Member-only story

The Eugenics Movement In America

“The Central Mission of All Politics is Race Hygiene”-Harry Laughlin

William Spivey
The Polis

--

Wikimedia Commons

“It is better for the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Eugenics is most often thought of as something Nazis did in their attempts to create a master race and eradicate the Jewish people. The Nazi’s “Final Solution” wasn’t their original plan to resolve their “Jewish question.” They evolved after attempts to force all Jews to emigrate, isolating them in ghettoes, and sterilization proved unsuccessful. It’s easy to point to Germawhohich murdered approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children during the Holocaust, along with other undesirables like Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals. But we shouldn’t forget that German eugenicists coordinated with American eugenicists for decades, and much of what Germany did was based on what they learned from Americans.

To be clear, Germany had its own eugenics advocates before the American influence. Wilhelm Schallmayer, for example…

--

--

Responses (13)