Was Eugenics Practiced In the USA?

[Ethereal]

This is a question from another thread:

I'm unaware of our conquest of India . 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/Eugeni..._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/Eugeni..._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 $#@!ing 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?.

...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?.
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).