NIH VideoCast - The Measure of Black (Un)Fitness: Legacies of Slavery in the Early Eugenics Movement

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The Measure of Black (Un)Fitness: Legacies of Slavery in the Early Eugenics Movement

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890 Views

Air date:	Thursday, April 28, 2022, 2:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
Views:	Total views: 890 (236 Live, 654 On-demand)
Category:	History
Runtime:	01:01:54
Closed captioning:	Check box to display CC outside of the video Note: You can drag the captioning window around and resize it
Description:	This presentation considers how people of African descent became targets of eugenic study during the early decades of the twentieth century. It delves into the methods and assumptions eugenicists used to cast people of African descent as inherently unfit. Eugenicists saw blackness as a heritable trait that signaled a lack of vitality, innate promiscuity, and low achievement. That said, views about Black people’s inherent unfitness circulated well before the advent of eugenics. As such, this paper highlights the ways in which studies on fitness, some of which were carried out by the United States government in the aftermath of the Civil War, proved instrumental in laying the groundwork for future eugenic studies of people of African descent. Drawing upon a number of sources from NLM’s digital collections, Dr. Hogarth will trace the genealogy of ideas white eugenicists held about black people’s allegedly inherent unfitness in medical writings from the era of slavery and beyond. Dr. Hogarth’s talk is co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the NLM/NEH partnership to collaborate on research, education, and career initiatives.

NLM Title:	The measure of black (un)fitness : legacies of slavery in the early eugenics movement / Rana A. Hogarth.
Author:	Hogarth, Rana A. National Library of Medicine (U.S.),
Publisher:
Abstract:	(CIT): This presentation considers how people of African descent became targets of eugenic study during the early decades of the twentieth century. It delves into the methods and assumptions eugenicists used to cast people of African descent as inherently unfit. Eugenicists saw blackness as a heritable trait that signaled a lack of vitality, innate promiscuity, and low achievement. That said, views about Black people's inherent unfitness circulated well before the advent of eugenics. As such, this paper highlights the ways in which studies on fitness, some of which were carried out by the United States government in the aftermath of the Civil War, proved instrumental in laying the groundwork for future eugenic studies of people of African descent. Drawing upon a number of sources from NLM's digital collections, Dr. Hogarth will trace the genealogy of ideas white eugenicists held about black people's allegedly inherent unfitness in medical writings from the era of slavery and beyond. Dr. Hogarth's talk is co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the NLM/NEH partnership to collaborate on research, education, and career initiatives.
Subjects:	African Americans--ethnology Enslavement--history Eugenics--history Genetic Fitness History, 19th Century History, 20th Century Medicine in Literature Systemic Racism--history United States--ethnology
Publication Types:	Lecture Webcast

NLM Classification:	HQ 755.5.U6
NLM ID:	9918418883406676
CIT Live ID:	44365
Permanent link:	https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=44365

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