Transcript Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism and Eugenics

Themes and Big Q’s
 How was science used to bolster the imperial
enterprise?
 How was Darwinian natural selection appropriated
and misinterprated in Social Darwinism and
Eugenics?
Race and Empire
 The Great Chain of
Being reinforces a racial
heirarchy
 Classification of natural
world leads to
classification and
reification of races
Science and Imperial Enterprise
 Geography – measuring
and claiming of new
territory
 Anthropology – the
mismeasure of
“primitive” peoples and
the display of the Other
 Racial anthropoligists
advocated “polygenism”;
Louis Aggasiz strong
proponent
Darwin on Human Origins and “Races of
Men”
“It might be enquired whether man, like so many other
animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races…or to
races… that might be classed as doubtful species… Do the
races or species of men, whichever term may be applied,
encroach on a replace one another, so that some finally
become extinct?”
“Nor is the difference slight in the moral disposition between
a barbarian… and a Howard or Clarkson…Differences of
this kind between the highest men of the highest races and
the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations.
Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be
developed into each other.”
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
Darwin and Human Origins (cont)
 Darwinian evolution: no
particular heirarchy,
common descent, but
divergent branches
 Developmental (neo-
Lamarckians and
recapitulationists): racial
heirarchy; “lower races”
preserve earlier
evolutionary paths or
stages
Herbert Spencer and Social
Darwinism
 Social Darwinism in American Thought by Richard
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Hofstader (1944)
Natural laws applied to human societies
Justifies social inequality and resistance to
amelioration of poverty.
Potential evolutionary power of warfare (not Spencer’s
idea, but taken up by others) cultural influence on
World War I
Hard or blending heredity: both explain social
hierarchy (remember, Spencer is neo-Lamarckian!).
Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel
of Wealth (1900)
 “The price which society pays for the law of competition,
like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also
great, but the advantages of this law are also greater still
than the cost…But whether the law be benign or not…it is
best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the
fittest in every department. We accept and welcome,
therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate
ourselves, great inequality of the environment, the
concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in
the hands of the few; and the law of competition between
these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the
future progress of the race.”
Andrew Carnegie, 1900
Francis Galton and “Good
Breeding”
 Coins term “Eugenics” in
1869 Hereditary Genius
 Concept of “isolated
genius” and fear of
regression to the mean;
“swamping” by poor
stock.
 Encourage breeding of
fit pedigrees; discourage
breeding of unfit.
“Eugenics is the self-direction of
human evolution”
Case Study of Eugenics: The Juke Family
(1874-1916) and Kallikak Family
Positive Eugenics vs. Negative
Eugenics.
 Positive Eugenics: Fit Baby
 Negative Eugenics: Segregation
contests; marriage
counseling; marriage laws
 Fits also with neo –
Lamarckian approaches to
heredity
 Most c ommon form of
eugenics found around the
world (Brazil, Soviet Russia,
Kenya, Mexico, etc)
or sterilization of “unfit”,
mentally deficient.
 Goal is to eliminate “bad stock”
from gene pool: Immigration
Restriction Act of 1924
 60,000 sterilized in united states
(1909 – 1943)
 Bolstered by Mendelian
genetics, hard heredity
(Weismann’s germ plasm).
Case study: Buck v. Bell (1927)
 Carrie Buck sterilized by Virginia state after giving
birth out of wedlock; decision upheld by US Supreme
Court as mental deficient.
 Raises crucial issues of gender and class: promiscuity
frequently equated with mental deficiency (Buck most
likely abused by foster relation); Social Darwinian
ideas of poverty also tied to intelligence and fitness
 “Three generation of imbeciles are enough.” Walter
Brandeis.
California Sterilization and Nazi
Germany
 30,000 sterilized in California alone; sterilization law
on the books until 1970s (scandal of sterilizing women
of color in East Los Angeles).
 Prominent California leaders members of eugenics
movement including Luther Burbank, David Starr
Jordan (president of Stanford) eugenics not a
“fringe” activity, part of mainstream reform movement
 Carried out on mentally ill, poor, immigrants,
women race, class and gender crucial to this history
 Nazi sterilization law modeled on California’s; over
200,000 sterilized.
Eugenics and Darwinian Synthesis
 Variation, recessive genes undermines negative
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eugenics timeline to “breed out” bad genetic stock
grows to thousands of years
Proponents of eugenics include: Julian Huxley,
Herman Muller , RA Fischer idealist vision of society
Opponents: JBS Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky
Nature vs Nurture: importance of environment on
development and success
Nazi horrors lead to label of pseudoscience many
scientists disturbed by uses of biology in warfare
UNESCO Statement on Race (1949)
 All humans from one species with common ancestor
 Tiny genetic differences between different populations
of humans means “…the likenesses between men are
far greater than their differences.”
 “What is perceived is largely preconceived, so that
each group arbitrarily tends to misrepresent the
variability which occurs as a difference which
fundamentally separates that group from all others.”
The End