Legacy Stories are stories that were conceptualised in September 2021, before the timeline was on Tiki-Toki, let alone GitHub. The story in its current form lives here. And you are very welcome to share any thoughts you have on how this story can be improved by commenting below!
Francis Galton hosts the "Anthropometric Laboratory" at the International Health Exhibition in London, England.
Justification
A precursor to "race science".
Unformed Thoughts
Galton’s work gained some formal recognition with the Galton Laboratory, established in 1884 at University College London (UCL) (Kiladi, 2019). Later on, Pearson, an important figure in the then-nascent field of mathematical statistics, provided the credibility Galton needed to succeed at UCL in the first decade of the 20th century. Kiladi (ibid.) goes as far as to describe Pearson as “forming a cult” around Galton.
In either case, eugenics constitutes an evil ideology that built on and argued for scientific racism, the view not only that there exist “races” that are biologically real and can be empirically identified, but that the “white race” is inherently superior – eugenics is a core tenet of white supremacy.
UCL apologised for their involvement with eugenics in January, 2021, and provide a useful definition of eugenics in their formal apology:
"This dangerous ideology cemented the spurious idea that varieties of human life could be assigned different value. It provided justification for some of the most appalling crimes in human history: genocide, forced euthanasia, colonialism and other forms of mass murder and oppression based on racial and ableist hierarchy" (Bolger, 2021).
Legacy Stories are stories that were conceptualised in September 2021, before the timeline was on Tiki-Toki, let alone GitHub. The story in its current form lives here. And you are very welcome to share any thoughts you have on how this story can be improved by commenting below!
Title
Legacy story: Eugenics, Part I
Date or Period đź“…
08-May 1884, as per Datta (2016).
Elevator Pitch
Francis Galton hosts the "Anthropometric Laboratory" at the International Health Exhibition in London, England.
Justification
A precursor to "race science".
Unformed Thoughts
Galton’s work gained some formal recognition with the Galton Laboratory, established in 1884 at University College London (UCL) (Kiladi, 2019). Later on, Pearson, an important figure in the then-nascent field of mathematical statistics, provided the credibility Galton needed to succeed at UCL in the first decade of the 20th century. Kiladi (ibid.) goes as far as to describe Pearson as “forming a cult” around Galton.
In either case, eugenics constitutes an evil ideology that built on and argued for scientific racism, the view not only that there exist “races” that are biologically real and can be empirically identified, but that the “white race” is inherently superior – eugenics is a core tenet of white supremacy.
UCL apologised for their involvement with eugenics in January, 2021, and provide a useful definition of eugenics in their formal apology:
"This dangerous ideology cemented the spurious idea that varieties of human life could be assigned different value. It provided justification for some of the most appalling crimes in human history: genocide, forced euthanasia, colonialism and other forms of mass murder and oppression based on racial and ableist hierarchy" (Bolger, 2021).