This week, our
readings were centered on the relationship between eugenics and disability.
Both the Levine and Bashford and the Baynton articles highlighted the essential
idea of eugenics that “some human life was of more value–to the state, the
nation, the race, future generations–than other human life” (3-4). They both discussed
the now controversial topic of eugenics and what the movement determined made
lives more or less valuable.
Levine and
Bashford’s article focused on defining eugenics holistically; they discussed
how eugenics prospered and differed throughout the world and how it was
connected to different social constructions, such as race, class, gender, and
disability. Levine and Bashford stressed that the concept of eugenics was
rooted in science, especially Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species, which
detailed his theory of natural selection. The fact that the idea of eugenics
was considered to be scientific was essential to its popularity. As was seen
our discussion last week on freak shows and three weeks ago on citizenship and
intelligence tests, the assumption that science, though by no means fully
objective science, “proved” disability greatly influenced public acceptance of different
theories and methods surrounding its management. This same phenomenon applies
to eugenics. Another important point made in this article was that during the
late 19th and mid 20th century, eugenicists believed
themselves to be modernists. According to Levine and Bashford, “Eugenics was,
in central ways, about modernity” (4). The combination of Eugenics being classified
as scientific and modern greatly contributed to its popularity, and for many,
outweighed the principles considered unethical today. The common opinion now,
and one viewed by some during eugenics’ prime time, was that the practices of
eugenics were unethical. Some of these practices were more radical than others;
they ranged from preventing marriages between individuals with certain traits
(for example the pivotal Loving vs. Virginia SCOTUS case) to sterilization of
people with undesirable traits (sometimes without their consent) to euthanasia
of disabled people.
Additionally,
both Baynton and Levine and Bashford draw connections between disability,
eugenics, and the ability to work. We have seen the connection between
disability and inability before in previous class discussions, and its power is
emphasized here. The generalization that disability, specifically deafness
highlighted in Baynton’s article, insured dependency and inability to work
prevailed regardless of contradicting information. Eugenics showed how this
inability to work was even considered to be a hereditary trait, defined as the
pauper class. Levine and Bashford discussed how in Britain, India, and other
countries throughout the world, eugenics greatly influenced and was greatly
influenced by caste prejudices. They
explained how, “When [western] eugenicists turned to the postwar global problem
of the ‘Third World,’ they imagined a globalized pauper class whose advance
demanded intervention, action, and expertise” (7). It is important to note that
this intervention was not a direct aid to the poor but rather an attempted
control of their reproductive lives. Baynton highlights that for immigration
officials at Ellis Island “the routine definition of the category to which
[disabled people] belonged overpowered the facts of their individual case”
(406). He also explicitly explains, “Disability was seen as the major factor
behind pauperism” (407).
I found many
points of intersectionality between these articles and our previous discussions
in addition to the relationship between disability and the ability to work. I
found it interesting how although eugenics focused on preventing the spread of
unfit hereditary traits during the late 19th through the mid 20th
century, in the United States birth control was not widely available to women
until the 1960s. Yet both articles subtly reveal that irresponsible sexual
activity was a danger to eugenics because it could potentially lead to the
passing on of undesired traits and because promiscuity itself was an undesired
trait. The story of Helena Boer highlighted in Baynton’s article explains this
phenomenon. Helena Boer made a fateful mistake when testifying for her two deaf
parents to be accepted into the US; she revealed that she was pregnant by a
deaf man who she was not yet married to. Baynton explains, “Pregnancy was
explicitly considered a disability that made women ‘more likely to become a
public charge’” and “for the daughter of a deaf parents to conceive a child
with a deaf man would have been seen, at the height of the eugenics movement,
as an act of reckless irresponsibility” (403). We saw a similar idea that
promiscuity was a signal of disability in our discussions of
institutionalization and citizenship/intelligence tests. Levine and Bashford
revealed another connection to institutionalization in relation to eugenics,
explaining how institutionalization was seen as a form of segregation,
separating the genetically fit and unfit (9).
