Edwin Blacks War Against the Weak: Eugenics and Americas Campaign to Create a Master Race :: Edwin Black Eugenics Master Race Essays

Edwin Blacks War Against the light(a) Eugenics and Americas Campaign to Create a Master RaceTo the average American it seems unfathomable that US ground research into the scientific practice of eugenics could have been the foundation and impetus for Hitlers Nazi genocide and atrocities. In addition, notions of racial superiority and the scientific quest for the ontogeny of a pure Aryan nation, both by the United States and foreign countries, particularly Germany, were funded and fueled by monies from such prominent families as the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Harrimans. In his book, War Against the Weak Eugenics and Americas Campaign to Create a Master Race, author Edwin Black traces the history of the American eugenics movement, its influence on the rise to power of the Third Reich, and how it was the foundation for the development of scientific racism. Consequently, Black fears that though eugenics in the sense that we recall from the past is gone in name, the future still pres ents eugenic-like research under the guise of man genetic science, which once again is supported by corporate funding whose goals are more for monetary gain and globalization, rather than for the benefit of mankind.The origins of eugenic ideology can be traced to the mid-nineteenth century when English philosopher, Herbert Spencer coined the term survival of the fittest. Those strong and fittest would naturally rise to the top, for the benefit of society. Spencer, along with other leading scientists like Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel advocated the principles of the value of the human race based on this superiority logic supporting their findings through the combined applications of science and mathematics. In 1865, statistician Francis J. Galton postulated that heredity not plainly transmitted physical features, such as hair color and height, but mental, emotional and creative qualities as well, and so new theories were born. (Page 15). These characteristics were more than coincidental and Galton delimitate about classifying and categorizing thousands of people based upon his hypothesis that negative hereditary existed, and that bad traits would out weigh the good and as a result, people would spiral biologically downward. Thus the term eugenics was utilized as the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair the racial tonus of future generations. (Page 18).Using the principles expounded by Galton and through Mendels research in laws of recessive and dominant traits discovered in plant breeding, American researchers entered this new scientific field.