A Brief History of American Eugenics

An ongoing problem.

In 1921, a movement in the state of New York tried to ban anyone who wore eyeglasses from getting married. They believed the marriage could result in children who became a burden to taxpayers.

The bill never passed, but it got support from doctors, lawyers, professors, judges, and at least one state senator.

In the wake of a pandemic and a world war, Warren Harding won a landslide presidential victory in 1920 by campaigning on, in his own words, "normalcy." He promised a return to normal. It's not a coincidence that in their obsession with normal, Americans turned to eugenics, giving birth to the bad science that ultimately inspired genocide. And if you look around now, it's clear that Americans never learned their lesson.

Eugenics didn't start in Germany.

It started over here.

The idea itself originated with Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who invented the term in 1883. He argued that governments should play a more direct role in "improving" the human race through a range of poli…