Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)
tative measures were suggested for race betterment. 50 2 By 1915, eugenics reached the dimensions of a dangerous fad in America, and began to influence national planning and immigration policies. 50 3 X. MODERN EUGENIC POPULATION POLICIES THE ADVENT OF RACISM AND OF GENOCIDE IN MODERN STATES In this survey of the practical utilization of genetic measures, the last chapter embraces the first half of the present century which is loaded with two world-wars, many colonial wars, and has witnessed the rise of various totalitarian systems of government. The troublesome years brought much migration, forced or voluntary, and displacement of peoples, with intensive intermingling of various ethnic groups and races. 50 4 The chief characteristic of these years was (and still is) state control of both the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of practical genetics at both the family and the national level. The controversial doctrines of the XIX. ct. on primitive and progressive human races 50 5 announced principles 50 6 which were gradually assimilated by politicians, national planners who then introduced them into the consciousness of vast majorities. 50 7 According to the early American school, the higher races were destined to push away the lower ones, 50 8 although —for political reasons —American anthropologists tried to show during World War II that "all the peoples of the earth are a single family and have a common origin". 50 9 Others said that miscegenation of different types would lead to physical and mental degeneration, and it was the seed of peoples decline. 51 0 This was also the advice of Herbert SPENCER which he gave to a Japanese statesman in regard to the dangers of racial intermarriage. 51 1 In the early 20th century, 28 U.S. states have already banned intermarriage 51 2 between negro and white, although eugenists never launched a formal campaign. 51 3 On the other hand, miscegenation has been going on, e.g., in Brazil, for ca. 400 years where the white race is still instinctively considered superior. 51 4 At the beginning of the 20th cent., in America the races of southern and eastern Europe were considered inferior, and immigration from these areas was thought to pervert the "blood stream " of Anglo-Saxon America. 51 5 In 1906, the American Breeders' Association set up a Committee on Eugenics with the task "to investigate and report on heredity in the human race , and to emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood," 51 6 The U.S. Senate Immigration Commission, under the guidance of an "expert eugenic agent", classified immigrants to the U.S. into 45 ethnic groups, 51 7 and on this basis the Act of 1924 was enacted, later to be modified in 1952, giving an annual quota to immigrants on the basis of the national-origins system. 51 8 At present, exclusions from the U.S. are still only phenotypic, and not genotypic. 51 9 Theodor ROOSEVELT repeatedly said, howewer, that the "blood " and the traditions of the "old stock " should be perpetuated. 52 0 In Australia, strongly enforced immigration laws are based upon fear of racial frictions with Orientals, and the government can keep 90% of Australia's stock 25
