Label:
How the eugenists viewed the people they discriminated against, James Watson
Description:
Interviewee: James Watson
DNAi Location:
Chronicle>Threat of the Unfit>threats
Burden of the feebleminded
Eugenicists were concerned about the increasing cost of caring for the feebleminded, because they were thought to reproduce more quickly than normal individuals.
Threats within and without
The large asylums for the homeless and mentally ill that were built at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century may have given the impression that "social dependency" was on the rise in the United States. Studies showing that institutions commonly housed a number of related inmates provided evidence that mental illnesses, pauperism, and other "dysgenic" traits were hereditary. Thus, eugenicists were quick to calculate the costs of maintaining "genetically inferior" families in public facilities.
"Feeblemindedness," a catch-all mental illness characterized mainly by low scores on intelligence tests and supposed promiscuity, was a major concern of eugenicists. This owed much to Henry Goddard’s influential book, The Kallikaks (1912), an effectively related study of Martin Kallikak, whose marriage to a Quaker woman produced a good lineage (kallos for "beauty"). Martin’s dalliance with an attractive, but feebleminded, barmaid produced a second, dysgenic lineage (kakos for "bad"). Goddard hypothesized that feeblemindedness was caused by a recessive gene, which would be spread throughout the national germ plasm by the supposedly promiscuous behavior of feebleminded persons.
At the same time, eugenicists were concerned about the hundreds of thousands of southern and eastern Europeans who were entering the country each year through the U.S. immigration facility at Ellis Island, New York. Eugenics Record Office Superintendent Harry Laughlin provided a scientific rationale for growing anti-immigration sentiments in American society. In three Congressional testimonies, he presented data that purported to show that southern and eastern European countries were "exporting" genetic defectives to the United States who had disproportionately high rates of mental illness, crime, and social dependency. The resulting Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 reduced southern and eastern European immigrants to less than 15,000 per year.
James Watson discusses how eugenicists reacted to the problem of mental illness and sought to lessen the threat of the "unfit" to the United States.
Biological elements:
Concepts precesses:
eugenics
Tools & methods :
Immigration Restriction Act