Eugenics – A deceptive pseudoscience
Some tribes and races consider themselves infinitely superior to others. These flawed views are never captured in constitutions or official policies. Worldwide, entrenched practice reveals blatant acts of discrimination or sparks thereof. It is a fact that white people generally consider themselves superior to all other races. As a general rule, wouldn’t you agree that leading the pack in the subtle racism agenda is the white, native English-speaking race, particularly Australians, Kiwis, the English and the Americans? Isn’t it true that they look down upon people who look pretty much the same as them; the Welsh, the Scottish, the Irish, mainland Europeans, Scandinavians and the Slavs? Of course, there are exceptions.
In Botswana, some people believe that some tribes’ IQ is so low that such people do not deserve representation in certain forums. In what can only be attributed to misguided etiology and overweening pride, such people’s contribution to the national economy is often relegated to menial roles that are considered to be less mentally taxing such as domestic workers, shepherds and herdsmen. Perched on their high horses, some ‘well-meaning’ parents have uttered the incriminating refrain, “I’m not tribalistic, but if my son were to marry a girl from that tribe, I would not bless that marriage.” Of the black nationalities, perhaps the most segregated people are the Nigerians. Wouldn’t you agree that even among blacks, there is discrimination based on the strength of the shade of black, that the darker you are, the less sophisticated you are? I am acquainted with black individuals who hold whites in high regard and have little if any respect for the rest of races, especially fellow blacks and people of Asian descent. I have observed this rather sad practice in some restaurants, where white people tend to be recipients of the best service.
In the absence of an informed prognosis, what impels people to take a dogmatic and harmful stance on issues that border on racism and tribalism? The Eugenics movement that took the US by storm in the early 1900s might help us understand relevant dynamics. Lies can be powerful, extremely powerful, and can cause untold harm to discriminated members of the society. Particularly when such lies are under girded by a divisive and emphatic pseudoscience like the theory of eugenics. In a purely simplistic form, eugenicists theorise that, if my grandfather and father were thieves, I will without fail be a thief. That stealing is a genetic disposition, the unalterable blueprint of my life’s journey, engineered into my DNA with surgical precision, and that neither education nor modern-day gene editing can reverse my defective genetics. You gotta be bonkers to believe that trash!
Among the strong advocates of eugenics were not only uninformed influencers of the day, much to the dismay of bioethicists, this sentiment also rippled through experienced psychologists and reputable politicians. As if that was not enough, through their philanthropic foundations, plutocratic families and corporate oligarchs entered the fray, availing funding for research purposes, thereby actively chasing the confirmation of the link between defective genes and social problems as an established fact. Among these families were the Rockefellers, the Harrimans and the Kelloggs.
In the 1927 Buck v Bell landmark case, the court’s view was that sterilisation was justified in a case where a mother, daughter and granddaughter were adjudged ‘deficient.’ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, a notorious justice of the Supreme Court of the US penned these words, “Society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” He concluded with this odious but punchy non-cryptic catchphrase, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Hypodescent as opposed to hyperdescent was the order of the day, and still is. In cases of intermarriages, the default race of offspring was that of the parent considered inferior. That explains why Barack Obama is considered black despite being the son of a black man and a white woman. There is no half-cast race in the US. The one-drop-rule suggests that whatever ‘little’ drop of black man’s blood Obama has in his genes qualifies him to be wholly labelled black and therefore decidedly inferior to his white compatriots.
While the US congress never enacted a federal law in favour of eugenics, typifying an era of moral decadence, several states in this oasis of civil liberties did, driven by what was believed to be the science of better breeding. The idea was to promote the quality of humans by preserving positive traits and chucking away negative ones. Eugenics maintained that there was a positive correlation between genetic make-up and social inequality and chose to ignore the link between such inequality and one’s environmental ecosystem.
For this reason, some less privileged people were considered socially inadequate. Among these were; the intellectually challenged and mentally handicapped, immigrants, alcoholics, paupers, ‘moral delinquents,’ criminals, epileptics and victims of chronic infections. Their condition was solely blamed on heredity and their capacity to procreate was more or less considered a crime against humanity.
Using highly subjective IQ tests, a hierarchy of imbeciles was developed. At the very bottom were idiots, people whose mental capacity could be equated to that of a two-year-old infant. Then came in a stratified tripartite grading of imbeciles; low grade, medium and high grade. Crowning the hierarchy were morons, people with a mental capacity of ten to 12-year-olds. Despite the fact that sterilisation glaringly violated the natural and civil right of procreation, in 1927, in a majority ruling of eight to one, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional to forcibly sterilise individuals who were considered socially inadequate. A typical case of innate savagery by brazen delinquents donning uninspiring and insipid long black robes, hell-bent on eroding humanitarian values. And a mediocre performance on every level, by the supreme body in the land charged with the responsibility to preserve the sanctity of the constitution! Justice Pierce Butler, though holding a dissenting view to the rest of the bench, was somewhat complicit too, as he did not bother to write a dissenting opinion.
Largely reflective of the depths of American depravity, without scruple, the eugenics invaded bodies of tens of thousands of ‘imbeciles’ and gleefully butchered their dignity as they forced them to fall victim to vasectomies, hysterectomies, salpingectomies, tubal litigations and castrations. Ironically, people were often sterilised for blue-collar crime, but white-collar criminals only got away with fines or carceral punishment. Adolf Hitler got the idea of wiping the ‘genetically inferior’ Jewish race from the Reichland from an American named Harry Laughlin. He took keen interest in Laughlin’s model law that advocated sterilisation of people with inferior traits. In 1933, Hitler enacted a law meant to prevent the birth of ‘defective’ offspring. Hitler was on his way to preserving a pure German nation, untainted by imbeciles, idiots and Jews. Fortunately, the sky did fall on the Nazis!
In Africa, lies have been told about twins, albinos and ‘witches.’ On the back of pseudoscience, antiquated views have thrived and flourished, leading to the demonisation of the minorities. They have been considered undesirable social and cultural misfits, and have in some cases paid the ultimate price for no wrongdoing. Inspired by popular but fallacious views, without applying their mind, many choked under pressure and chose to go after the crowd. A fleeting expedient of unimaginable harm! They lacked the intellectual resolve to question the status quo.
Rather than immerse ourselves in handwringing, may we and our children choose to be different and never allow our moral integrity to be eclipsed by the desire to fit in. We need to boldly shut out the endless din of falsehoods, particularly on issues at the epicentre of polarising views.
May we encourage our children to hold tightly to civic virtues, to listen to that intuitive niggling alarm, to ask questions and to demand answers and to show off their unconstrained valour as fully-fledged champions of ethical reasoning. We all have an obligation to ride the wind and crest the waves, ever ready to step up and to decisively thin the herd of modern day ‘eugenics.’ Let’s remember, the deliberate absence of positive action, is in itself a deafening unambiguous message of silent complicity.