About Eugenics
The American Eugenics Society was an organization that began in the United States in the early 1900s. Its mission included segregation, racial cleansing and the establishment of a strong, pure race untainted by the blood of those that were deemed lesser by race or disability. That meant the practice of forced sterilization for those who were deemed unfit to have a family, such as those with learning disabilities or those in institutions. It also meant forbidding interracial marriage, the forced sterilization of orphans, cripples, and the “feeble-minded"
The theories behind the practice came from the work of Charles Darwin and his cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Galton theorized that if only the best and the brightest married each other and bore children, it would elevate the human race.
At the height of the movement, 30 states had adopted legislation that legalized the sterilization of individuals deemed unfit for reproduction. In most states, that meant the mentally ill or mentally deficient. By the time all was said and done, about 60,000 people had been forcefully sterilized in state-sanctioned procedures. In some states, such as California, sterilization records are incomplete or often altered, making it impossible to truly know how many people were subjected to the procedures. It was done to men and women, Caucasians as well as individual from other and mixed races.
State laws in California included permissions for those who were in prisons to be eligible for sterilization, as well as those found to have any chance of carrying hereditary dementia or insanity. The laws also removed the patients’ rights to contest the procedure.
The Racial Integrity Act of Virginia was established in 1924. The purpose was to document the race of every person in the state, allowing for a massive genetic database to be created. The database was necessary for the rest of the law—making sure that someone whose heritage was purely white married only another similarly pure person. State Registrars were forbidden from issuing a marriage license unless the man and the woman in question could both produce such a certificate stating that there was no trace of any race other than Caucasian in their ancestry. If the clerk had any reason to believe that the racial profile was inaccurate, they didn’t have to grant a marriage license, either—not until both parties submitted proof that they actually, truly were white. Lying about your race on the form was a felony, and could be punished by up to a year in jail.The eugenics movement in the United States was largely discredited by the fact that eugenics was central to both the theory and practice of Nazism. California in particular has a long history of forced sterilization: sterilizations were forced on prisoners as late as the mid-1960s, in part because California’s long-time attorney general was a supporter of the practice, and it wasn’t formally outlawed until 1979. The law that was ignored in the case of the 148 prisoners over the past years was designed in the shadow of that history. It is a product of the understanding that forcibly institutionalized people are especially vulnerable to having their “consent” extracted from them, in ways that would never work if they were free persons. On the "bright side of things" majority of these women who were incarcerated, who were forced to partake in tubal ligation, had give birth to five plus children. An incarcerated woman who is coerced into being sterilized, has had a crime committed against her, just as it would be a crime if it were committed against a free woman.
During the peak of eugenics, state fairs across the country started holding Better Babies contests. Mothers were encouraged to bring their babies to fair judging contests, and in much the same way as livestock was judged, babies would be judged on things like health, weight, and size. Better Babies soon evolved into Fitter Families, a contest where whole families would present judges not only with their happy, healthy babies, but with an abbreviated version of their racial pedigree. Doctors would perform examinations on all the members of the family, awarding and deducting points according to guidelines, and families were given a letter grade to show just how eugenics-friendly their family was. Winners would be rewarded with medals and trophies in these contests, which remained hugely popular throughout the 1920s.
The theories behind the practice came from the work of Charles Darwin and his cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Galton theorized that if only the best and the brightest married each other and bore children, it would elevate the human race.
At the height of the movement, 30 states had adopted legislation that legalized the sterilization of individuals deemed unfit for reproduction. In most states, that meant the mentally ill or mentally deficient. By the time all was said and done, about 60,000 people had been forcefully sterilized in state-sanctioned procedures. In some states, such as California, sterilization records are incomplete or often altered, making it impossible to truly know how many people were subjected to the procedures. It was done to men and women, Caucasians as well as individual from other and mixed races.
State laws in California included permissions for those who were in prisons to be eligible for sterilization, as well as those found to have any chance of carrying hereditary dementia or insanity. The laws also removed the patients’ rights to contest the procedure.
The Racial Integrity Act of Virginia was established in 1924. The purpose was to document the race of every person in the state, allowing for a massive genetic database to be created. The database was necessary for the rest of the law—making sure that someone whose heritage was purely white married only another similarly pure person. State Registrars were forbidden from issuing a marriage license unless the man and the woman in question could both produce such a certificate stating that there was no trace of any race other than Caucasian in their ancestry. If the clerk had any reason to believe that the racial profile was inaccurate, they didn’t have to grant a marriage license, either—not until both parties submitted proof that they actually, truly were white. Lying about your race on the form was a felony, and could be punished by up to a year in jail.The eugenics movement in the United States was largely discredited by the fact that eugenics was central to both the theory and practice of Nazism. California in particular has a long history of forced sterilization: sterilizations were forced on prisoners as late as the mid-1960s, in part because California’s long-time attorney general was a supporter of the practice, and it wasn’t formally outlawed until 1979. The law that was ignored in the case of the 148 prisoners over the past years was designed in the shadow of that history. It is a product of the understanding that forcibly institutionalized people are especially vulnerable to having their “consent” extracted from them, in ways that would never work if they were free persons. On the "bright side of things" majority of these women who were incarcerated, who were forced to partake in tubal ligation, had give birth to five plus children. An incarcerated woman who is coerced into being sterilized, has had a crime committed against her, just as it would be a crime if it were committed against a free woman.
During the peak of eugenics, state fairs across the country started holding Better Babies contests. Mothers were encouraged to bring their babies to fair judging contests, and in much the same way as livestock was judged, babies would be judged on things like health, weight, and size. Better Babies soon evolved into Fitter Families, a contest where whole families would present judges not only with their happy, healthy babies, but with an abbreviated version of their racial pedigree. Doctors would perform examinations on all the members of the family, awarding and deducting points according to guidelines, and families were given a letter grade to show just how eugenics-friendly their family was. Winners would be rewarded with medals and trophies in these contests, which remained hugely popular throughout the 1920s.