Was Eugenics Practiced In the USA?

[Ethereal]

This is a question from another thread:


I'm unaware of our conquest of India :wink::grin:. Was eugenics practiced in the US? Was it practiced in Nazi Germany? What would Alain think?
The answer to that question is: Yes, eugenics was practiced in the US. Here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

The US also had concentration camps (which FDR and his apologists euphemistically referred to as "internment camps") where over a hundred-thousand Americans were imprisoned based on pure racism against people of Japanese descent.

One has to wonder what would have happened to FDR's prisoners had the US been bombed to smithereens the same way Germany was by the Allied strategic bombing campaign.

Speaking of which, the Allied strategic bombing campaign was the systematic and deliberate targeting of civilians by Allied bombers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this campaign in Europe was the firebombing of Dresden which killed approximately 25,000 people, most of whom were women, children, old men, and invalids (most of the military aged men were fighting on the front lines). There are many other examples of this kind of barbarism. And of course everyone knows what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Chris]

Yes, the height of it was during the Progressive Era. It was believed you could by eliminating those you deemed not quite human that you could re-engineer man and society. It was the basis of the Nazi holocaust: the Germans borrowed it from the US. It re-emerges here in the personhood arguments for abortion: Unborn babies are deemed not quite human and thus expendable.

[donttread]

This is a question from another thread:


The answer to that question is: Yes, eugenics was practiced in the US. Here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

The US also had concentration camps (which FDR and his apologists euphemistically referred to as "internment camps") where over a hundred-thousand Americans were imprisoned based on pure racism against people of Japanese descent.

One has to wonder what would have happened to FDR's prisoners had the US been bombed to smithereens the same way Germany was by the Allied strategic bombing campaign.

Speaking of which, the Allied strategic bombing campaign was the systematic and deliberate targeting of civilians by Allied bombers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this campaign in Europe was the firebombing of Dresden which killed approximately 25,000 people, most of whom were women, children, old men, and invalids (most of the military aged men were fighting on the front lines). There are many other examples of this kind of barbarism. And of course everyone knows what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That was the way of the World wars. Kill civilians to force military surrender. The burning of the crops in the south didn't magically only starve soldiers either in the Civil War.
I think one of the few benefits of modern media is that we engage in less of that kind of war now. It also leads to longer rebellions or insurgencies following military collapse and what we call terrorism, which basically means when civilians are the targets of anyone aside from us or our allis. Take away . Don't make war unless you are invaded or seriously threatened with invasion. Clearly our "efforts" have only made the ME less stable. ( which is the goal in reality but not the propaganda sold to the public)
We need to stop cleansing war. We DO NOT need to be fucking around in the ME with our people and others killing and dying. The media should show every casket as it is off loaded, list every maiming. Then tell us where and when and hopefully why.
Modern war is truly where young people fight the wars of old greedy people. It needs to stop. Foreign oil and these related wars have done more to compromise national security than they have to protect it.

[southwest88]

This is a question from another thread:
The answer to that question is: Yes, eugenics was practiced in the US. Here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:
...



For a more comprehensive look:
War against the weak : eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race / Edwin Black, c2003, Four Walls Eight
Windows, 363.97 Blac.

Subjects


Eugenics -- United States -- History.
Sterilization (Birth control) -- United States.
Human reproduction -- Government policy
-- United States.
United States -- Social policy.

United States -- Moral conditions.


Length





xxviii, 550 pages, [14] pages of plates
:

[Chris]

For a more comprehensive look:
War against the weak : eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race / Edwin Black, c2003, Four Walls Eight
Windows, 363.97 Blac.

Subjects


Eugenics -- United States -- History.
Sterilization (Birth control) -- United States.
Human reproduction -- Government policy
-- United States.
United States -- Social policy.

United States -- Moral conditions.


Length





xxviii, 550 pages, [14] pages of plates
:










Was just reading about that book in a review by NIH: Was Nazi eugenics created in the US? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299061/).