Many of the
insights from both of these articles intertwined with many of our previous
discussions, revealing the complexities of studying and defining disability. These
articles broaden our understanding of the eugenics movement’s classifications
of desirable and undesirable people.
Here is a
picture of a eugenics pedigree chart, which traces illegitimacy and
feeblemindedness.
Here are two
posters/propaganda that supported the eugenics movement.
Questions to think about for discussion:
- Did the eugenics movement find a balance
between scientific unfitness and social unfitness?
- What role do you think historiography
plays in the discussion of eugenics? Why do you think perspectives have changed
so drastically?
- Eugenics is often only associated with racism and the holocaust, how does this
knowledge hinder or help our understanding of eugenics?
- Do you think Baynton’s insights apply to
all disabilities or just deafness? Can we use his insights in a broader
discussion of disability, or are they too specific?
- How did eugenics influence the agency of
disabled people? Was it different for people with different disabilities?
- Are there any other points of
intersectionality that you believe are too significant to go undiscussed?
I would like to begin by addressing Sophie’s question: Do you think Baynton’s insights apply to all disabilities or just deafness? Can we use his insights in a broader discussion of disability, or are they too specific? I think Baynton’s claims apply more broadly to disability in general and not just deafness, despite the fact that his primary example of Fischmann deals with deafness. Rather, Baynton’s analysis ultimately focuses on how the disabled were excluded on the basis of becoming a “public charge,” which not only applies to deafness, but other disabilities as well. He writes, “When the federal government began in the 1880s to regulate who could enter the United States, the exclusion of what were termed ‘defectives’ was one of the primary aims of Congress” (393). Here, Baynton makes clear that his analysis is not exclusively limited to deafness, but rather anyone classified as “defective” more broadly. He continues, “The provision barring immigrants ‘unable to take care of themselves without becoming a public charge’ was intended to screen out those considered ‘physically defective,’ a category that included deaf people” (393). Again, Baynton references the “public charge” that disabled individuals could become, which emphasizes how this stigma “included” deaf people, but the use of the word “included” infers that there are more groups that are also included.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Baynton chooses to focus specifically on deafness because it was “a condition [that] straddled the line between mental and physical defect” (403). Thus, there was much fluctuation with regard to who was admitted and who was rejected, which is why Baynton makes use of a litany of examples where the outcomes differ greatly. In addition, the discussion of deafness is important because it emphasizes preexisting notions of disability and questions of dependency. The entire question of whether or not someone would become a public charge was determined by their level of “dependency,” which was more ambiguous for deaf individuals because of its less visible nature than other disabilities. Baynton elaborates, “Occasionally the assumption of dependency was so obviously misplaced that immigration officials had difficulty sustaining it” (403). The following story of Charles McHardy emphasizes this engrained perception because he “presented himself as an independent adult…and the officials…found it difficult to see him as anything but a dependent” (404). Here, Baynton emphasizes how traditional perceptions of disability were manifested in immigration regulation. He finishes the section by writing, “But those who created immigration policy and the officials who enforced it relied largely upon images they carried in their heads from long cultural conditioning” (412). Thus, immigration officials already had predetermined notions of what it meant to be disabled (in this case, it equated with dependency), which shaped their understanding of disability and the corresponding policies that they implemented.
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This claim connects well with the Levine and Bashford document, because it shows the evaluative logic immigration officials used to determine which “dependent individuals” to let into the country. Levine and Bashford explain, “Eugenics always had an evaluative logic at its core. Some human life was of more value—to the state” (3). Thus, it is possible to understand the immigration officials’ responses to disability as a form of eugenics, because it included an evaluative logic to determine whether or not an individual would be productive for the good of the nation. Baynton explains, “Deaf people were culturally defined as social dependents rather than social contributors” (394). Baynton thus elaborates how deaf people were conceived of as unproductive and could not contribute to the good of the nation. Baynton continues by explaining how sterilization programs were limited, “the screening of immigrants was another way to accomplish the same goal: the reduction in the number of those deemed defective, dependent, and undesirable” (395). Thus, despite not being a true sterilization program, the immigration policies had the same goal and the same effects as the eugenic programs described in the Levine and Bashford essay by attempting to regulate who entered the country on the basis of productivity and dependency.
