Racial hygiene 681316 225614431 2008-07-14T15:47:52Z Kbdankbot 6505923 Robot - move category per [[WP:CFD|CFD]] [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 July 7|2008 July 7]] '''Racial hygiene''' (often labeled a form of "[[scientific racism]]") is the selection, by a government, of the putatively most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation ([[selective breeding]]) and a close alignment of [[public health]] with [[eugenics]]. In the past, this has been done by using [[deportation]], [[Racial segregation|segregation]], [[compulsory sterilization]], and even [[genocide]] of persons or groups with various mental disabilities, ethnicities, handicaps, criminal backgrounds, religious affiliations, etc. Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of [[public health]], but usually with an enhanced emphasis on [[heredity]]. The use of social measures to attempt to preserve or enhance biological characteristics was first proposed by [[Francis Galton]] in his early work, starting in 1869, on what would later be called [[eugenics]]. In the early [[twentieth century]], the idea that human heredity required active vigilance, and perhaps coercive measures (such as [[compulsory sterilization]]) had many mainstream scientific and political supporters; [[Winston Churchill]] was an advocate, as was [[Alexander Graham Bell]], [[Marie Stopes]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[John Maynard Keynes]], [[Theodore Roosevelt]] and [[Calvin Coolidge]]. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989992,00.html Cursed by Eugenics], Paul Gray, ''Time Magazine'', v.153, 1, Jan 11 1999.</ref> It was the [[Germany|German]] [[eugenicist]] [[Alfred Ploetz]] who introduced the term ''Rassenhygiene'' in his "Racial hygiene basics" (''Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene'') in [[1895]]. In its earliest incarnation it was concerned more with the declining birthrate of the German state and the increasing number of mentally ill and disabled in state institutions (and their costs to the state) than with the "Jewish question" and "de-nordification" (''Entnordung'') which would come to dominate its philosophy in Germany from the 1920s through the [[World War II|second World War]]. One of the confusing aspects of "racial hygiene" is that "race" was often interchangeably used to mean "human race" as well as "German race" as well as "[[Aryan race]]" &mdash; three quite different concepts with three quite different implications. In the 1930s, under the expertise of eugenicist [[Ernst Rüdin]], it was this latter use of "racial hygiene" which was embraced by the followers of [[Nazism|Nazi]] ideology, who demanded "Aryan" [[racial purity]] and condemned [[miscegenation]]. This belief in importance of German racial purity often served as the theoretical backbone of [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|Nazi policies of racial superiority]] and later [[genocide]]. These policies began in 1935, when the Nazis enacted the [[Nuremberg Laws]], which leglislated "racial purity" by forbidding marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans . A key part of [[Nazism]] was the concept of racial hygiene and during their rule the field was elevated to the primary philosophy of the German medical community, first by activist physicians within the medical profession. This was later codified and institutionalized after the Nazis came to power in 1933, during the process of ''[[Gleichschaltung]]'' (literally, "coordination" or "unification") which streamlined the medical profession into a rigid hierarchy with [[Nazism|Nazi]]-sanctioned leadership at the top. Racial hygienists played key roles in the [[Holocaust]], the Nazi effort to cleanse Europe of [[Jew]]s, [[Communists]], [[Roma people|Gypsies]], [[homosexuality|homosexuals]], political dissidents, the [[mental retardation|mentally retarded]] and [[insane]]. After [[World War II]], such attempts have been widely reviled as cruel and brutal, and the racialist ideology behind them as un-scientific and [[pseudoscience]]. Still, some racial hygiene policies persevered. For instance, the state-led forced sterilization of [[Roma people|Roma]] in [[Norway]], which started in 1934, wasn't stopped until 1977.[http://home.online.no/~nqureshi/Bokanmeldelser/35.html] In [[Australia]], a policy of removing [[biracial]], so-called "[[half-caste]]" children from [[Indigenous Australians|Aboriginal]] mothers, overseen by [[A. O. Neville]], was justified under the principle of "biological absorption" through selective breeding. The policy of removing children from Aborginal communities and subjecting them to forced [[cultural assimilation]], which ended in 1969, had the aim of ensuring the gradual disappearance of a distinctive Aboriginal population through destroying Aboriginal culture and promoting [[interracial marriage]] with white Australians. The Aboriginals who were subjected to these traumatizing state policies are today known as the [[Stolen Generation]]. ==See also== *[[Eugenics]] *[[Nazi eugenics]] *[[White Supremacy]] *[[Ethnic cleansing]] *[[T-4 Euthanasia Program]] *[[Racial policy of Nazi Germany]] *[[Mental hygiene]] == Further reading == *Glad, John. (2008)[http://www.whatwemaybe.org/txt/txt0000/Glad.John.2008.FHE.Meisenberg-abridgement.en.pdf . ''Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century''.]Hermitage Publishers. *Joseph, J. (2004)[http://www.jayjoseph.net/GeneIllusion.html . ''The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope''.]New York: Algora. (2003 United Kingdom Edition by PCCS Books) *Joseph, J. (2006). [http://www.jayjoseph.net/MissingGene.html''The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes''.]New York: Algora. == References == {{reflist}} * Paul, Diane B. ''Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present.'' New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995. * Proctor, Robert. ''Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis.'' Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. [[Category:Eugenics]] [[Category:Racism]] [[Category:Nazi terminology]] [[de:Rassenhygiene]] [[ru:Расовая гигиена]] [[sv:Rashygien]] [[zh:優生政策]]