Eugenics had dismissed the democratic ideal that all people are of equal value
Eugenics began with SIr Francis Galton’s assumption that desirable traits could be selected for in humans by selectively breeding the population, and these notions had pronounced political implications. Humans, he had determined, were decidedly unequal. Democratic ideals that men were of “equal value,” he said, were simply “undeniably wrong and cannot last.” Even the average citizen was “too base for the everyday work of modern civilization.” Indeed, if a superior race were to be bred, then it would be necessary for English society—and other white societies—to encourage their fit to procreate and prevent their unfit from doing the same. Galton, for his part, imagined penning up the unfit in convents, monasteries, and asylums to prevent them from breeding.
”I do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the gifted class, when they had the power, from treating their compatriots with all kindness, so long as they maintained celibacy. But if these [compatriots] continued to procreate children inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness.”
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2002). Mad in America Chapter 3. UNFIT TO BREED (p. 72). New York, NY: Basic Books.