ReplyDeleteBaynton’s analysis is not so limited that it excludes other aspects of disability, but rather he chooses to focus on the issue of deafness because it represented one of foremost examples of how individuals who could be productive were still primarily perceived as unproductive.
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I’d like to address my discussion toward Sophie’s comment asking how an understanding of Eugenics wholly in terms of racism and the holocaust may hinder a more appropriate interpretation.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Holocaust, sterilization programs, and documents using racist assertions to justify the the preceding examples may constitute the most extreme and jarring permutations of actions brought on by the Eugenics movement, there exist examples of alternate programs seeking to change the constitution of the population by positively selecting for those considered best. Levine and Bashford categorize this duality as “twin sides of the Eugenic coin: efforts to improve the fertility of some (positive Eugenics) while curbing the fertility of others (negative Eugenics)” (5). Alongside fitter family competitions, tax incentives, and exhortations for fecundity for those of the superior ethnic group came an active focus upon “race betterment and race improvement”(10). Bashford and Levine also recount how many studies addressed “the inheritance of ability” and how in Russia, “eugenics focused far more on improving the “fit” rather than worrying about the effects of leaving the “unfit” to their own devices” (11). That Eugenic discussion focused upon positive selection of the most exceptional in addition to racist, degeneration narratives is not to say that Eugenics is in any way redeemed by this alternate subset. Discourse proclaiming the need for selection of the fit implies the subordinacy and inadequacy of all other ethnic groups and bodily constitutions nearly as much as dialogues and endeavors that directly assert the unfitness of certain individuals. In fact, Bashford and Levine offer that within essays discussing positive Eugenics came “the persistence of degenerationist discourse” (10). As a result, it seems that rather than absolving Eugenics of any wrongdoing, discussion of positive eugenics alongside other modes provides a more nuanced perspective, allowing for an amalgamation of tactics for selection more appropriate for understanding the science.
Simultaneously, a focus upon only the racist aspects of Eugenics especially in regard to immigration constriction in the early twentieth century may limit understanding by ignoring oppression of other groups that transcend simply racial identifiers. Within his article, Douglas Baynton discusses the extreme difficulty deaf-mutes had in immigration, citing the cases of Moische Fischmann, Schie Budwicky, Gedalie Rothstein, Charles Mchardy, and many other deaf-mutes who struggled to be admitted or were rejected entirely despite strong qualifications (391, 397, 400, 403). Baynton also notes that simply in the year 1915, “17,000 were excluded” even after making it through the harsh physical testing and rejection practiced by the ships themselves (407). In addition to rejection of deaf-mutes, Baynton describes how pregnancy itself “was explicitly considered a disability that made women ‘likely to become a public charge,’” often producing eugenic fears about heredity (403). Doubtless, pregnant women and deaf-mutes were not the only categorizations of people that were discriminated against by immigration policy in the early twentieth century, but they do serve to display the inaccuracy of a purely racial interpretation of Eugenics.
Sophie poses an interesting point concerning the historiography associated with the eugenics movement. I believe that tracing the political tendencies of eugenics may lend insight to the overall rate of change within the Eugenic-supporting community.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the governmental policies associated with eugenics may be read as either far-right or far-left. A government issuing eugenic policies could be seen as an authoritarian one aiming to enforce a strict code of appearance. A far right government would employ eugenic laws in order to assure uniformity in its subjects and an overall physical compliance with the regime’s values.
Likewise, a far-life government would employ eugenic policies in order to promote the greatest happiness for its subjects. For one living in a far-left state, the eugenic policies would ensure a physically and mentally homogenous life.
Levine and Bashford comment on the duality of eugenic policies when invoking Malthusian reasoning: “As this consideration of ‘excessive production’ shows, Galton and Darwin were heavily reliant on Malthus’s ideas about human population numbers” (5). Malthus theorized about the eventual collapse of the human race due to an exceeded carrying capacity of the Earth. Galton and Darwin would have applied this train of thought to eugenic practices by saying that undesirable genes ought to be discontinued in order to assure the continuation of humanity.
