PBS: 'The Eugenics Crusade,' Racial Pseudoscience In America's History

[appalachiablue]

The Eugenics Crusade, America's hidden history, PBS American Experience, 2018.

(8 mins) PROMO. The goal of the eugenics movement was simple and, to its disciples, laudable: to eradicate social ills by limiting the number of those considered to be genetically “unfit” –– a group that would expand to include many immigrant groups, the poor, Jews, the mentally and physically disabled, and the “morally delinquent.” At its peak in the 1920s, the movement was in every way mainstream, packaged as a progressive quest for “healthy babies.” Its doctrines were not only popular and practiced, but codified by laws.

Wiki. A hybrid derived from the Greek words meaning “well” and “born,” the term eugenics was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, a British cousin to Charles Darwin, to name a new “science” through which human beings might take charge of their own evolution. The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– movement that turned the fledgling scientific theory of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control.

Perhaps more surprising still, American eugenics was neither the work of fanatics, nor the product of fringe science. The goal of the movement was simple and, to its disciples, laudable: to eradicate social ills by limiting the number of those considered to be genetically “unfit” –– a group that would expand to include many immigrant groups, the poor, Jews, the mentally and physically disabled, and the “morally delinquent.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeble-minded

At its peak in the 1920s, the movement was in every way mainstream, packaged as a progressive quest for “healthy babies.” Its doctrines were not only popular and practiced, but codified by laws that severely restricted immigration and ultimately led to the institutionalization and sterilization of tens of thousands of American citizens. Populated by figures both celebrated and obscure, The Eugenics Crusade is an often revelatory portrait of an America at once strange and eerily familiar.

*Watch the full episode, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics-crusade/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

The eugenics movement became associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when the defense of many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of 1945 to 1946 attempted to justify their human-rights abuses by claiming there was little difference between the Nazi eugenics programs and the U.S. eugenics programs.[9] In the decades following World War II, with more emphasis on human rights, many countries began to abandon eugenics policies, although some Western countries (the United States, Canada, and Sweden among them) continued to carry out forced sterilizations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_trial

Since the 1980s and 1990s, with new assisted reproductive technology procedures available, such as gestational surrogacy (available since 1985), preimplantation genetic diagnosis (available since 1989), and cytoplasmic transfer (first performed in 1996), concern has grown about the possible revival of a more potent form of eugenics after decades of promoting human rights.
A criticism of eugenics policies is that, regardless of whether negative or positive policies are used, they are susceptible to abuse because the genetic selection criteria are determined by whichever group has political power at the time...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

[AnnieBW]

1. There's A Lot of Remnants of Eugenics

In our current laws. Not to mention the attitudes towards those who are mentally challenged, etc. I mean, just look at the Republicans - cut funding for the disabled and poor.

[appalachiablue]

3. Definitely, only foster the strong, eliminate the 'weak,'

social Darwinism, it's just not being called that directly.

[dweller]

2. whichever group has political power at the time...

and here we are ...


✌🏼

[Marcuse]

4. 1968

[appalachiablue]

5. Horror, and the critical year of 1968, tx for posting