A 1926 eugenics poster (from autistics.org):
From left to right the boxes say (and the left two are what we need less of, the right two what it says we need mroe of):
This light flashes every 48 seconds. Every 48 seconds a person is born in the United States who will never grow up mentally beyond that stage of a normal 8 year old boy or girl.
This light flashes every 50 seconds. Every 50 seconds a person is committed to jail in the United States. Very few normal persons ever go to jail.
This light flashes every 16 seconds. Every 16 seconds a person is born in the United States.
This light flashes every 7 1/2 minutes. Every 7 1/2 minutes a high grade person is born in the United States who will have ability to do creative work and be fit for leadership. About 4% of all Americans come within this class.
Here’s another example of the use of pseudoscience to make racial arguments (via):
Notice that the “woman mulatto” is draw to appear extremely unattractive, and that while the white man and mulatto woman have a “pass-for-white” daughter, the son on the far left isn’t “pass-for-black”–he really is black. The idea of “passing for black” made no sense at the time, while “passing for white” was a major concern. I am surprised to see here, though, that the baby of the pass-for-white woman and the white man is defined as entirely white.
Of course, none of this makes any logical sense at all, but lots of supposedly scientific studies at the time applied many statistical and other methods to prove various racial arguments.
Comments 42
angie — October 15, 2009
Yes, this whole thing seems to be about colour but what about other things of ethnicities. American white-coloured ethnicities on their own are so mixbred among themselves that all real ethnicity has disappeared completely and is replaced by this ambiguous sense "whiteness". So this means that people instead of having real ethno-cultural indentity have some sort of general "white" indentity. Which is undoubtedly one trait of "only in america" type of absurdity. Of course this in the mind of a racist is not important in comparison to race mixing of people that have different coloured of skin.
Michelle E — October 15, 2009
I think this this is an interesting piece of history. I totally disagree but understand where it is coming from, within the historical context of the time.
I like to believe that people were afraid of the unknown!
Andy — October 15, 2009
If a person is born every 16 seconds, and a "person ... who will never grow up mentally beyond that stage of a normal 8 year old" is born every 48 seconds, 1/3 of all people born will never grow beyond the "stage of a normal 8 year old."
PPR_Scribe — October 15, 2009
I am surprised to see here, though, that the baby of the pass-for-white woman and the white man is defined as entirely white.
I would love to read the entire article this image appeared in. I think the point of it--because the point of these things was often how you could practice good genetic "hygiene"--might have been that there was "still hope" for "cleansing" the genetics of a family that had Black twigs on the family tree. As long as the "pass for White" woman marries a "full White" boy, they might have a baby that looks/is White and no one need know any different.
Just a guess...
Penny — October 15, 2009
The article with the second illustration is by Dr. Woods Hutchinson--some of his writings are on Project Gutenberg if you want to try and follow his train of thought on these matters...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woods_Hutchinson
anon mouse — October 15, 2009
Interesting how the white man with the white woman is drawn as good-looking, while the white man with the "woman mulatto" is older and bald with those huge muttonchops! They're definitely trying to make a point about what kind of people those in inter-racial relationships were being judged as!
Alessandra — October 15, 2009
There's an excellent movie on the pass-for-white issue, I think it's from the 40's or 50's, can't remember. Young (black but white-looking) woman goes off to study to be a nurse, white guy falls in love with her. She returns to her poor black roots in the South, he follows, big tragic love story. Anyone seen it?
Alessandra — October 15, 2009
The "researches" were done by the Carnegie Institution. Kind of like the APA of our times.
caity — October 15, 2009
Interesting bit of related history - in Australia in the bad old days (of really not all that long ago, sadly) it was believed that you could "breed out" the Aborigines. Someone who was 1/8 Aborigine and 7/8 white was classified as white (or, at least, as passing for white).
This was one of the justifications used sometimes for taking children away from their faimilies - kids with some white in them, particularly girls, were specifically targeted for removal at least partly to "protect" them from having children with other Aborigines when they grew up.
CC — October 15, 2009
Some have gone so far as to theorize that the appearance of "race obsession" emerged among the different ethnic White groups in Europe as a reaction to the realization during the early days of exploration that most of the world consisted of non-White peoples and that mixing with said peoples would result in the gradual disappearance of the White genotype, something that created great fear and resulted in centuries of downpression and colonization of non-White populations.
jackie c. — October 15, 2009
Although all of this is obviously heavily tainted with ideology, as a historical type I find it a bit annoying to refer to the science of the past that we are repulsed by today as "pseudoscience". We don't refer to geocentric theories of the universe as "pseudoscience" even though we now believe them to be incorrect and based on faulty premises and research. It was simply a historically specific understanding of the world, which can be read to reveal the assumptions of the people who supported it at the time - just as racial and eugenic science can be.
MC — October 16, 2009
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff
Still going on today! Them black folks and white folks better not be making babies together because THEIR CHILDREN WON'T BE ACCEPTED.
Great.
Love that in the illustration, only skeezy looking ugly old white men would ever make babies with a 'mulatto' who of course also looks like an ugly man. look how prim and proper those waspy parents are though! so pretty!
Flamethorn — October 20, 2009
Well, as it happens...
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_black_and_white_twins.htm
Joka — October 28, 2009
you've made a mistake: "Notice that the “woman mulatto” is draw to appear extremely unattractive" she's actually 'woman black'