ABSTRACT
Prior to World War II, a sociopolitical movement captured the hearts and minds of many Europeans and European Americans—the eugenics movement. Triggered in large part by fears that “mongrel” races were breeding at an excessively large rate, this movement was given a quasi-scientific legitimacy by some sociologists, biologists, and psychologists of the day. In fact, no less a figure than Leonard Darwin (son of Charles Darwin) spelled out the goals of eugenics explicitly: “We can at all events assert that there are many kinds of men that we do not want. These include the criminal, the insane, the imbecile, the feeble in mind, the diseased at birth, the deformed, the deaf, the blind, etc., etc,” (1929, p. 25). Belonging to the “etc., etc.” category were the products of “miscegenation” or “race mixing,” according to Osborn (1923): “In the matter of racial virtues, my opinion is that from biological principles there is little evidence in the ‘melting pot’ theory. Put three races together, you are as likely to unite the vices of all three as the virtues” (p. 2).
