301340.html

Your Investigation Task

Create a bubble map poster show “How and why people have misused Darwin’s ideas”? (this is your center bubble)Use the research provided on the history to create your diagram.For each branch, you need to cite which of your documents supports the misuse of Darwin’s ideas.

How and why have people

misused Darwin’s ideas?

Involuntary Sterilization

Laws(Doc 3 – “the few best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to

become parents…”)