Self-inflicted Damage: Eugenics and White Replacement
I just presented at a NH high school and was inspired and energized by students’ interactions with and question about eugenics in the U.S. and Nazi Germany. It’s always fun, and disturbing, to begin by raising the question, “How did an elitist, antidemocratic, race-based, white supremacist, antisemitic ideology become popular and shape the norms and laws of the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s?” Admittedly, I’m pretty satisfied with how I got that into one sentence. More to the point, what happens if hate goes unchecked? What ethical questions are raised when we discover that American eugenics had a direct impact on Nazi “race hygiene” which escalated to mass murder? Why are eugenics language and ideas reemerging to justify hate of immigrants? I’m not so smugly satisfied anymore. Hate Tells Us Nothing About the Target Group I’m always asked to talk about antisemitism, hate, and bigotry and why certain groups are targeted. I always begin by saying that we will learn nothing about a targeted group when talking about hate. Instead, we will learn about the variety of intersecting and individual motives, fears, and needs of the believer. Blaming the victim is an easy way to justify hate that is destructive and importantly self-destructing. Confederate states committed treason and caused the blood-letting of the Civil War for two reasons: rejecting the election of 1860 and preserving the institution of slavery. Each succeeding state spelled that out clearly. The end result? Devastation. It is no coincidence that Berlin in 1945 resembled Richmond, Virginia of 1865. Hate is empowering but destroys us. Eugenics Eugenics was the movement to improve society by fixing its genes, a sort of animal husbandry for humans. Who should reproduce? Who was valuable? Who was a threat? Who gets to decide? Eugenics emerged out of rapid social changes brought about by the Industrial and French Revolutions which would continue through the 19th century. Rapid urbanization brought poverty, disease, exploitation, crime, despair, but also great fortunes for some. Were there enough resources for all? Were traditional power bases and important people safe? A lot of wealthy well educated white guys didn’t think so. Origins With Darwin’s Origins of the Species people began to think of how the rules of nature applied to human life. More to the point, how did this new scientific thinking give a framework to justify maintaining privilege? British thinkers created the idea of “positive eugenics” (that the right sort of people (white, healthy, likely educated and financially sound) should reproduce) and “negative eugenics” (that less “valuable” people: workers, the poor, infirmed, weak) should be eliminated. Adopting the idea of “survival of the fittest” gave a convenient “natural” argument (no longer tied to traditional moral constraints) that resources should be diverted from the “worthless” to the “valuable”. Eugenics contributed the idea that all undesirable traits were inherited and not necessarily about choice. German Empire In Southwest Africa (Namibia today) colonial German troops suppressed the Herero and Namaqua peoples at the turn of the 20th century. Dripping in nationalism (Germany was unified through three wars ending in 1871) and racism, Germans set out to prove why their race was superior. German scientists conducted medical experiments in concentration camps and there was even a killing camp, Shark Island. Intermarriage between natives and Germans was forbidden. If this sounds familiar, Hermann Göring’s father was the governor of SW Africa and Nazis later dressed up in their brown colonial uniforms in units led by veterans of the colonial slaughter to affirm their racial superiority. The U.S. While Britain and Germany had their eugenic thinkers it remained a relatively small clique of elites. The U.S. showed how these ideas could become mainstream. There were a variety of groups (often with nothing in common) that accepted eugenic language, some with zeal and others out of convenience. Former Confederates could keep building the “Lost Cause” myth and gain power by playing the race card; antisemitism was always a bedrock, as was anti-immigrant sentiment. Anti-Immigrant Hate There’s much to discuss, but I will focus here on post-Civil War America’s embrace of hate of the immigrant. The Statue of Liberty and its lamp of hope went up in New York harbor in 1886. Immigrants had been coming in (mostly from Europe) to seek opportunity and help replenish and rebuild America. However, by 1879, the U.S. barred Chinese and
Asians from citizenship and in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Targeting Chinese workers who built the transcontinental railway allowed former Confederates to find allies with racists in California. As Jews began to arrive in the 1880s (escaping the pogroms) Boston brahmans created the Immigration Restriction League. Senator Lodge talked about the usefulness of racism and the League (finding allies in the KKK and elsewhere) saw a threat to the nation’s “race and blood” from foreigners they saw as “breeds” or “species” not individuals seeking safety. When President Trump talks about Somalis as “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime” he is echoing the language of the 1880s. Steven Miller adds to the diarrhea of hate that frames people as inferior species, "You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies…” "What do we think is going to happen?” Hate Education and Immigrants? Racists often attack education – a main vehicle for democratic dignity and progress. Eugenicists embraced antidemocratic ideas and embraced hate through “scientific” justifications. Of course, they ignored facts that got in the way. A 1917 U.S. Army IQ test administered to many immigrants joining the ranks was designed and twisted to reinforce racial prejudice. Indeed, the “data” collected would be the basis of one of the most important Nazi eugenics books. What they ignored was that blacks who had migrated north and had access to philanthropically funded schools performed much better than poor whites from Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky who did not have access to education. Maybe this wasn’t about genes and species after all! American eugenicists wondered why they “have no place to drive the Jews to” and remembered in the good old days, “they burned the witches but it seems to be against the mores to burn any considerable part of our population.” They also argued that “The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.” Hitler was impressed and praised American “Nordic pride in its politics” (referencing immigration restriction laws). The KKK with its slogan “America First” and other anti-immigrant allies in Boston and elsewhere passed the race-based 1924 Quota Immigration Law. My Turn “What is going to happen to us?” By the late 1930s America (due in large part to the levelling effect of the Great Depression) began to sour on eugenics. Were social position and prosperity really indicators of genetic superiority? Eugenics was more about prejudice than science. Funds dried up while researchers discovered that there were no scientific justifications for sterilizing the “feeble-minded”. As we started to let go the Nazis grabbed it. By 1945 they had killed millions and destroyed themselves fighting their war of “race and space”. The U.S., and its Allies won World War II. Our strength was our diversity that offered new solutions and commitment to the cause of building a more just Republic. Over 500,000 Hispanics served valiantly. The Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st “Black Panthers” continued valuable black service. Indigenous peoples were code talkers and Japanese Americans (despite or because of their families being locked up in U.S. concentration camps) produced the most highly decorated combat unit in U.S. history, the 442nd Nisei. My good fortune was to work with “Ritchie Boys” mostly ex-pat Jewish German refugees whose service provided about 67% of the battlefield intelligence that helped us beat the Germans in Europe. Those who vilify immigrants and refugees for personal political gain, grown from fear and hate, betray us. It is in our self-interest to foster freedom and diversity. It is purposefully self-destructive (although perhaps self-enriching) to extinguish the lamp beside the “golden door” of American freedom. Once while traveling in Israel my driver passed a blackened, dying forest. I thought maybe a missile had fallen. Oh no, he reassured me. We were stupid. Over there we planted one type of tree. A disease came and they died. Look over there. He pointed to a thriving forest full of a variety of trees. We got smarter. Now when a disease comes, only a few die, and the forest is strong enough to thrive. It is the perfect metaphor.
