Eugenics

 I have just finished reading the book Superior by Angela Saini, and heard her talk at Greenbelt, covering the same areas. It is a superb book, but also it is frightening.

What I found really interesting is that it helps to join up all sorts of related areas - starting from racism, something that we see more and more in the world.

Now I should say that that, until recently, I thought eugenics ideas had die out in the middle of last century, at or after the second world war - for reasons that are clear as I explore the meaning of eugenics. I was wrong, and that was disturbing.

Now - what is eugenics? Well, it is (simplisticly speaking) the idea that we should be breeding humans to produce the very best of humanity, in a similar way that we breed our farm animals to produce the very best. This was a result of the ideas of evolution initially produced by Darwin, and the term was created by Francis Galton, a relative of Darwin (I should point out that Darwin himself did not support the idea).

What is interesting is that, for the early part of the 20th century, these ideas were broadly acceptable and discussed openly. Selective breeding, producing humans as good as is possible, seemed like a good idea. Until, of course, Adolf Hitler adopted the idea and sought to eliminate all those who were not "good enough". Most of the movement died out after that, but no entirely.

The problem with eugenics is not actually Hitler. The problem is far deeper than that - the problem is that to pursue such a plan, you need to define what the best humans are. And this is where the problems really start.

The root of race was the division of people into what were random racial categories - all based on skin colour - I am reminded of the Sunday School song:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
....

Hang on - yes that is it - the four racial groups - red (native Americans), yellow (Orientals), White (European) and black (Anyone with dark skin - African, Indian, native Australian). There are two fundamental problems with this:

Firstly, this division by skin colour is completely unscientific. In particular, the range of those who are covered under "Black" is a huge range, comprising many different skin colours and many unrelated people. There is as much difference across that range as there is between any two skin colours, speaking biologically. If you are wanting to divide people by their biological origins, skin colour is a very poor proxy - and the more we explore and discover about DNA relationships, the more we realise that there is no proxy, not way of dividing people. When it comes down to it, we are all the same, we all share the same DNA structures.

It is also the case that those in England - as an example - are almost certainly descended from people whose skin was dark. Of course, people in the UK are all immigrants from somewhere - none of us are "native" - the islands have been invaded from the North and the South, and the people here are mixtures of a range of peoples. Of many different skin colours as well - and all sorts of eye colours and hair colours and other genetic properties. We are a wild mix.

Secondly, of course, the racial groups were put into a heirarchy. Unsurpisingly, the whites were at the top - for no obvious reason, except that we were the ones making the lists. The heirarchy was mainly about "how like white Europeans are these people".

What continued to strike me was that the way we divide people is always biased. We argue about IQ tests - but these are not universal. They have to be adjusted for different cultures, and over time. an IQ score is not an eternal value (and the average for any cultural groups is, by definition, 100 - it only measures your position compared to the average). Often we talk about the scientific advances and technology that we in the west have made - ignoring the fact that these are not universal indicators of "success". Because we value these things over others - over an appreciation of nature or of community - we claim these to show that "we" are better than "them".

And so eugenics - in the various forms it crops up in neoliberal discourse - is ALWAYS a vile and disgusting concept, always a power thing, seeking to put "me" as being worthy of living and "them" as not. And the divisions that a eugenics mindset generates - races - are putely social ideas, with no actual basis in any sort of fact. We are all one race, we are all human. Those who seek to claim otherwise will have none of my time.