4/16 - Eugenics

Next Class isn’t rly a class:

1 on 1 meetings (in his office) where you pitch your idea…doesn’t matter when you show up lol

  • 1 major source

  • scope

    • chronological

    • geographical (be more local?)

    • language

  • analytical thematic

    • class

    • gender

    • race

Ideas:

  • snake oil and miracle tonics

  • war and medicine

    • Civil War

  • people like Jemmy Button lol

  • …DRUGS HA

    • can it tie into snake oil?

  • reconstruction era

  • the ways in modern pharmaceuticals come to be

  • huckleberry finn and a snake oil salesman

    • expose perhaps?

Eugenics…everyone has em! But, they can be separated into 3 big sub-topics.

  • class

  • gender

  • race

How do we get successful families? There must be traits passed down from person to person to forge these families. Things are passed down. Tgis is founded by Galton…Darwin’s cousin smh.

  • Eugenics - the idea that certain traits are passed down

    • it is a “science”…you can make a religion outta this..and he TRIED

      • we have to get away from moral implications of human production

      • religious, social, ethical convictions cannot be taken into account bc it is more desirable to marry your match and eugenically fit for you

Positive Eugenics - encouraging the reproduction of individuals with desirable traits, which is often believed to lead to an improved population.

  • smart people marry smart people, which create smart babies

Negative Eugenics - the discouraging people of marrying based on certain traits, such as both individuals having inherited genetic disorders

  • (at the time) criminals shouldn’t marry criminals

  • discouraging of interracial relations

  • anti-immigrant

America

Buck V. Bell (1927) - people who have been institutionalized for mental defects or criminalities may be sterilized by the state without their consent

  • “3 gens of imbeciles are enough”

Baby Contest

  • babies were judged to see which was the best baby based on traits and their background

    • awards and money

    • both black and white participation

      • NAACP very much participated this, shockingly

Germany

By the 1930s, American eugenics is on the wane, but Nazi eugenics are on the rise

  • idea of stabbing them in the back

    • Jews stabbed Germans in the back, leading to their loss in WWI

The Nazi’s first experiments of gassing people were for the disabled, then they got taken to Poland after public outcry where they did it against the Communists, Jews, Roma, gays, etc

Reality ran into propaganda, as Nazi’s believed jews were the ultimate capitalists and communists…which doesn’t make sense bro