Eugenics In The 20th Century

Eugenics in the 20th Century
During 1912 in western society everybody was all about keeping the superior white race “pure.” Therefore, laws enacting eugenic measures such as forced sterilization were passed. Political leaders across the ideological spectrum supported its goals, and scientists thought of eugenics as the salvation of humanity. There was no one to save you should you be anything other than white-skinned. Francis Galton, one of the great polymaths of Victorian science in Britain, published a book in which he proposed a method for creating a race of supermen: “It is easy….to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practical
They render no useful service, they create no wealth; more often they destroy it.’ What, then, could be more natural than to end this misery by limiting its reproduction? Eugenics.” (Blom 340). The government had created this poverty and now their solution was to get rid of the people who were poor and in the slums. The way Charles Booth had encountered this image was a bit exaggerated. However, it gave people more reason to think that if they didn’t do something about it then all of Britain would fall into poverty and there would no longer be status nor order. This pushed them to think that the only solution was eradication of the poor. I also believe that for those who were rich and white-skinned, in aristocracy, even if they might have felt bad about killing off people for being poor, they feared their loss of status and wealth even more. The last thing they wanted was the government to take their money to give to the poor and so the easiest way to get rid of the problem, according to them, was to get rid of
“Steiner particularly made it his scared task to spread the gospel of race during his hundreds of lectures across Germany. According to his teaching of what is essentially a spiritual variant of evolutionism, Africans were at the very bottom of the scale while Europeans (Germans to be prices) stood at the pinnacle.” (Blom 355). The way Stein’s lectures are described as “sacred” and “the gospel of race”, show that people were really starting to believe Eugenics was more than just a founding of science, it was a religion to live by. It would justify their disgusting act of sterilization and make it seem they were doing to for the better, even when the only reason they went along with it was pure racism (and not just of skin