Psych Yerkes revision

Stephan Jay Gould

an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science.

America Immigration Restriction Act 1924

• American racial discrimination

• Exacerbated growing fears of other races weakening “American gene pool”

• Under the new law, immigration remained open to those with college education and/or special skills, but entry was denied disproportionately to Eastern and Southern Europeans and Japanese. At the same time, the legislation allowed for more immigration from Northern European nations such as Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavian.

Politically-Political rights/status

• By mid-1920s, the growing hatred against African Americans, immigrants, Catholics and Jews.

• Interracial Marriage Law: “That intermarriage between negroes or persons of colour and Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited; and the term ‘negro or person of colour,’ as here employed, shall be held to mean any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or negro blood.”

Eugenic movement

• From 1907 to 1932, states passes explicit eugenics laws that allowed for the government to sterilise the “insane,” the “feeble minded,” the “dependant,” and the “diseased”—all of whom were deemed incapable of making their own decisions about reproductions.

• The history of legalised forced sterilisation by the government begins in 1907 when Indiana became the first state to pass a eugenics law providing for the involuntary sterilisation of “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists.”

• More than 60,000 men, women and children were sterilised under these state laws.