Likewise, Baynton notes that eugenics classified “members of ‘disfavored races’ and many other disabled people… as bearers of a potentially defective heredity” (395). This pseudo-scientific approach to eugenics created a new, political disability. If, for example, an Italian and English immigrant were interviewed for the same case of deafness, the immigration commissioner would have created a disability based exclusively on nationality (because he would deny one of the two mirror cases).
The subjectivity of disability, in this case, depends on nationality and other’s beliefs. As all three historians write, eugenic beliefs could become policy in any extreme state (either left or right). These policies, in turn, then create disabilities where there were none originally ex: an immigrant is deported because of a slight blindness in one eye.
Hello all this week I would like to address Sophie’s question “Eugenics is often only associated with racism and the holocaust, how does this knowledge hinder or help our understanding of eugenics?”
ReplyDeleteI would first like to address the hindrance caused by only associating eugenics with race. Levine and Bashford address this problem by causing this view of eugenics as only a race problem as “simplistic” (6, Bashford and Levine). They argue that eugenics never targeted other races specifically, but rather people who were categorized as “internal threats” (6, Bashford and Levine). By only associating eugenics with race this minimizes any damage done to those for reasons outside of race. However, there is an intersectionality with this point being that now only were different races often seen as a hazard to the stability and success as a country; also, as we saw in another one of Baynton’s articles, Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History, other races were often seen as disabled overall. Nonetheless, there are still examples that show how race was the most abundant victim of eugenics like in Baynton’s article we read this week where he compares the experience of two skilled immigrants trying to enter the U.S. coming to the conclusion that one was probably able to enter because he was “Scottish” while the other one was unable to enter because he was “Russian and Jewish” proving that race was still a substantial factor in eugenics (410, Braynton). Still, even though different races are always one of the largest victims of eugenics it is not because eugenics specifically targets other races but rather the traits of a victim of eugenics fits other races. Additionally, by only associating eugenics with the racism it minimizes victims of eugenics who were not of another race.
Now I would like to address the problems with only associating eugenics with the holocaust as an event. I feel like the most sizable drawback with associating eugenics only with the holocaust is that it leads to populations forgetting about other instances of eugenics and placing all the blame on NAZI Germany. This state of mind where eugenics is only associated with the holocaust totally glosses over the fact that eugenics was often associated with modernity. As Bashford and Levine discuss how during the first half of the twentieth century “scientifically authorized projects of race and racial purity were mapped onto this extensive new nation building” (12, Bashford and Levine). This shows that not only was NAZI Germany a society founded on eugenics, but any other society try to modernize during this time period felt that using the new scientific methods of eugenics would improve their countries. This constructs a new depiction of history where eugenics is more present in world politics than previously thought. Also by only equating eugenics to the holocaust creates the reality where only Germany was at fault and eugenics is over. Neither of these are true however as Bashford and Levine exhibit multiple examples of eugenics outside of Germany, and Braynton presents a reality of eugenics in America. Also Braynton shows that the ideas behind eugenics did not end with the holocaust but rather he submits an example from 1995 where two immigrants were denied entrance because they were deaf displaying that eugenics is still in existence in present day society.
Immigration policy towards disabled people in the early 20th century provides a specific example addressing Sophie’s question about disabled individuals seeking agency. Baynton suggests that the problematic nature of this immigration policy came from eugenic justifications that turned disability into a public health danger, depriving disabled individuals of the potential to seek agency in the first place. Many deaf immigrants did not have the chance to deliver their own testimonies and thus began their pleas for entrance into America from a position of appearing “incompetent and dependent,” which provided sufficient rationale for immigration officials to label them as future burdens on the public (Baynton 410).
