The Black Politics of Eugenics
22nd January 2018
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, eugenics was a term associated with possibility and progress. Charles Davenport, head of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor, defined eugenics as “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding.” Eugenicists thought they could fix a whole host of problems with a clear understanding of heredity and its applications. Their strategies for human improvement often had negative consequences for marginalized people like African Americans, people with disabilities, and gender nonconforming folks.
We often think of these marginalized people as victims of eugenics, and they often were. But we don’t often ask what they thought of eugenics. What did human improvement mean to them? What did they think of the possibilities of eugenics?
The chief trick seems to have been breeding with white people, which I suppose is why we have so many ‘blacks’ that are anything but.