(Posted May 2, 2017)

David Sowell speaking at the Faculty-Trustee Dinner
David Sowell speaking at the Faculty-Trustee Dinner

It’s easy to group together different ideologies that share an underlying current of discrimination, but doing this presents one major problem: by reducing harmful ideologies like eugenics, nativism, and white nationalism to the same root cause, we don’t allow ourselves to effectively solve the issues they present. David Sowell, chair of Juniata College’s history department, explained in his talk in the Diversity and Democracy series of lectures, “It’s easier to use that broad brush to label things you don’t like but it may be more problematic to do that.”

According to Sowell, “eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution.” The direction is carried out by those in power and can be defined by positive and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics is achieved through encouraging certain people that possess “desirable traits” to reproduce and pass on those traits through heredity. While negative eugenics suggests removing the “undesirable traits” that some members of society express  – usually achieved through forced sterilization of certain groups of people. Of course it is inherently wrong to target specific groups because it leads to discrimination based on race, but the historical practice of eugenics has a very distinct and specific cause.

Social Darwinism was often used to justify eugenics programs which supposedly fostered the growth of the fittest members of the population. When eugenics was introduced, it was based on scientific racism, the idea that there is scientific data to prove that races are unequal. Today, we know that this data never actually existed, but was actually just misconstrued information that upheld notions of the superiority of some races over others.

That same idea of superiority is found in nativism, which is the belief that a country should include only members of a certain race or ethnicity. Historically, when a group of immigrants came to the U.S. in large numbers, those same immigrants faced discriminatory laws meant to slow immigration. Nativism overlaps with eugenics in the “Nordic Theory,” proposed in 1916. It expresses a belief that the racial makeup of the U.S. is at risk of being changed for the worse if immigrants are allowed in the country. Eugenics comes into play if a country decides that actions need to be taken to protect its racial purity.

White nationalism is a fairly new phenomenon, and believers in this ideology will express a desire to have a separate country for white Americans. They will likely claim that they do not believe in white superiority, but rather that whites have become victim to an increasingly diverse national population. However, white nationalism does represent white supremacist ideologies.

Eugenics, nativism, and white nationalism all represent white superiority and oppression of other races and ethnicities. As Sowell explains, “There is a hierarchy that in the minds [of those who are at the top] and [their own] language that can explain why this hierarchy exists.” When a group claims that they are superior because the current social structure confirms this incorrect belief, it can seem to some like a convincing enough argument.

Laura Snyder ’18, Juniata Online Journalist

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.