ReplyDeleteThough over the past weeks, many people have commented on the privileging of abled-bodiedness for the purpose of generating productive workers, Baynton’s evidence clearly shows that rejection in the immigration process was arbitrary, since officials in charge of making these decisions could and did categorize people as “likely to become public charges” often despite overwhelming evidence of their ability to support themselves (411). Though Baynton’s insights focus on the exclusion of deaf individuals, his understandings of the immigration process as excluding based upon assumptions of individual defectiveness rather than relationship between people and their social settings proves crucial towards understanding the exclusion of disabled people through a social lens (412). Thus, although Baynton focuses on deafness as a particular target, his analysis reveals the social conditions that led to broader removal of disability.
Levine and Bashford also emphasize the treatment of disability as a public health problem to justify eliminating disability to create better conditions for future generations (10). Yet, Levine and Bashford focus more on the historical conditions that facilitated the uptake of eugenics. They explain how the more recent large wave of eugenics correlates with the development of the nation state and spike in nationalism (12). They also note the transnational uptake of eugenics ideas, showing the pervasiveness of ableism throughout different societies. Differing from Baynton, however, Levine and Bashford trace the spread of eugenics to an issue of life and death in the midst of scientific framings of evolution and the state rather than emerging from social conditions (20).
Hello All. This week I was particularly interested in Sophie’s question "How did eugenics influence the agency of disabled people?”
ReplyDeleteI think that the historiography of eugenics certainly falls under Gerber’s argument from the reading last week. While it is important to acknowledge agency in history, the eugenics movement was certainly an instance of oppression by an ablest society. By deeming some human life as having more "value” than other life, the movement was highly problematic (Levine and Bashford 3). Its logic "manifested as both passive withholding of treatment from, and active killing of, disabled people” (Levine and Bashford 9) In this sense, agency certainly may exist within forms of resistance, although when historians interrogate eugenics movements, there should also be a large focus on interrogating the oppressive construct. The Baynton article specifically focuses on the immigration process and thus focuses solely on the oppressive institution and not forms of resistance.
When recognizing ways that disabled immigrants made it into the US in the context of eugenics, Baynton specifically resists overly monolithic conceptions of eugenic immigration history; however, due to the incredibly controlled process, Baynton’s main focus centers around how much of the immigration process was designed to eliminate agency. For example, he acknowledges that "deaf immigrants were often admitted because they were children of hearing and otherwise non disabled parents” (385). While he resists the notion that the efforts towards exclusion were completely monolithic (excluding all disabled people), the most Baynton can argue is that disabled people often got through the immigration system by sheer luck (on the very next page, Baynton acknowledges that a disabled child with disabled parents would be excluded). This focus on luck often being the way to make it into the US continues with Baynton’s example from 1913 of Russian immigrant Yankel Falikman. A commissioner from Philadelphia considered his case separately from the rest of his family’s case (which meant his family was admitted). Due to the young carpenter’s disability, Falikman would have been seen as “defect;” however, due to that “defect” status, he had to be admitted due to the perception that he would be dependent upon his family which was already admitted to the US (400). After acknowledging how luck played an important role in citizenship, Baynton specifically points out how the system was incredibly controlling. Often not allowing disabled people to represent themselves and failing to provide interpreters for sign languages, the immigration process never gave most disabled immigrants the chance to influence whether or not they could be admitted. Additionally, Baynton notes that “the assumptions attached to the group [of immigration officials]… were so powerful as to nearly obliterate the individual they saw before them” (405). By acknowledging how the social system led officials to literally ignore the individuals before them, Baynton explains how the social system foreclosed most options to resist or act in the immigration process. Thus Baynton certainly resists the monolithic conception of the immigration process as a simple “disabled people are excluded - end of story” narrative while simultaneously acknowledging that the social structure was completely oppressive and often those with disabilities who made it into the US made it through by luck.
Thanks for the discussion.
-Will
In this blog post, I would like to focus on Sophie’s question regarding eugenics and its association with racist attitudes and the Holocaust. Sophie brings up the point that eugenics has often only been connected with these two things, yet as discussed in previous posts, racism and a majority of other oppressive social systems and structures have been a direct result from the negative stigmatization, both medically and socially, disabilities have acquired over time.
