In this episode, I'm going to take an even
closer look at eugenics and its movement
in the United States. So, what's eugenics? Eugenics is the study
of methods to improve the mental and
physical characteristics of the human
race by choosing who may become parents. This set of beliefs and practices, which
aims at improving the genetic quality of
the human population, played a
significant role in the history and
culture of the United States from the
late 19th century until the U.S.
involvement in World War II. The
American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of
the British scientist Sir Francis Galton.
He believed that an individual's genes
or some component of their physiology
directly controlled their human behavior.
In 1883, Galton first used the word
eugenics to describe the biological
improvement of human genes and the
concept of being "well-born". He believed
that genetics primarily determined the
differences in people's abilities, and
that eugenicists could implement 
eugenics through selective breeding in
order for the human race to improve in
its overall quality, therefore allowing
for humans to direct their own evolution.
Henry Goddard was also a eugenicist. In
1908, he published his own version of the
Simon-Binet IQ test.
He called his version, "The Binet and
Simon Test of Intellectual Capacity, and
cordially promoted the test. He quickly
extended the use of the scale to public
schools in 1913; to immigration in 1914,
and to a court of law in 1914. Unlike Gal-
ton, though, who promoted eugenics through selective breeding for positive traits,
Goddard went with a U.S. eugenics
movement to eliminate "undesirable" traits.
Goddard used the term "feeble-minded" to
refer to people who didn't perform well
on the IQ test. He argued that heredity caused
"feeble-mindedness", and found that the government should prevent
feeble-minded people from giving birth,
either by institutional isolation or
sterilization surgeries. First,
sterilization targeted the disabled
but was later extended to poor people.
American eugenicists endorsed
Goddard's intelligence test, and they
pushed for laws for forced sterilization.
Different US states adopted the
sterilization laws at different pace.
These laws, which the Supreme Court
upheld in their 1927 ruling Buck vs.
Bell, forced over 64,000 people to go
through sterilization in the United
States.
California's sterilization program, for
example, was so effective that the Nazis
turned to the government for advice on
how to prevent the birth of the "unfit".
While the U.S. eugenics movement lost
much of its momentum in the 1940s, in
view of the horrors of Nazi Germany,
advocates of eugenics, including Nazi
geneticist Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, continued to work and promote their
ideas in the United States. In later
decades, some eugenic principles made a
resurgence as a voluntary means of
selective reproduction, with some calling
them new eugenics. Now, as it becomes
possible to test for and correlate genes
with IQ, ethicists and embryonic genetic
testing companies are attempting to
understand the ways in which we can
deploy the technology ethically. This
information came from these websites.
You'll find these links below this video.
Be sure to subscribe to my channel, and
watch this series from the start. Next
Friday, I'll be back with a new episode
in my Series on Intellectual Giftedness.
Till then, I only want to say three
things: thank you for watching, have a
great day, and bye y'all.
