On Eugenics & History (I)

H-Law published a review by Lynne Curry of two recent books on eugenics, including Paul Lombardo's account of Carrie Buck, and her experiences before, during, and after the notorious case of Buck v. Bell. 

Here is an excerpt from the Review:

Eugenicists, many of whom were associated with the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Springs Harbor, New York, exercised a profound and disturbing influence on law and social policy, including drafting a model compulsory sterilization law and then vigorously campaigning to have it replicated in the states.  While much of this material will not be new to historians, Carrie Buck’s story becomes even more compelling steeped in the rich detail that Lombardo provides.  Buck was an extremely poor, barely educated, seventeen-year-old rape victim, who in 1920s Virginia became a pawn of a blatantly self-serving cast of incredibly shady characters.  Mandatory sterilization laws had met with mixed success in state courts, and therefore in Virginia a small circle of eugenicist lawmakers, doctors, and institutional directors conspired to write and enact a statute and then manufacture a test case to gain a judicial stamp of approval for their own project.  Lombardo vividly presents the patently absurd case concocted purporting to show that Buck was both “feeble-minded” herself and the daughter and mother of feeble-minded females, rendering her a genetic threat to the population and a fit subject for the operation. (Her younger sister was also sterilized.)  Buck’s lawyer, himself a major crusader in Virginia’s sterilization campaign, “violated every norm of legal ethics” in deliberately failing his client at each step in the case, leaving Buck quite literally defenseless (p. 155).

I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Lombardo at the AAHM Meeting in April, and it was wonderful to get the chance to chat with him a bit about the history of eugenics.

Dr. Lombardo has compiled a wonderful web site in support of his book and his work, which features a rich digital supplement chock-a-block with downloadable primary sources from the public domain.  I cannot recommend either the book or the website enough.

As notorious as Buck v. Bell is, I think it is actually underemphasized in terms of its importance, mostly because the case aptly demonstrates how powerful was the hold eugenics exercised on American society during the 1920s.  Lombardo's book, which I am currently in the middle of, does an excellent job of separating the scholarly and religious debate over eugenics from the widespread acceptance it enjoyed among wide swaths of the lay public.  This last point is an important methodological aspect of any social history, which both Fairburn and Jenner warn against (presuming that the attitudes, beliefs, and practices of an elite subsume those of various less privileged communities and subgroups).

Having legal training as to Buck v. Bell helps, not so much because the case is difficult to interpret, but more because knowing anything at all about American legal history suggests just how visionary and singular a mind was Oliver Wendell Holmes.  Arguably the most important jurist in that history, and one of the most influential in Anglo-American jurisprudence itself over the last 100 years, Holmes was nevertheless ready, willing, and able to utter the infamous line: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.  This is a critical example of the reach and power of eugenics ideas, and it is absurd, as so many do, to see this history as a curio, an artifact. 

Roughly 90% of pregnant women informed that their fetus has trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) choose to terminate the pregnancy.  I do not judge this decision, but do want to note that there is no way to interpret this as anything other than an example of the persistence of eugenics tropes.  Disability studies scholars have repeatedly pointed out that prenatal testing itself is founded on eugenics, whether we endorse or reject the practice.

The history of eugenics demonstrates the importance of understanding history dialectically, as events, ideas, and conditions continue to shape the world we inhabit in profound ways.  There are, in my view, fewer short-sighted approaches to the study of history then to perceive it as a linear "that-was-then-this-is-now" phenomenon.  History has much more to offer than that.  Despite the frequency with which people bandy about Santayana's quote, my suspicion is that a much lower percentage of those who quote him approvingly actually understand why it is that history repeats itself.  It does so, in short, because it never really leaves us.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Neuroskeptic]

"Disability studies scholars have repeatedly pointed out that prenatal testing itself is founded on eugenics, whether we endorse or reject the practice."

This is a rather ambiguous statement. It could mean that PNT is historically the product of the Eugenics movement. Or it could mean that eugenicists would have been in favor of PNT. Or it could mean that PNT can only be justified by arguments that eugenicists would agree with. But those are all very different.

I guess I find this kind of thing troubling because it calls to mind the claim that Eugenics was founded on Darwinism or that Nazism was founded on Nietzsche.

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

Hey Neuroskeptic,

Yes, the statement was ambiguous, but this is a blog post, not a polished manuscript. Here's my attempt at clarification:

To the best of my knowledge, there is no immediate historical connection between PNT and the eugenics movement. Whether eugenicists would have been in favor of PNT is irreducibly speculative, though given the ample historical record of their beliefs, I find it hard to believe that committed American eugenicists would have found much to differ with in regards to PNT.

As for the third possibility you raise, that "PNT can only be justified by arguments that eugenicists would agree with," I don't see how that is fairly implied by anything I write. I certainly think that PNT can be justified by arguments eugenicists would agree with, but it does not follow that PNT can "only" be justified as such.

(That may or may not be the case, but I don't see how that argument is contained in my text).

My point here is that it seems difficult to understand why overwhelming percentages of persons in the U.S. faced with the decision of whether to terminate a trisomy 21 fetus choose to do so absent the belief that it would be better if the fetus with trisomy 21 was not born.

This is itself a core eugenics idea -- that it would be better for the person themselves, better for the family, and better for society if certain persons were either not born, in the case of Buck v. Bell and the Black Stork, or in the case of already-living persons, were removed from society.

I find your final comment puzzling, because I am not sure what "kind of thing" you find "troubling." No historian of American eugenics that I am aware of reduces the American eugenics movement to any kind of linear connection with Darwinism, as if Darwinism "caused" eugenics, or any such absurdly simple and naive notion.

However, it is equally spurious to deny that Darwinism's immense influence, and, indeed, the entire scientific field of heredity exerted an enormous influence in the scope and direction of American eugenics in the first few decades of the 20th century. Scientific racism was all too real, and while American eugenics is certainly not reducible to scientific racism, and not all eugenicists were scientific racists, it would be white-washing in the extreme to pretend that such racism played little part in shaping the scope of American eugenics c. 1890-1930.

As for Nazism and Nietzsche, I don't see the analogy. I am no Nietzsche expert -- far from it -- but virtually anyone who has taken an undergraduate level class on Nietzsche with a halfway competent teacher should learn very quickly that the Nazis twisted and corrupted Nietzsche for their own purposes.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

[overworkedwriters]

I have this tendency to twitch whenever eugenics is presented. In concept and properly practiced, it is actually a very good idea. However, various implementations of it over history have left it with a very negative reputation.