ReplyDeleteAs discussed previously, the idea that discriminated groups, like African Americans and women, were commonly deemed inferior because of perceived ability status resulted in the justification for prejudice movements like eugenics and miscegenation laws. Therefore, I would argue that disabilities were the underlying justification and reasoning behind the eugenic movements in the US and in Germany.
To further this idea, I believe that the idea of evolution promoted by Charles Darwin in 1860s and racial purity heavily contribute to the Eugenic movement. I also believe that the huge fluctuation of immigrants in the early 20th century contributed to the social desire to create a racially pure community (Baynton 393); eugenics was the tool to achieve that goal. Discriminated against and given a bad persona, immigrants were often deemed as disabled in some capacity, which added to the resistance towards mixing races and diluting the pure, healthy American blood and genealogy family tree (Bashford 4, 5). People desired “working” and “productive” bodies and reproducing with an immigrant or disabled person assumedly increased the risk of having an “inferior” child. Once again, being different or not fitting the socially accepted image of being “normal” was seen as counter-productive for society and harmful to the evolution of society; the eugenic movement reflected the desires of the government to achieve a racially pure society through the use of medically manipulating the genes being passed on from generation to generation (8, 9). Therefore, I believe the events preceding the eugenic movement in the 1920s framed the justification for legally sterilizing disabled and racially different persons.
I would like to respond to Sophie’s question regarding scientific/biological unfitness and social unfitness in the eugenics movement. I interpreted this distinction as an extension of the debate between the medical and social models of disability. Thus I viewed scientific unfitness to be physical disability and social unfitness as the inability to function in society due to various obstacles including disability.
ReplyDeleteEugenics attempted to classify people based off of physical or biological traits and to “affect reproductive practice through the application of theories of heredity” (Levine and Bashford 3). As eugenics was geared to promote “fitter life” and “to prevent life,” the primary motivations for eugenic movements related to weeding out physical unfitness in order to create a superior group of humans through selective reproduction (3). These theories can also be applied to not purely physical relations because in the eugenics movement “Some human life was of more value” than others due to both conceptions of physical inferiority as well as social inferiority (3). Biological fitness thus influenced conceptions of social unfitness because biological fitness determined a person’s social value in society.
Levine and Bashford discuss issues of racism in relation to eugenics and focus on ideas of racial superiority in conjunction with social and physical conceptions of fitness. For example, eugenics was commonly applied to people “whose continued presence diluted the race” (6). Racist societal views led to exclusionary practices that prioritized some life over others. These ideas were founded upon utopian conceptions of “racial nationalism and racial purity” (6). This formation of an idealized physical fitness designated people with disabilities or people of different races as biologically unfit, which, in one instance, led to the “sterilization of whites” as “a means of stabilizing respectable visions of whiteness in a changing demographic environment” (6). The view of white immigrants as physically unfit influenced social conceptions of fitness, as immigrants were said to be socially aberrant due to supposed biological differences. These biological distinctions could also be used to classify who was considered socially fit based on objective facts, providing a unique scientific justification for persecution. Eugenics offered a solution to these concerns of physical and social unfitness by reinforcing societal hierarchies and attempting to eliminate physical unfitness through scientific processes.
Similarly, Baynton discusses the implications of scientific and social unfitness in regards to disability. Primarily discussing issues related to deaf immigrants, Baynton repeatedly cites the phrase that immigrants would be “likely to become a public charge” (393) if they were admitted to the United States. This justified the exclusion of disabled immigrants due to a presumed inability to work. The fear of physical unfitness was used to justify social exclusion as “Physical difference meant defect, which meant dependency” (Baynton 412). Dependency could be considered a form of social unfitness, as people could supposedly not function in society on their own. The eugenic approach to the concerns of dependency contributed to the “assumption that disability was an individual rather than a social issue and that it was defective bodies that were at fault rather than the relationship between particular bodies and particular social environments” (412). This perception of disability as an individualized issue led to social unfitness in which people were depicted as dysfunctional not due to social relations, but due to purely physical disability. Eugenics in immigration attempted to resolve both the physical and social unfitness by barring those deemed unfit from entering into the society.
