American Eugenics Research Paper

Forced sterilization and Eugenics are terms you would associate with Hitler's heinous World War II crimes. Those terms were not isolated to war time Europe. From 1929 until 1977 Eugenics was a terrible part of North Carolina History that used selective breeding to extinguish lower class mentality and guarantee future generations. The State is trying to make amends to the victims of the past. For almost 50 years over 7,600 victims were evaluated harshly and then coerced or sterilized against their will. Eugenics scientists have used this method to target what they consider as the “undesirables,” mainly unwed, black females, and also the mentally disabled in North Carolina. This was done under the pretense to make future American generations stronger and smarter. Eugenics still negatively affects the people of North Carolina today.

Buck versus Bell 274 U.S. 2000 (1927) was the United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld a statue instituting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the mentally retarded “for the protection and health of the state.” (Holmes) It was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenics which is the attempt of science to improve the human race by eliminating “defectives” from the gene pool. (Elof) Paul Lombardo argues (in N.Y.U. Law Review, April 1985, 60(30):30-62) that the Buck case was a milestone in government power over individual rights. (Lambardo) In his essay “Carrie Buck’s Daughter: a popular, quasi-scientific idea can be a powerful tool for injustice,” Stephen Jay Gould attacks

In 1933, the Nazi's exercised eugenics as a direct way to rid individuals who were portrayed as "unfit" or

Written by Justice Holmes, the infamous Buck v Bell opinion, gives a summary and an analysis of how the court reached the decision to uphold Virginia’s sterilization statute. The case involved Carrie Buck, an 18 year old women in a Virginia institution for “feeble-minded” individuals, she was to be sterilized after being found to be feeble-minded. In addition to the summary of the case, Holmes raises his concerns with having more “feeble-minded” individuals and criminals parading the streets which justifies coerced sterilization.

Later the Circuit Court had supported the law and filed for the sterilization of Carrie. In 1925 Carrie’s lawyer Irving Whitehead supported the decision of the Circuit Court at the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia. So after all of this Dr. Priddy had passed away in which Dr. J.H. Bell had replaced him at the Colony. The case now became Buck v. Bell; Dr. Bell had sterilized Carrie in 1927 which then was released from the Colony (Buck v. Bell, 2006).

Future eugenicists can extort their knowledge and use it to their advantage. Eugenics is an interesting subject that is co-dependent on society; the future holds great possibilities for acknowledgment in this field of science.

We have all heard of concentration camps, but we think about the Germans and the Jew. We usually never think of the Native Americans as being part of any type of concentration camps. But unfortunately they were. Back when the Germans started construction on their own camps in 1933 they based some ideas of them on some of the United States Civil War camps, the ending resolution was based on American Eugenics programs that were already working in the United States. You can obviously see there have been camps in the country for nearly 170 years. Even back before the Civil War we did the same exact thing to Native American Indians. One of the first "Happy Camps" was called Oklahoma.

Many Eugenics organization lobbied for laws to be passed that promoted the sterilization of the deviants of society. In some cases the women who were sterilized tried to fight against the crime committed against them. In Buck v. Bell, 1927 the court ruled in favor of the sterilization of Carrie Buck. She was said to have came from a feeble minded mother and she was called feeble minded as well by Dr. Priddy of Virginia State Colony of Feeble Minded where she was a patient. Her mother was said to be immoral and was a prostitute. Carrie was adopted by another family and was raped by her cousin and was viewed as promiscuous, therefore sent to Dr. Priddy institution (Buck v. Bell). Promiscuous and immorality was viewed as a characteristic that

In contrast to the "negative" eugenics position of the state of Virginia, involuntary sterilization laws emphasizing breeding restrictions for society's "unfit" neither benefit the welfare of the individual nor that of society for several moral and legal reasons. The legal validity of these involuntary sterilization laws would be challenged within the Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. In September of 1924, at the age of eighteen, Carrie Buck, an illegitimate daughter of an allegedly feebleminded woman, was admitted to the Virginia's State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded. Six months earlier, the Virginia State Legislature decisively passed their involuntary sterilization bill authorizing the Superintendents of five state institutions to petition for the permission to sterilize inmates. Buck, who had a mental age of nine and an I.Q. of about fifty, had already given birth to an illegitimate child herself, who was allegedly feebleminded as well. At the time, the Superintendent of the State Colony, Dr. A. S. Priddy, petitioned for permission to sterilize this woman for fear that Buck would have more mentally defective children. The statute had provided that each Superintendent needed to receive permission from a special Board of Directors of that institution, who would hear the grounds for sterilization and determine whether or not to follow through on the operation. Priddy faced immense pressure from state officials to petition for sterilization, as

Social Origin of Eugenics The American Eugenics developed from the reshaping of the social and economic problems that succeeded the Civil War. The latter was followed by rapid growth of American industry and increase in mechanization. As a result of the two factors, people started migrating from farms to cities leading to their expansion, and exploitation of labor led to creation of labor organizations. In 1873, prices fluctuated, and businesses experienced many problems because of crises taking place every decade until 1900 creating labor unrest.

One reason our government should not limit how many children one has is because it can lead to abuse to citizens.

At the beginning of the 20th century, power and prestige was held by the majority of (if not only) White people. African Americans were living under Jim Crow laws, Native Americans were forced into reservations and all of the new immigrants were in crowded ghettos. Those that were a race other than White were at “the bottom of the social and political hierarchy.” One of the aims of the Eugenics Movement was racial purification. Using the concept of Mendelian genes, scientists would try to breed the best, smartest, most talented, most beautiful and always white individuals and breed out the worst and weakest colored individuals. Mixed race people were seen as not put together because it was a combination of the best and worst traits someone could have.” Frederick Hoffman, presented data, statistics and a theory that claimed African Americans would become extinct because of high death and disease rates that were caused by African Americans being biologically lesser than Whites. However, his analysis was flawed because it failed to mention how systematic poverty and social neglect could be affecting the health of African Americans.

This article begins with Mary Forr discussing how society has reached the point where people with disabilities are faced with the greatest form of discrimination available and how this type of discrimination grows when other persons within society get rid of individuals who have any genetic differences through abortions. Next Forr discusses the history of discrimination and how person with disabilities have been treated as “less than human.” Forr even gives and excellent example of this when she quotes Aristotle, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” In this instance Forr explains how the child was seen as a liability on the society in which it lived in and the child’s death was determined to be a greater benefit. Forr continues

The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists' desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally

In the years following World War I, the Social Darwinist movement lost some of its momentum due to the unpopularity of Germany 's Neo-Darwinism. Support for an individualistic and nationalistic based Social Darwinism died and was replaced by the state-enforced Social Darwinism of eugenics. Despite the widespread Christian attack on Darwinian tenets, Christians did not fight the eugenics movement in an effective way. Eventually, even legislatures controlled by Christians fell to the false promises of eugenics. Despite poignant criticism of eugenics among scientists in the United States, more than 30,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized. In an ironic twist of fate, the Nazis Party 's adoption of American Eugenics programs led to the virtual extinction of Social Darwinism in the United States.