...Black's book covers much of the ground that has now become familiar through a wide variety of scholarly, as well as popular, writings on the history of eugenics: its first formulation in the writings of Francis Galton; the concern, around the turn of the twentieth century, about racial degeneration, both in Europe and the USA; the incorporation of Mendelian genetics into much of eugenical thought (especially in the USA); and the role of eugenicists (particularly in the USA before 1933) in passing legislation legalizing compulsory sterilization, immigration restriction of those deemed genetically unfit, and the reaffirmation or strengthening of existing anti-miscegenation laws.

...Black is also correct that the American and German eugenicists were in close contact with each other, especially after World War I: they were working together in international organizations, following and even reporting on developments in eugenics in each other's countries. The Germans did, in fact, borrow much of their 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Defective Offspring (the so-called 'sterilization law') from the model sterilization law drawn up for the various states by Harry H. Laughlin, Superintendent of the ERO, and a number of American eugenicists were impressed with the Nazi eugenical laws after 1933. ....

I believe this is one reason FDR turned away from the Progressive label and appropriated the liberal label.

[southwest88]

Was just reading about that book in a review by NIH: Was Nazi eugenics created in the US? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299061/).
I believe this is one reason FDR turned away from the Progressive label and appropriated the liberal label.
Yah, there was a lot - a lot - of near-hysteria about The passing of the great race, with dozens of books in the same vein (vain?) It's still a great bugaboo in popular culture - as if mere numbers would account for the state of the World. There's also an excellent discussion of the topic - the furor over the demographics & birthrates in the World - in

The wizard and the prophet : two remarkable scientists and their dueling visions to shape tomorrow's world / Charles C. Mann, c2018, Alfred Knopf.

Subjects



Vogt, William, -- 1902-1968.
Borlaug, Norman E. -- (Norman Ernest), -- 1914-2009.
Environmental sciences -- History -- 20th century.
Food security.
Water security.
Energy security.
Climatic changes.
Environmentalists -- United States -- Biography.

Notes



One law -- State of the species -- Two men -- The prophet -- The wizard -- Four elements -- Earth: food -- Water: freshwater -- Fire: energy -- Air: climate change -- Two men -- The prophet -- The wizard -- One future -- The edge of the petri dish.

Summary



Presents two influential scientists, William Vogt (1902-1968), and Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), whose diametrically opposed views shaped modern understandings about the environment and related public policies.

Length



x, 616 pages :


Also discusses along the way the Green Revolution, cereal genetics/propagation, fertilizer (natural & chemical). I knew some of Borlaug's work, didn't know Vogt's. Both brilliant, driven men - & inspired networks of like-minded people. The book explains a lot of the current heated debates over the technical way forward for the West.

[Lummy]

Eugenics is practiced to this day but only by more intelligent people who understand it. Their idea, their doom, I guess.

[Lummy]

The "improprieties" of Lincoln and Roosevelt were necessary in times of real and present danger to the nation. To accuse either one of them as "racist" is highly inaccurate. Lincoln did, however, want blacks shipped out of the US. That's a fact, and one that, had it been implemented, would have made the US an entirely different living experience.

Can you describe how you think life would be today had Lincoln's plan been carried through?

I shall refrain from further comment lest certain people here get all bent out of shape.

[Tahuyaman]

The US has not attempted to execute a policy of race purification.

[southwest88]

The "improprieties" of Lincoln and Roosevelt were necessary in times of real and present danger to the nation. To accuse either one of them as "racist" is highly inaccurate. Lincoln did, however, want blacks shipped out of the US. That's a fact, and one that, had it been implemented, would have made the US an entirely different living experience.
…

Look up the valuation of slaves in the US in the 1860s (antebellum). Slaves were counted as the most valuable resource in the US @ the time, & there wasn't enough money in the US to actually buy them all, let alone transport, equip & train them & set them up in towns or villages (wherever that might have been - Africa was mentioned as a possibility). Lincoln's opinions varied over time, & in the end, I believe he recognized that there was neither the political will nor the capital to buy & free all the Black people held in slavery in the South (or throughout the country, come to that).

