Experts Gone Awry: Eugenics Movement Revisited

Yesterday I shared how an expert, with major funding, built what was expected to be the first airplane. Instead, it crashed, and the New York Times declared that it would be a million years before we'd witness a manned flying machine. This was 1903, yet before the year's end the Wright Brothers made aviation history. The point being that experts don't always know what they're talking about.

Looking back on a century ago, one might be surprised at how many bad ideas were germinated by so-called experts, especially when you consider the ideas spawned by Social Darwinism. Because of its utopian belief in human perfectibility -- that is, the perfectibility of the human race -- and confidence in it experts, the movement went off the rails by embracing the eugenics movement.

I don't know your thoughts about Woodrow Wilson as a president, but the more I learn the further he falls down the ranks in my book. Woodrow Wilson was a supporter of the eugenics movement and the broader "racial science" prevalent during the Progressive Era. He viewed it as a rational, scientific approach to improving human heredity and social organization. His endorsement of eugenic principles was intertwined with his advocacy for white supremacy, and his policies on segregation.

I never knew that as Governor of New Jersey, Wilson signed a bill in 1911 that authorized the compulsory sterilization of criminals and those considered mentally disabled. It was described as "An act to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded, epileptics, rapists, certain criminals, and other defectives". This aligned with similar measures he campaigned for in Indiana in 1907 with the end result that Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. [EdNote: The law was overturned in 1921. However, in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions. Go figure.]

How could this happen? Well, because educated "experts" persuaded the public this was good and right.

Wilson used the theories of eugenics to justify his belief in the inherent superiority of white individuals, particularly those of Nordic descent. He frequently expressed racist views and viewed Black people as inferior.

On March 9, 1919, the Legislature of North Carolina passed a similar law with the fancy title "An act to benefit the moral, mental, or physical condition of the inmates of penal and charitable institutions." The purpose of this legislation, as the name suggests, was to "improve" the condition of individuals living in state institution by allowing them to be sterilized.

Actually there were a lot of liberal ad ssocialist intellectuals who supported eugenics during the early-to-mid 20th century, including H.G. Wells and the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger, as well as Bertrand Russell. Regarding Russell, I remember hearing Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame going on a rant against Christianity on the radio and citing Bertand Russell, "the smartest man of the las 100 years," as proof that there was no God because Russell was an atheist. Which again proves my point: experts don't always know what they're talking about.

[EdNote: This occurred around late February 2004, right after The Passion of the Christ opened in theaters. Contemporary accounts describe Rooney delivering a “mean-spirited diatribe” against the film and Gibson, essentially arguing that a brilliant thinker like Russell (a well-known atheist and philosopher) rejected Christianity, so the movie’s religious premise was suspect or unworthy of serious regard.]

 

The scary part of this story is not what we've done in the past. Rather, how pervasive, influential and damaging they can be when pushed by so-called experts and their media mouthpieces. It takes work to stay informed. When advocates trot out their troves of experts, it does not mean they are right.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences.

Second International Eugenics Conference

https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/timeline/517228a6eed5c60000000017
includes timeline

September 25-28, 1921. The Second International Eugenics Congress at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, one of three held between 1912 and 1932. Fifty-three scientific papers were presented, most by Americans, and Alexander Graham Bell served as honorary president. The conference was originally scheduled for 1915 but due to the outbreak of the First World War, was re-scheduled.

America's Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement

https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/#:~:text=The%20eugenics%20movement%20took%20root,and%20principal%20interested%20in%20breeding.&text=Movies%20and%20books%20promoting%20eugenic%20principles%20were%20popular.

The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. Beginning around 1930, there was a steady increase in the percentage of women sterilized, and in a few states only young women were sterilized

A 1937 Fortune magazine poll found that 2/3 of respondents supported eugenic sterilization of "mental defectives", 63% supported sterilization of criminals, and only 15% opposed both.

No one knows for certain how many compulsory sterilizations occurred between the late 1960s to 1970s, though it is estimated that at least 80,000 may have been conducted

Harry Laughlin 

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/eugenical-sterilization-united-states-1922-harry-h-laughlin 

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin

A 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics. 

