Leading British intellectuals and politicians endorsed eugenic management of human stock
Evidence
The prospect of scientifically managing the presently defective human stock was seriously debated in the most enlightened and distinguished circles. Biologists and medical experts were, of course, in the forefront of the debate; but they were joined by famous people from other areas, like the psychologists Cyril Burt and William McDougall, politicians Balfour and Neville Chamberlain, the whole of the infant British sociology, and on various occasions by J. B. S. Haldane, J. M. Keynes, and Harold Laski. Concepts like “rabid and wilted stock” (coined by Wheethams in 1911), “degenerate stock,” “submen,” “low-grade types,” “biologically unfit” became staple figures of intelligent debate, while the tremendously influential Karl Pearson sounded in 1909 the alarm that shook the reading and debating public: “the survival of the unfit is a marked characteristic of modern town life.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 406
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Connects to broader eugenics history and to the author’s interest in how respectable elites normalize racist ideology.
- SEED: The social marginalization of Black people in Britain’s post-1948 period as an instance of the broader transformation happening in the West at large.