DBWI: What if the Department of Eugenics Never Formed?

[Mr_ Bondoc]

It is now 2022, we are 90 years from the formation of the U.S. Department of Eugenics, formed 4 years after the Supreme Court ruled in 1928, in Buck v. Bell, that "genetic hygiene" was ruled a "compelling state interest". At the time supported by Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Henry Ford. Yet we are also 25 years since the Clinton Administration shutdown the federal agency...

So, how would America and its "race problem" be without 65 years of sterilization and racial hygiene policies,

 

[Bigby]

Whites would probably have a lower birth rate by far. The Department set back women’s liberation and kept them as house wives to ensure high birth rates. Who knows how women would react to equal rights at this point after nearly a century of submission?

 

[Pete55]

I'd bet that the gradual destruction of the "lesser" races would have to be passed on to more crude methods of like mass abortions.

(Ooof, I'm going to bow out of this before I make it over political. Interesting idea for a thread though )

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Whites would probably have a lower birth rate by far. The Department set back women’s liberation and kept them as house wives to ensure high birth rates. Who knows how women would react to equal rights at this point after nearly a century of submission?

Well, consider that while the organization supported an end to segregation as early as 1948, interracial marriage was banned until 1968, and they didn't admit to the human experiments until 1975....My guess is that things would have gone badly!

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

True. The Eugenics Department did play a pivotal role in the adoption of "seperate but equal" policy as the national lord. Imagine the potential for violence if jim crow had lasted past the 1970s as a sizeable regional thing. Blacks who make more than $50,000 a year can vote in even South Carolina, Missisipi or Alabama.

Sure, interracial marriage is properly regulated to prevent higher-quality women from ending up with lower quality men, but just imagine either trying to keep old-style segregationism in place or worse, the US becoming brazil.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

True. The Eugenics Department did play a pivotal role in the adoption of "seperate but equal" policy as the national lord. Imagine the potential for violence if jim crow had lasted past the 1970s as a sizeable regional thing. Blacks who make more than $50,000 a year can vote in even South Carolina, Missisipi or Alabama.

Sure, interracial marriage is properly regulated to prevent higher-quality women from ending up with lower quality men, but just imagine either trying to keep old-style segregationism in place or worse, the US becoming brazil.

What was even weirder has been, in some states (e.g. California, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York) still have the idea that in order to have children, you have to essentially take a written test. What's weird is the many college sports scandals that have erupted from college athletes (e.g. Stanford, USC, & Texas A&M) paying off Mensa students to conduct their tests for them. Apparently, college jocks need the nerds to either stay on the team or even have kids....

 

[Don Corleone]

Only one good thing came out of it. Johnson v Oregon, which incorporated the Fourth Amendment against the states. Oregon prosecuted a doctor who was reversing tubal ligations for Untermenschen.

And even that could have come from a different case (where the initial "crime" should actually have been illegal).

 

[GJohn902]

How about the twisted way the Eugenics Department defacto approved of same-sex relationships beginning in the 1950s?

If you wanted to live as openly gay/lesbian, you went to your local Eugenics Department office and ask to put yourself on the so-called "Pink List" (officially, the National Directory of Known Homosexuals) and got sterilized (so you wouldn't pass on the "defective gay gene" scientists thought was A Thing back then). Afterward you received an official government ID identifying you as gay, allowing you to participate in a gay relationship (with another adult of legal age with their "Gay ID", of course) without fear of further persecution.

So yes, you could be openly gay back then and be treated fairly well, but you were sterilized and put on a Big Government List(TM). If you were bisexual, you had to "pick a side" with regards to your romantic/sexual relationships (and there were no takebacks, obviously). And of course this offer was not extended to trans/non-binary individuals. However, given the state of LGBTQ rights in other developed countries at the time (especially as many other nations followed America's lead on eugenic practices), the U.S.'s offer was actually very generous.

And now, even long after the downfall of the Eugenics Department, many states still require LGBTQ individuals to register (and sterilize themselves in some states) and ID themselves before engaging in "qualifying" relationships to avoid running afoul of anti-sodomy laws.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

What was even weirder has been, in some states (e.g. California, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York) still have the idea that in order to have children, you have to essentially take a written test. What's weird is the many college sports scandals that have erupted from college athletes (e.g. Stanford, USC, & Texas A&M) paying off Mensa students to conduct their tests for them. Apparently, college jocks need the nerds to either stay on the team or even have kids....

That's more normal than certain pre-Eugenics department practices. Did you know that they used to allow negroes to attend colleges in some northern states? Allowing moneyed blacks to vote is more generous than they deserve imo but actually attending college like normal people? What was America thinking in those dark days?

 

[Sparta4042]

Would the Pope still have condemned Eugenics in the 50's? The name of encyclical escapes me but he very clearly mentioned America, in addition to the Reich, as examples, "no greater crime has been known since the Great Persecution," is the phrasing I believe. Perhaps it would have been rolled into one of the anti-colonial encyclicals.

Political Catholicism, and its copycat Left Islam, would still emerge as the chief anti Imperialist and anti American Ideology in the Global South however. The only competitor by a long shot was Marxism, but its anti-religious tendencies, not to mention the collapse of its first and only sponsor, lead to me rate its chances poorly in Africa and SA.

Come to mention it, the Lord's Army in North America might never have been formed. That means no independent Quebec, Cristero Revolution or Catholic strife and subsequent Maundy Thursday Treaty in the US itself.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Would the Pope still have condemned Eugenics in the 50's? The name of encyclical escapes me but he very clearly mentioned America, in addition to the Reich, as examples, "no greater crime has been known since the Great Persecution," is the phrasing I believe. Perhaps it would have been rolled into one of the anti-colonial encyclicals.

Political Catholicism, and its copycat Left Islam, would still emerge as the chief anti Imperialist and anti American Ideology in the Global South however. The only competitor by a long shot was Marxism, but its anti-religious tendencies, not to mention the collapse of its first and only sponsor, lead to me rate its chances poorly in Africa and SA.

Come to mention it, the Lord's Army in North America might never have been formed. That means no independent Quebec, Cristero Revolution or Catholic strife and subsequent Maundy Thursday Treaty in the US itself.

Well, the Papal Encyclical is one of the major reasons that despite the large Catholic and Jewish population, many colleges and universities continue to openly state that Jewish and Catholics have a disproportionate voice in academia and amongst the student bodies in higher education. Imagine how much worse things would have gotten with a disproportionate number of Negroes or Orientals....