The Horrifying American Roots Of Nazi Eugenics Summary

In the article, “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics by Edwin Black we are educated with knowledge most of us did not expect nor have any idea before reading. For many years majority of individuals including myself have blamed Hitler for “victimizing an entire continent and exterminating millions in his quest for a co-called Master Race” (Edwin Black; 2003). A good portion of our society believed that Hitler started and was responsible for the cleansing of ethnic races and cultures by invading continents. Hitler was believed to have done this by having doctors select victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination. However long before Hitler came into the picture, the problem of Eugenics already existed.
According to the text Eugenics “was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed “unfit,” preserving only those who conformed to a

Nordic stereotype”. In other words Eugenics was the science of improving the qualities of human race by controlled breeding in order to “increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary; 2014). This idea originated in California decades before Hitler took power and played a pivotal role in the “American eugenics movement’s campaign for ethnic cleansing.” (EB; 2013). During the early 1900’s California sterilized 60,000 Americans and thousands of marriages were segregated into colonies by these eugenics practitioners. The ideal they had going was “white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race.”
Different corporations like the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune funded the idea of Eugenics.

Carnegie Institution was made up of a laboratory complex that had millions of index cards of ordinary Americans where researchers would plot the removal of families, their bloodlines, and humans themselves! This seems so ethnically incorrect and just pure wrong. To have researchers cut off families and even humans just because they do not fit this ideal stereotype should not be allowed. It is illegal to kill and cause death on anyone especially because they do not fit the characteristics in a person you are looking for. This is discrimination because you are limiting the world to only one culture and look instead of accepting all different types of humans. How could we have culture and uniqueness to the world, if everyone is just a replica of each other? How could we add diversity if no one is allowed to look any differently than the person next to them? Carnegie Institution should have been sued in my opinion for doing this to

humans.
Besides the Carnegie Institution, Harriman railroad fortune as well contributed. The Harriman railroad fortune “paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.” (EB; 2013). In my opinion what Harriman railroad fortune did was a lot worse than what Carnegie Institution did. Since both of my parents came here as immigrants as well as my little brother, I can never imagine having these horrible actions done to them. Many immigrants who come to New York and other crowed cities, come in search of better opportunities and to help raise their families in a better country. You aren’t born with the choice of which race you want to be so for Jewish, Italians, and other immigrants to be discriminated just because of where they come from does not make it right for them to be deported or sterilized. Others who c contributed include Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundations the California branch of the American Eugenics Society. These organizations did no physical harm however they did publish racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals. These contributes were still despiteful even though they did not do physical damage.
As the process went on the movement moved not only from Jews and Italians but it was now targeting to “Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.” (EB; 2013). They did this by identifying family trees and subject them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. By trying to wipe out every race other than the specific one they were looking for makes me wonder how diversity would no longer exist if this actually worked out. The different ethnicities we come from is what makes the world diverse and interesting. If were all identical and had no variation, then the world would be a very boring place.