[Chris]

The "improprieties" of Lincoln and Roosevelt were necessary in times of real and present danger to the nation. To accuse either one of them as "racist" is highly inaccurate. Lincoln did, however, want blacks shipped out of the US. That's a fact, and one that, had it been implemented, would have made the US an entirely different living experience.

Can you describe how you think life would be today had Lincoln's plan been carried through?

I shall refrain from further comment lest certain people here get all bent out of shape.


Lincold came before the Progressive Era, and FDR ended it--at least in name.

[Mini Me]

Eugenics seemed like a good idea, until Hitler got carried away with it!

[Ethereal]

Look up the valuation of slaves in the US in the 1860s (antebellum). Slaves were counted as the most valuable resource in the US @ the time, & there wasn't enough money in the US to actually buy them all, let alone transport, equip & train them & set them up in towns or villages (wherever that might have been - Africa was mentioned as a possibility). Lincoln's opinions varied over time, & in the end, I believe he recognized that there was neither the political will nor the capital to buy & free all the Black people held in slavery in the South (or throughout the country, come to that).
With all the money Lincoln and the north spent on their invasion of the south, they could have liberated every slave in the country. Just saying.

[barb012]

I would guess this is in our future for us when we no longer serve a need for the elite

[Tahuyaman]

With all the money Lincoln and the north spent on their invasion of the south, they could have liberated every slave in the country. Just saying.


And what do you suppose woukd have happened if the slaves were simply liberated?

[Chris]

And what do you suppose woukd have happened if the slaves were simply liberated?

I was searching for stories of the camps created by the Northern army to place freed slaves in during the war. The slaves were left to self-rule, soon build houses and businesses, and actually prospered. At the close of the war these camps were dismantled and the slave dispersed to fend for themselves.

What I found instead was How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war):


Hundreds of thousands of slaves freed during the American civil war died from disease and hunger after being liberated, according to a new book.

The analysis, by historian Jim Downs of Connecticut College, casts a shadow over one of the most celebrated narratives of American history, which sees the freeing of the slaves as a triumphant righting of the wrongs of a southern plantation system that kept millions of black Americans in chains.

But, as Downs shows in his book, Sick From Freedom, the reality of emancipation during the chaos of war and its bloody aftermath often fell brutally short of that positive image. Instead, freed slaves were often neglected by union soldiers or faced rampant disease, including horrific outbreaks of smallpox and cholera. Many of them simply starved to death.

..Downs believes much of that is because at the time of the civil war, which raged between 1861 and 1865 and pitted the unionist north against the confederate south, many people did not want to investigate the tragedy befalling the freed slaves. Many northerners were little more sympathetic than their southern opponents when it came to the health of the freed slaves and anti-slavery abolitionists feared the disaster would prove their critics right....

[Captdon]

With all the money Lincoln and the north spent on their invasion of the south, they could have liberated every slave in the country. Just saying.

You're funny. You can't invade your own country. The money spent putting down the idiotic rebellion would not have been enough to buy 4 million slaves.

[Captdon]

And what do you suppose woukd have happened if the slaves were simply liberated?

The same thing that did happen. The South would have passed Jim Crow laws.

[Captdon]

I was searching for stories of the camps created by the Northern army to place freed slaves in during the war. The slaves were left to self-rule, soon build houses and businesses, and actually prospered. At the close of the war these camps were dismantled and the slave dispersed to fend for themselves.

What I found instead was How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war):

He overstates his case. His figure of a million is over the top. His reasons like cholera don't add up. Freed slaves were no more susceptible than anyone else. Other than the figure, I found it a part of our history I didn't know, or think, about much. I assumed they went straight to share-cropping as a means of living.

His main point that the slaves were freed and left helpless rings true.Few people thought that blacks were equal to whites. Whites opposed slavery didnt want them around.


They didn't have the ability to prosper on their own.Most of them had few salable skills and little reason to have business sense. Slavery was more than free labor. It was also the active denial of other skills that hurt the freed slave. They were kept at the lowest state of knowledge and it showed after the war.


Thanks for this post.

[Chris]

He overstates his case. His figure of a million is over the top. His reasons like cholera don't add up. Freed slaves were no more susceptible than anyone else. Other than the figure, I found it a part of our history I didn't know, or think, about much. I assumed they went straight to share-cropping as a means of living.

