Paulina Rau’s essay reminds us that eugenics was not confined to Nazi Germany. It was also rooted in American universities, agriculture departments, and philanthropic foundations. This is a fact many people overlook. They find it easier to condemn the horrors of Auschwitz than to admit that similar ideas were tested in their own societies.
A wider history than we admit
The United States was not alone. In Sweden, state programs sterilised thousands of people labelled as “unfit” well into the 1970s. In Japan, a Eugenic Protection Law authorised forced sterilisation until 1996, with survivors only now receiving recognition. In India during the 1970s, slum-dwellers were targeted under population control drives, where consent was rarely respected. These are uncomfortable truths. They show that the logic of eugenics travelled far beyond Berlin or Washington.
The idea was simple and cruel. Some lives were useful, others were burdens. Governments, backed by science and law, could decide which was which. When those decisions became policy, they stripped people of dignity, family, and future.
The new face of an old idea
What unsettles me in Paulina’s piece is how much of that thinking survives in new forms. It is no longer sterilisation clinics or immigration quotas written in openly racist language. Instead, it is genetic testing sold as entertainment, ancestry websites promising to map our bloodlines, and predictive health algorithms that classify people by risk.
On their own, these tools look harmless. Yet when connected to government policy or private insurance, they begin to echo the old categories. Who is a burden? Who is worth investment? Who is likely to “cost” society too much? These are not far from the questions eugenicists once asked.
The political temptation
Politicians have always found eugenics tempting. It offers them a language of “science” to justify exclusion. In the early twentieth century it was marriage bans and immigration quotas. In the twenty-first, it is talk about “shithole countries,” “poisoned blood,” or “civilizational empathy as a disease.” These words sound different, but the aim is familiar: to decide who belongs and who does not.
Paulina is right to point out that cruelty often hides behind claims of order and protection. When leaders describe migrants as criminals by nature, they invite the public to think of whole populations as defective. That is not far from the logic that once placed Native Americans, Puerto Rican women, and the urban poor under the knife of sterilisation.
A warning for today
The danger is not only in government offices. Ordinary people now hand over their DNA through ancestry kits or health checks without thinking how that information might be used. Technology makes classification easier than ever. What once required a census and punch cards can now be done by software in seconds. That speed makes it even more urgent to ask who controls the data, and for what purpose.
Why it matters
The lesson from history is that once society accepts the idea that some lives are worth less, it is difficult to stop where that line is drawn. In the 1930s, the first step was “idiot” or “imbecile.” Later it became “degenerate,” “alien,” or “enemy.” The labels shift, but the outcome is the same. People lose protection, and cruelty becomes normal.
Reading Paulina’s essay left me uneasy. The past is closer than we think. Eugenics was discredited after the Second World War, yet its categories never fully vanished. They slip into new language, new tools, and new fears. If we do not guard against them, we risk repeating the same mistake: deciding who counts as fully human.
Comments
Post a Comment