Sophie asks an interesting question about how eugenics is often associated with the holocaust and if that limited understanding of eugenics hinders the overall analysis of eugenics. I think that understanding eugenics as solely related to the holocaust oversimplifies eugenics as a whole and dismisses the subtler yet no less problematic aspects of eugenics that hinge more heavily on social exclusion. Although I do think Levine and Bashford do an excellent job of making apparent why the holocaust is an example of eugenics enacted on a large scale but not the only consideration. Bashford and Levine also agree that eugenics and racism go hand in hand however I think that if eugenics is only considered through the lens of racism as it is traditionally is in the holocaust, that lens obfuscates the part of eugenics that deals with the elimination and sterilization. The historical narrative of the holocaust so predominately relies on the narrative of the persecution of Jews and uses that as the sole example of eugenics on a large scale. However, in 1939 Hitler also signed an Adult Euthanasia policy which legitimized "mercy killing" in the case of a disabled individual.
ReplyDeleteI think that the focus on Eugenics in the holocaust typically boils down to a race based analysis of "darwinian superiority," however, through the lens of a disability scholar the issue is much more complex and the idea of defective bodies needing to be sterilized more prominent. Understanding eugenics solely as something that goes hand in hand with the holocaust also ignores the reality that for the most part eugenics was utilized to promote nationalistic fervor within European nations and as a byproduct of that eugenics differs greatly from country to country. What was considered the most evolved in one country was not necessarily the same in other countries.
I would like to address Sophies question regarding the common assumption that eugenics only deals with racism. I found this week's readings particularly interesting, as I wrote and read about immigration policy and disability history for my article review. I was intrigued by some of my peers' responses. However, I noticed that a lot of them try to argue that it should be just about disability or that we should be more nuanced in our understanding. I think both of these points are very convincing and valid. However, I would like to discuss what may have been the underlying cause that we can use to develop a more intersectional approach to the issue of eugenics.
ReplyDeleteMy article focused on Australian immigration policy. It concluded that Australia's ableist immigration policies stem from a drive to create the perfect "demos," or the exemplar democratic citizens. Levine and Bashford touch on this idea in their section regarding nationalism and the nation state. As new nations were developing, so too did new ideals that were "closely attended by health, hygiene, and population questions" (12). These ideals later developed into ideas that "'prioritized the duties of citizens over their rights.'.. it was typically the powerless and disenfranchised who were rendered problematic...these populations were increasingly understood in terms of what Maria Bucur calls 'biological capital'" (13). People were no longer viewed as active individuals. Instead, they were viewed as biological cogs in the nationalist machine - one's value only existed insofar as they were able to model the ideal citizen. Therefore, disabled individuals necessarily fell into the category of "problematic," for countries modeled the citizen as an active, politically minded individual. The preexisting beliefs that disabled people were neither, as shown in our last two discussions, meant that disabled people experienced the consequences of eugenic policies.
Furthermore, Baynton also brings up a similar point. Baynton argues that "the exclusion of deaf immigrants grew out of fears that deaf people would be a burden on the state and that they would reproduce more of their kind" (412). Similar to what my article argued, Baynton claims that deaf immigrants were refused entry because they would become dependent upon the state. This dependency serves directly counter to the exemplar citizen who provides for those around him and helps to serve the state, not to be served by the state. Thus, preexisting notions that disabled individuals could not be productive laborers, as shown in our discussion of disability and labor, created the stereotype that disabled individuals would hinder and cause more harm to the American "demos."
Thus, one can understand both the racial and ableist undertones of eugenics through an understanding of how nation states formulated their populations. By doing so, one understands how each of these different understandings of eugenics meet at a common point. In doing so, one recognizes the flawed underpinnings that provided the basis for eugenic policies. One cannot suggest that one was the root cause of the other, but instead they must recognize how all of the interact with each other. This analysis demonstrates that these eugenics policies rested on flawed notions of disabled individuals, racial minorities, and other minority groups as being unable to actively engage as a citizen.