America and Eugenics

Are you familiar with the pseudoscience theories of eugenics and its history in early 20th century America? If not, it is understandable. It is one of those historical embarrassments that we are reluctant to teach our kids about in history class. (Our nation has numerous such examples of convenient "national amnesia").

In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy funded prestigious academics to develop a scientific method of ensuring our people would be, as the Army's recruitment slogan goes, "the best that you can be". The plan was to establish national policy based upon science.

The resulting "science", called eugenics, was developed. In short, it concluded that to be "the best that you can be" required an intellectually superior, white race. It further concluded that to obtain such a people required the identification of so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs.

These people with "defective" family trees included poor people, insane people, disreputable people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, American Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm, the homosexual and anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by these American scientists.

American corporate entities involved included the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. Some of our country's most respected scientists were involved, as was the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department, various state governments and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They all were intent on breeding a eugenically superior race. The plan was to wipe out the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under Hitler, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide.

During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins.

After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — dove underground. Today, there are still those of the ultra-right who think eugenics is a pretty good idea.

Evangelical groups like the Evangelical Luthern Church in America were reportedly the most vocal opponents of eugenics during that time. In contrast, mainline Protestants were reportedly the most open to the idea. After all, the concept of improving the human race seemed to be both logical and scientifically sound.

- Sources include the Archive on the American Eugenics Movement at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/ and War Against the Weak by Edwin Black