His main point that the slaves were freed and left helpless rings true.Few people thought that blacks were equal to whites. Whites opposed slavery didnt want them around.


They didn't have the ability to prosper on their own.Most of them had few salable skills and little reason to have business sense. Slavery was more than free labor. It was also the active denial of other skills that hurt the freed slave. They were kept at the lowest state of knowledge and it showed after the war.


Thanks for this post.

Perhaps he was a Southerner eager to prove abolitionists wrong.

I'll have to find the information on the war-time camps for together blacks did do well till the camps were broken up.

[Mister D]

You're funny. You can't invade your own country. The money spent putting down the idiotic rebellion would not have been enough to buy 4 million slaves.
It could have bought almost twice that amount.

[Captdon]

It could have bought almost twice that amount.

I stand corrected on the money part. I thought the South was worth more than it was.

[southwest88]

With all the money Lincoln and the north spent on their invasion of the south, they could have liberated every slave in the country. Just saying.
From The wizard and the prophet, Charles Mann, c2018, A. Knopf, p458:

"In 1860, slaves were the single most valuable economic asset in the United States, collectively worth more than $3 billion, an eye-popping sum at a time when the U.S. gross national product was less than $5 billion. (The slaves would be worth as much as $10 trillion in today's money.)"

So, no. There likely wasn't that much paper money circulating in the US @ the time. & politically, even if the US government had scraped together the money somehow (bonds?), Plantation Society's position in the World depended upon cotton & slaves. I don't think the large plantation owners would have sold in any event.

[Mister D]

From The wizard and the prophet, Charles Mann, c2018, A. Knopf, p458:

"In 1860, slaves were the single most valuable economic asset in the United States, collectively worth more than $3 billion, an eye-popping sum at a time when the U.S. gross national product was less than $5 billion. (The slaves would be worth as much as $10 trillion in today's money.)"

So, no. There likely wasn't that much paper money circulating in the US @ the time. & politically, even if the US government had scraped together the money somehow (bonds?), Plantation Society's position in the World depended upon cotton & slaves. I don't think the large plantation owners would have sold in any event.
The US Government estimated that the war cost a little over 6 billion dollars to wage.

[Lummy]

Lincoln's opinions varied over time, & in the end, I believe he recognized that there was neither the political will nor the capital to buy & free all the Black people held in slavery in the South (or throughout the country, come to that).

As always, there was strong opposition from blacks (or from abolitionist groups, rather) to a plan for deportation and time was short. Other crucial issues demanding attention, like the impending fall of Washington, pushed the entire discussion to the back burner.

Slaves need not have been purchased to participate in deportation, but they did have to be free as a legal technicality to settle the issue with slave owners. By the end of the war, they were all too pooped to deport, and of course, Lincoln was killed, which was not only a tragedy but a huge failure of continuity in his political vision.

[Captdon]

From The wizard and the prophet, Charles Mann, c2018, A. Knopf, p458:

"In 1860, slaves were the single most valuable economic asset in the United States, collectively worth more than $3 billion, an eye-popping sum at a time when the U.S. gross national product was less than $5 billion. (The slaves would be worth as much as $10 trillion in today's money.)"

So, no. There likely wasn't that much paper money circulating in the US @ the time. & politically, even if the US government had scraped together the money somehow (bonds?), Plantation Society's position in the World depended upon cotton & slaves. I don't think the large plantation owners would have sold in any event.

I agree that there is doubt about whether the owners would have sold. The money part is wrong as i found out. We did raise 6 billion to fight. So, the money was there.

[Captdon]

As always, there was strong opposition from blacks (or from abolitionist groups, rather) to a plan for deportation and time was short. Other crucial issues demanding attention, like the impending fall of Washington, pushed the entire discussion to the back burner.

Slaves need not have been purchased to participate in deportation, but they did have to be free as a legal technicality to settle the issue with slave owners. By the end of the war, they were all too pooped to deport, and of course, Lincoln was killed, which was not only a tragedy but a huge failure of continuity in his political vision.

