When Charles Darwin published his thoughts on how living things originated or “evolved,” it had serious effects on the world. Besides breeding people who did not believe in God and creation, it caused a lot of trouble around the world. Darwin’s cousin, called Francis Galton, used that as a basis to preach that certain humans are not fit to live or to be born. He called this idea, “Eugenics.”
What is Eugenics? People who believe in eugenics believe that certain humans do not have good blood or genes. Therefore, in order to save humanity and make a better world, people with bad genes should be killed, prevented from marrying or prevented from giving birth. People who believed in eugenics, therefore, thought that only people with “good blood” or “good genes “should be allowed to marry, give birth, and populate the earth.
This idea, after being birthed in 1883, quickly spread throughout Europe, and became especially strong in America. If Darwin is right, in that only the fittest will survive in his evolution teachings, then the same must be applied to humans: only the best must survive to keep the human race from extinction. Many scientists, politicians, philanthropists, legislators, lawyers, Universities, and judges came to believe in this teaching.
In fact, many Universities established departments to study eugenics. Research into eugenics was sponsored by John D. Rockefeller Jr., the Carnegie Institution of Washington, etc. Popular names such as John Harvey Kellogg (founder of Kellogg’s corn flakes), Theodore Roosevelt (former US President), Margaret Sanger (founder of the birth control movement), etc. all supported and promoted eugenics.
Eugenics believed that races such as the African race, Asians, American Indians, and Aborigines, were inferior as they were “less evolved” (primitive) and hence, were not fit to increase in population or intermarry with Europeans. In America, rich people, including J. H. Kellogg, gave money to collect information about people’s history and bloodlines, and make a record of all people in America. This was to be published to determine people’s fitness to marry etc. in what was called the Eugenics Record Office (ERO). Some institutions began to provide a eugenics marriage certificate to certify that one’s lineage is pure and qualified to marry.
Based on this idea, a lot of crimes, forced sterilization, wars, genocides, laws against marriages, etc., were undertaken. The effect of eugenics was so great that millions of Jews were killed because they were deemed inferior. Many humans were used as “animals” in zoos, called human zoos, to show that they were less evolved. Saartjie Baartman, Ota Benga, and several other humans from Africa and Asia were used as human zoos for display in Europe and America. I will expand on these in the next and subsequent write-ups under population control. The next article will delve deeper into eugenics.
