Umaymah Shahid

July 11, 2015

½ cup Sugar + 1 cup Chocolate + 1 tsp. of salt = Eugenics

          Eugenics is a recurring convention throughout the literary and historical utopias we studied in this course. Almost all of the literary utopias studied dealt with some form of Eugenics: Gillman’s Herland allows certain types of women to reproduce; Callenbach’s Ecotopia introduces the concept of women choosing the man they feel fit to father their children; and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, where Crake creates the Crakers, a special species that survive the apocalypse. In historical Utopias we see the prevalence of eugenics in the Oneida community through the practice of choosing men and women perfect in the physical, social, and spiritual. History shows a repetition of the use of eugenics throughout the world to promote the idea of a superior race, and modern science shows the use of eugenics in enhancing human beings, especially while they are still in the womb (Tomasini). This research post will explore how the historical utopian Oneida community used eugenics to create a perfect society and the literary utopian/dystopian Oryx and Crake used the concept to create a more caring race.

          Survival of the fittest and elimination of the poor and weak was the driving force behind the political movement of eugenics. Although Darwin comes to mind when we think of “survival of the fittest,” English philosopher Herbert Spencer coined the term. He argued that the government should take a stand against allowing the “poor and sickly to propagate” because it would result in the superior class, the more intellectual people, from gaining majority in the society (Wade). Darwin’s cousin, Galton, took the idea and proposed that the human population would improve if the government enforced controlled breeding. Galton proposed “that marriages between [well off] families should be encouraged with monetary incentives to improve the race” because if those who were better off, socially, intellectually, and physically had more children, society would prosper (Wade 22). The problem with society, according to these scientists who had invested themselves in the idea of eugenics, was that the mentally, economically, and physically inept were having too many children, resulting in a misbalance between the superior race and the weaker race. As Galton pushed the idea of eugenics, it did not gain political support till the 1890s when a heavy wave of immigrants poured into the United States. Taking advantage of this situation, scientist Charles Davenport began the eugenics movement to segregate and sterilize those who were unfit to reproduce. He got political and financial support from many such as the Carnegie Institution and Rockefeller Foundation, who feared that the white superior race was at risk due to the heavy immigration. Backed by the state legislature, the eugenics movement started off with the sterilizing of inmates in both prisons and mental asylums.  By 1930, 24 states had laws approving of sterilization and by the 1940s, nearly 35,878 Americans had been “sterilized or castrated” (Wade). However, eugenics took a downward turn by 1933 when many scientists discovered Davenport’s data to be inaccurate and useless. The idea of eugenics might have died had Hitler not been influenced by Davenport’s work, killing millions of Jews, mentally disabled, Russians, homosexuals, and Gypsies, in the name of creating the Aryan race. Both America and Germany used eugenics to promote a certain race and eventually eliminate the weaker. Through a glimpse of the history of eugenics one must understand that certain communities had some idea of the concept of selective breeding even before its rise in popularity, and some continued to practice it even after it died away from the mainstream.

          The Oneida intentional community is one such community that practiced selective breeding before the ideas of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton came to America, for the purpose of creating a perfect society. Led by John Humphrey Noyes, the community found inspiration for the idea of selective breeding, also known as “stirpiculture”, from Plato’s Republic (Richards). Plato’s Republic was a “blueprint for the organization of an ideal society” based on mating between the guardian class (i.e. the premier class) to produce perfect children (Galton 264).  Noyes believed that Christ’s second coming had already occurred at the fall of Jerusalem; therefore the community was sinless and needed to establish Heaven on Earth. The way the community practiced this concept was by Noyes banning monogamous marriages. Since in Heaven no one is bound to another, everyone was married to everyone in the Oneida community. In 1869, after the community established itself and became financially stable, Noyes began the process of creating a perfect community through the practice of stirpiculture. A man and a woman would be selected based on intellectual, physical, mental, and spiritual abilities, paired up, and would have children. From the stirpiculture 81 community members became parents and they had 58 “perfect” children (Richards). When a couple got permission to procreate, the Community celebrated because the perfect children would inhabit and in the future build Heaven on Earth. The process through which this selective breeding happened follows very closely to how Plato outlined the process in Republic. Suitable young people were brought together at a festival and “sacrifices, poetry, songs and dance would set the atmosphere for young couples to ‘marry’ and cohabit during the period of the festival for about one month, after which the marriage would be dissolved and the partners remain celibate until the next festival” (Galton 264). Thus the idea of no marriage, selective partners, and a pure society becomes the foundation of the Oneida community.

To ensure that Noyes’s theory of selective breeding was scientifically correct, scientific studies were done of the physical progress and health of the children born to the designated parents. Studies showed that, compared to certain sections of the US population, the Oneida children were more educated, successful, and had lower death rates (Richards). However, the stirpiculture program ended within ten years due to various factors such as the lack of a charismatic leader after Noyes and the frustration of other couples for being restricted from having children. Even though the Oneida practiced eugenics before it became popular in the United States, this practice did not influence the communities outside the Oneida because the idea of a complex marriage, being married to everyone, and having specific people chosen to breed with each other did not set well with many at the time (Richards).