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is 502 pages long and has seventeen chapters. Harry Olson, the Chief Justice of Chicago's Municipal Court, introduces the book, followed by a preface written by Laughlin

 the book reports Laughlin's analysis of how states could benefit from sterilizing their mentally disabled residents, and it reprinted his model sterilization law, which he encouraged state governments to adopt. Laughlin's model sterilization law stressed the need for the sterilization of populations that Laughlin deemed inadequate for reasons ranging from physical appearance to socioeconomic status. The document influenced twentieth century legislation in the US about reproduction and compulsory sterilization. Although Laughlin suffered from epilepsy, he advocated for breeding out specific populations from the general population, including epileptics, the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, alcoholics, the blind, and the deaf. 

Related Links

Bad Ideas: The Eugenics Movement In America

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/bad-ideas-eugenics-movement.html

Shedding More Light on the History of Eugenics: Are These Ideas Still With Us Today?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/02/shedding-more-light-on-history-of.html

Eugenics, Revisited

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/02/eugenics-revisited.html

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration

"We have all been here before; we have all been here before."
--David Crosby, Déjà Vu

With immigration policy at the center of our national conversation, I went to the library last week to find a specific book that was referenced in an online debate. What I found (among other things) was another intriguing title: One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over Immigration.

Before tackling our current immigration issues I wanted to set the stage by outlining the various stages of our own immigration history, The Seven Eras of U.S. Immigration History.

Jia Lynn Yang's book, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide, is a well documented deep dive into the decades-long battle over U.S. immigration policy from the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 through the enactment of the transformative Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In other words, it covers Era Five of the seven periods. 

The 1920's was a strange time in our history. Many people have images of flapper girls and wild parties, inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It was also an era of gangsters and turf wars generated by the Volstead Act (Prohibition). Simultaneously, we have images of a "lost generation," the young veterans of WWI having returned to a society they didn't understand, that didn't really understand them either. (See "Soldier's Home" by Hemingway in his first small volume of short stories, In Our Time.)

The early 1900s was also a time when the Eugenics movement gained significant traction,  legalizing sterilization in 33 states lest "inferiors" reproduce. Eugenics was seen as a means for addressing overpopulaton and "over-multiplication of the unfit and unintelligent," among other societal problems. Promoted by intellectual elites, the eugenics movement reached its apex in the early 1930s. More han 66,000 Americans were sterilized against their will.

We should also note here that the Ku Klux Klan had had a rebirth at the beginning of the last century as well and were well represented in politics. According to the Congressional Record the Klan elected about 16 U.S. Senators as well as 11 governors, along with an undetermined large number of congressmen. "Undetermined" means that not all federal officeholders were openly affiliated with the Klan, but owed their electoral success, in part, to Klan support. (This surge in Klan power also contributed to mass migration of blacks from the Deep South to industrial centers in the North. But that's another story.)

The combination of these factors contributed to passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, which imposed ethnically based national quotas on immgration, sharply curtailing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and nearly banning immigrants from Asia, reflecting widespread nativism and racial prejudice of the era.

Yang's book follows the political struggle to dismantle these discriminatory quotas over the next forty years, focusing on the efforts of key lawmakers, activists, and presidents—from Emanuel Celler, Herbert Lehman, and civil rights advocates to presidents like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—who worked to build coalitions for reform.

This long campaign culminated in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished the national-origins quota system and created a new immigration framework emphasizing family reunification and skills. That legislation dramatically reshaped America’s demographic landscape and opened U.S. immigration to people from Asia, Africa, and Latin America in unprecedented numbers.

Yang frames much of this history through personal context—drawing on her own family’s immigrant experience—while illustrating how the yesterday's debates over immigration policy resonate with ongoing controversies today.

Related Links
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide (Amazon reviews and more)
A More Perfect Union: Eugenics In America
Birth Selection vs Birth Control
Ideas Have Consequences. Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882