Edwin Black Eugenics Essay

In Edwin Black’s videos on eugenics

The term eugenics was first used by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, who is a respected British scholar and natural scientist, who also was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The popular theory in the late 19th century was Social Darwinism, which focused around the idea of “survival of the fittest”, this helped advocate eugenics into serious scientific study in the early 1900’s. Galton used the term eugenics as a meaning of “well-born”, he believed that the by selectively breeding individuals who have “preferred” traits the human race could help direct its future. Galton’s upper class Britain studies were based on this idea. A limited position in society was due to a good genetic makeup up. Galton’s ideas didn’t go as planned in Britain, but they did eventually come through in other countries.

The eugenics movement began in the United

multiple committees were created. This put to a new system of stricter immigration rules that were put into effect, along with the most threatening resolution which was a plan to sterilize “unfit” individuals to stop them from passing on their negative traits. There was a total of 33 states in the United States that had sterilization programs in place during the 20th century. These sterilization programs that were put into place were strictly for people who were believed to be mentally ill at first. However, later traits such alcoholism, criminality chronic poverty, blindness, deafness and promiscuity were believed to be serious enough that sterilization was used. Most people who were exposed to these sterilizations had no choice, African American women were even sterilized during medical procedures without consent, and since the program was ran by the government, they had little chance of dodging the procedure. During this time period, an estimated 65,000 American people were