Eugenics & Scientific Racism:

Racism and fear motivated the eugenics movement. In turn, eugenics used science to reinforce racism and establish the inferiority of non-white racial groups. During the eugenics era, white men in power constructed disability labels as a means of social control and justification for worldwide racial violence and oppression. Disability was used to dehumanize and discredit. 

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In the United States, attributing disability to enslaved people legitimized the denial of their rights because it categorized them as biologically inferior, less evolved, and subhuman (Baynton). Based on the white male standard of normalcy, white physicians claimed that enslaved people lacked the intellect and mental strength for equality. They argued that enslaved people had smaller brains and that freedom would overwhelm and disable them. Dr. Samuel Cartwritght even pathologized acts of resistance like running away or avoiding work as forms of mental illness called Drapetomania and Dysaesthesis Aethiopis, respectively. These disabilities ascribed to Black bodies justified their continued enslavement and oppression, and slavery was treated as a cure. 

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Similarly, attributing disability to immigrants justified the denial of their right to enter the United States because it categorized them as social burdens and unworthy citizens. Immigration inspectors considered immigrants physically inadequate if they had asthma, heart disease, poor eyesight, varicose veins, bunions, arthritis, or a number of other discernable physical or mental impairments (Baynton 46). Physical physique was critical because the inspector could deny people entry to the United States based on ethnicity, race, disability, and stature.

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The eugenics movement in the United States disproportionately targeted racial minorities. Eugenicists equated white with "fit" and Black with "unfit." For example, Black women were sexualized and demonized as bad mothers (Washington). Consequently, Black women were victims of "Mississippi appendectomies," or forced sterilization, because they were institutionalized at high rates. Moreover, they were targeted with birth control pills and contraceptive devices.  

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In Nazi Germany, the racist pseudo-science of the racial hygiene movement led to genocide. Similar to the United States eugenics movement, the German racial hygiene movement started with marriage and sterilization policies that prevented disabled, unproductive, and “asocial” people from marrying or reproducing (Heberer 51). These practices gained momentum, public support, and physician backing with state-sponsored propaganda films and tours of institutions that dehumanized disabled people. Then, in 1939 and 1940, the movement escalated when Hitler implemented killing operations for the extermination of children and adults with cognitive and physical disabilities. Under his leadership, physicians murdered more than 5,000 disabled children, 200,000-250,000 disabled adults (Operation T4), 10,000-20,000 concentration camp prisoners, hundreds of geriatric patients (Operation Brandt), and hundreds of disabled laborers from Poland and the Soviet Union by starvation, lethal gas, or lethal injection at six euthanasia centers scattered across Germany and Austria (Heberer). 

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References

Baynton, Douglas C. “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History.” The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, New York, 2001, pp. 33-57.

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Heberer, Patricia. “Targeting the ‘Unfit’ and Radical Public Health Strategies in Nazi Germany.” Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, edited by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman, Gallaudet University Press, Washington D.C., 2002, pp. 49-70.

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Washington, Harriet A. “The Black Stork: The Eugenic Control of African American Reproduction.” Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Anchor Books, 2007, pp. 189–215.