There is also the fact that we couldn't have moved 4 million people anywhere.

[southwest88]

I agree that there is doubt about whether the owners would have sold. The money part is wrong as i found out. We did raise 6 billion to fight. So, the money was there.
No, the North (& the South) sold war bonds - see https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052970203990104576191061207786514

"Altogether, the federal government was able to get 21% of its revenue from taxation. The South, with its less developed and cash-poor agricultural economy, was able to raise only 6% that way.

"Fully two-thirds of federal government revenue came from bond sales, thus throwing most of the cost of the war onto the future. In 1860, the national debt had amounted to a relatively paltry $64 million. By 1866, it was $2.68 billion, a 40-fold increase."

(My emphasis - more @ the URL)

That money was raised on the premise that the North would win the war. But it took decades to pay off the loans, & that money likely could not have been raised if the purpose were to purchase all the slaves & transport them somewhere else.

[Captdon]

No, the North (& the South) sold war bonds - see https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052970203990104576191061207786514

"Altogether, the federal government was able to get 21% of its revenue from taxation. The South, with its less developed and cash-poor agricultural economy, was able to raise only 6% that way.

"Fully two-thirds of federal government revenue came from bond sales, thus throwing most of the cost of the war onto the future. In 1860, the national debt had amounted to a relatively paltry $64 million. By 1866, it was $2.68 billion, a 40-fold increase."

(My emphasis - more @ the URL)

That money was raised on the premise that the North would win the war. But it took decades to pay off the loans, & that money likely could not have been raised if the purpose were to purchase all the slaves & transport them somewhere else.

The money was still there. Whether or not the will was is debatable.

[southwest88]

The money was still there. Whether or not the will was is debatable.
Pres. Lincoln laid out the case himself:

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

August 22, 1862 Lincoln published a letter in response to an editorial by Horace Greeley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Greeley) of the New York Tribune (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Tribune) in which the editor asked why Lincoln had not yet issued an emancipation proclamation, as he was authorized to do by the Second Confiscation Act.

As the war continued, Lincoln's war aims changed. He decided to strike @ the South by putting pressure on the CSA to divert manpower to guarding the slaves, & to welcome escaping slaves into Union service.

As this progression of opinion was taking place, the political will to buy up & transport all the slaves was not in place - it never was, TMK. & bear in mind that in bringing slaves to the US, the youngest, old & weak died on the way. Transporting the entire Black population would have meant hiring or building a fleet of ships to carry the passengers in relative comfort.

[Mister D]

The numbers are amazing. The government spent more than the two times the value of every slave in country.

[ripmeister]

This is a question from another thread:


The answer to that question is: Yes, eugenics was practiced in the US. Here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

The US also had concentration camps (which FDR and his apologists euphemistically referred to as "internment camps") where over a hundred-thousand Americans were imprisoned based on pure racism against people of Japanese descent.

One has to wonder what would have happened to FDR's prisoners had the US been bombed to smithereens the same way Germany was by the Allied strategic bombing campaign.

Speaking of which, the Allied strategic bombing campaign was the systematic and deliberate targeting of civilians by Allied bombers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this campaign in Europe was the firebombing of Dresden which killed approximately 25,000 people, most of whom were women, children, old men, and invalids (most of the military aged men were fighting on the front lines). There are many other examples of this kind of barbarism. And of course everyone knows what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I guess I have a misunderstanding of what eugenics is. I thought it referred to the systematic elimination of certain races, those with birth defects etc. in order to create a genetically superior human, ie: the "Superman". Those "cleansing" policies along with systematic genetic manipulation and design are my take on the definition on eugenics.

[Mister D]

I guess I have a misunderstanding of what eugenics is. I thought it referred to the systematic elimination of certain races, those with birth defects etc. in order to create a genetically superior human, ie: the "Superman". Those "cleansing" policies along with systematic genetic manipulation and design are my take on the definition on eugenics.

Eugenics can be positive or negative. The former would include something like forced sterilization. The latter is a matter discouraging the unfit from reproducing while encouraging those deemed fit.