NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Racial hygiene

Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of "scientific racism") is the selection, by a government, of the 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, segregation, compulsory sterilization, and even genocide of persons or groups with various mental disabilities, ethnicities, handicaps, criminal backgrounds, religious affiliations, etc. Scientific racism refers to research which promotes or appears to promote a racist ideology while forgoing the ideals of scientific objectivity. ... Selective breeding in domesticated animals is the process of developing a cultivated breed over time. ... Jump to: navigation, search Public health is an aspect of health services concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis. ... Jump to: navigation, search Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... Deportation is the expelling of someone from a country. ... Jump to: navigation, search Segregation means separation. ... Jump to: navigation, search Compulsory sterilization programs sprouted up in many countries at the beginning of the 20th century, usually as part of a program of negative eugenics -- to prevent undesirable members of the population reproducing. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up Genocide on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Genocide is the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status or other particularity. ...

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 and Marie Stopes, to name just a few. In Australia, a policy of removing so-called "half-caste" children from Aboriginal mothers was justified under the principle of racial hygiene (see Stolen Generation). Jump to: navigation, search Public health is an aspect of health services concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis. ... Jump to: navigation, search Heredity (the adjective is hereditary) is the transfer of characteristics from parent to offspring, either through their genes or through the social institution called inheritance (for example, a title of nobility is passed from individual to individual according to relevant customs and/or laws). ... Jump to: navigation, search Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. (February 16, 1822 â€“ January 17, 1911) Victorian polymath, British anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, statistician, and half-cousin of Charles Darwin. ... Jump to: navigation, search Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ... Jump to: navigation, search Compulsory sterilization programs sprouted up in many countries at the beginning of the 20th century, usually as part of a program of negative eugenics -- to prevent undesirable members of the population reproducing. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, FRS, PC (30 November 1874 â€“ 24 January 1965) was an English statesman, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. ... Jump to: navigation, search Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 â€“ August 2, 1922) was a scientist, inventor, founder of Bell Canada, and was formerly credited as father of the telephone. ... Jump to: navigation, search Marie Stopes (October 15, 1880 - October 2, 1958) was a Scottish author, campaigner for womens rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. ... Half Caste is the name of a poem by John Agard, a Caribbean writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search A 19th century engraving of an indigenous Australian encampment. ... Jump to: navigation, search Stolen Generation is the term commonly used to mean the Australian Aboriginal children who were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions between approximately 1900 and 1972. ...

It was the 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 second World War. The word eugenics (from the Greek εὐγενής, for well-born) was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to refer to the study and use of selective breeding (of animals or humans) to improve a species over generations, specifically in regards to hereditary features. ... Alfred Ploetz (March 22, 1860 - March 20, 1940) German Physician, Biologist, Eugenicist. ... 1895 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. ...

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" — 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 Nazi ideology. It often served as the theoretical backbone of Nazi policies of racial superiority and later genocide, leading its detractors to label it as "scientific racism." Jump to: navigation, search This article contains information that has not been verified. ... Ernst RÃ¼din (April 19, 1874 - 1952) Swiss-German psychiatrist, geneticist and eugenicist. ... Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that Nazi be merged into this article or section. ... Jump to: navigation, search The racial policy of Nazi Germany was the set of rascist policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany primarily against Jews. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up Genocide on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Genocide is the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status or other particularity. ... Scientific racism refers to research which promotes or appears to promote a racist ideology while forgoing the ideals of scientific objectivity. ...

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 during the process of Gleichschaltung (literally, "coordination" or "unification") which streamlined the medical profession into a rigid hierarchy with Nazi-sanctioned leadership at the top. Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that Nazi be merged into this article or section. ... Jump to: navigation, search The German word Gleichschaltung listen ( â™«) (literally synchronising, synchronization) is used in a political sense to describe the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up Nazi on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Racial hygienists played key roles in the Holocaust, the Nazi effort to cleanse Europe of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents, the 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 even pseudoscience. Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust was Nazi Germanys systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II. Early elements include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program established by Hitler that killed some 200,000 people. ... The Rroma people (pronounced rahma, singular Rrom) along with the closely related Sinti people are commonly known as Gypsies. ... Jump to: navigation, search Since its coining, the term homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mental retardation (also called mental handicap and, as defined by the UK Mental Health Act 1983, mental impairment and severe mental impairment) is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills (milestones) during childhood, and a significantly below-normal... INSANE is a proprietary INteractive Streaming ANimation Engine developped by LucasArts. ... Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. ... Jump to: navigation, search Phrenology is seen today as a classic example of pseudoscience. ...

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