Eugenics

In my history class today we had a special guest speaker that talked to us about racism, the history of racism, and about the relations to eugenics. In the class discussions, simulating a college seminar, we were asked to ask questions to the guest speaker before he got into his lesson to help us listen to him to find an answer. I asked him when do you think racism first developed and why? I was the first one in the class to ask him a question because of thirty seconds passing by without any of my classmates asking a question, I pushed through the barrier of being shy, and asked the first.

He started off by saying "like animals, humans are categorized by looks and actions." and doing so in a manner that only a persuasive man like him could say. Racism was always around, whether it be in myths and legends or, in the newspaper. I does not matter where it comes from but that it is there. He believes that Thomas Jefferson was one of the first of the people to use "science" to explain racism, even though he had slaves. Also he believes that racism is an aftermath of Eugenics.

"Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally."

Sir Francis Galton 1883

When Sir Francis Galton wrote agency what Type of agency did he mean? Are you talking about the KKK? No, he was not. He was talking about law enforcement, law firms, schools, medical facilities, and many others. He was trying to point out to us that it is all over the place and there is no way to be "colorblind" to it, but to take it by the horns and ride it for eight seconds in other words to let us deal with it and get over racism.He had a top eight reasons for why racism and genocide happens:

Eugenicist Idea's

1. Race exists.
2. Races are unequal, some are superior and other are inferior along a continuum.
3. Physical and behavioral traits between and within races are biologically determined. Environment has little or nothing to do with a person's development.
   
4. These traits are passed down from one generation to another by unit character (genes) in the germ plasma of the blood.
   
5. Especially concerned with each traits as criminally feeblemindedness, paupererium.
6. Sexual relations and marriages between superior and inferior types should be avoided otherwise the national culture will decline.
7. Science can help weed out "bad blood" through artificial selection (sterilization), immigration restriction, marriage restriction, etc.
8. Science can help society observe and measure eugenic difference in order to fertilize the process

By the end of this seminar all of the questions were answered, and we all gained a valuable lesson on the importance of being different racially, religiously, and sexually in a way that we all could comprehend. I learned that people who are normally in charge of any area are normally at the top of the food chain for a ideal society and those almost opposite are down at the bottom waiting for eugenics, racism, and genocide to take control over their lives and let them take its toll on them.