A Cultural Exchange: Germans and Americans and Eugenics of the 20th Century
The Black Stork Part 3: Eugenics Gets Legislation
What American movie ends with a multiethnic baby euthanized as Jesus Christ stands over the cradle?
Why Dr. Harry J. Haiselden’s successful film, The Black Stork, of course! Dr. Haiseldencast himself in it -naturally- to tell the tale of a wealthy, proper enslaver who is “tempted” while drunk by his shameless enslaved woman (“vile and filthy”) and has a child with her. This tragic, shameful “freak” child haunts his family line from here on out. The film made sure to show some “defective” children and Washington points out that the first child shown is Black.
This tracks, because experts on Haiselden are clear that his standard for “fit” humans only extended to European Americans he believed to be White. This film was not a stretch for him, as he had already become quite famous for his photo ops with family members and their dead children that they had paid him to help kill. It says something, that this film, The Black Stork, could be so popular among Americans. There is this idea, when we look back with longing at a past that we think had better morals and good family values, that this kind of obvious hatred and disgust were private things. That this kind of propaganda or image making of a group of people wasn’t intentional. That the racism was an accidental side effect of ignorance. However, in these stories the insistence to not know, to refuse to see the humanity of the people in front of them, is clear. It puzzles me today when people say that women and their emotions are not trustworthy in certain professions. In an age when men dominated healthcare, there was a consistent, undeniable proliferation of terrible science unprofessionally bent to serve the racist feelings and needs of men who needed to justify the pain they inflicted on others.
Long before the rise of the murderous Adolf Hitler, German doctors started chasing “Nordic Purity”. Hitler would come to power in 1933, but prior to that, American doctors smitten with the idea of eugenics helped create national U.S. policies that violated Americans in unthinkable ways. Americans and Germans in the field shared a vision for “racial” purity and came together in the International Society for Racial Hygiene. Several members from that society on their own developed other organizations and standards that they used to support and pass national acts, like the National Origins Act of 1924, barring immigrants from Eastern and Southern European countries. Those people (considered White today) were not “good enough” to enter the U.S. This history is a good reminder that the social construction of Whiteness has never been truly fixed in a real ethnicity, because who gets to be considered White has always depended on what the ruling class needed at the time. If you need more White votes or bodies, you change the parameters of Whiteness. Italians cease to be Italian, the Polish cease to be Polish, Jews cease to be Jewish, and on and on. All of those groups and more at various points were denigrated and looked down upon as people with inferiority. That changed when the block of White people needed to politically expand.
The German and the American eugenicists shared a relationship that Harriet Washington described as “Warm”. The Americans praised the German quest for purity, and everyone agreed on the absolute abhorrence of Black and White children. Articles from the Germans were happily shared with Americans, as well as a few honorary doctorates.
The postwar (World War 1) French Somalian soldiers who were stationed in Rhineland ended up marrying some German woman and having children. This was intolerable, and the German Hereditary Health Courts stepped in. For poor people or sick people, the courts required case by case decision making. For African descendants or anyone who “looked Black”, mere visual or verbal evidence was all that was needed to start immediate sterilization procedures in secret facilities. This was carried out under Special Commission No.3. Anyone of African descendent could be required at any point to provide documentation to prove that they had been sterilized. Washington found that at least 385 children had been sterilized.
This commitment to cleansing -with more and more oppressive and violating tactics deployed- as time went on was considered liberal compared to American policy. The laws of Jewish and the alleged Aryan mixing were more lax than American White and Black mixing. In the U.S. mixing was effectively punishable by death (lynching). “The Germans are beating us at our own game” complained Dr. Joseph S.Dejarnette, in a revealing speech he gave to the Virginia Legislature. He was hoping to get them to expand the sterilization laws. Virginia was also home to the Virginia Racial Integrity act, which stated that anyone with any “Negro Blood” in them at all was essentially and politically considered to be Black. In other Southern States, even if 1/32 African heritage made you Black. The German rules about marriage and what you could be considered with multiethnic heritage were far more lax. The Germans also used the American medical journals and standards as a guide to developing their own toxic eugenic standards.
In the 1960s and 1970s, mass sterilizations would be carried out on Native American women. This was an echo of what was forced upon Native people in earlier generations, as an American ruling class sought to exterminate and erase their presence. White Supremacy will destroy anyone in its way and deftly redefines complex populations and ethnic groups down to one “category” it can justify removing.
All of these initiatives were sponsored and championed by actual men of science. There is this idea that if we know better, we do better. That had these men had the whole picture, or just knew better, there is no way they would have pushed all this all the way into law. This is a nice thought, but what is illogical to us now about these arguments was just as plainly illogical back then. These people had all the information they needed to know this was bad science and conjecture. In 1917, the English geneticist P.C.Punnett had already proven that these eugenic steps to prevent disease were always too late. They couldn’t detect the recessive genes or what the parents were carrying. There were too many carrier to detect, and he and basic logic showed that these social steps to rid humanity of “ill” people was not going to work. Removing a few already born people from the mix did not eradicate traits. We cannot continue to give people the cover that they probably just didn’t know better. They did, but they had other things to accomplish and prejudices to uphold. It is a good reminder, that while we laypeople may not practice medicine, we can practice critical thinking and consider what is at play when blanket statements about a group of people are used to politically silence and oppress them.