Racism and Welfare: The Hybridization of Eugenics Movement

Abstract

Human beings millenarian interest in improving their natural attributes culminated at the end of the 19th century with the emergence of ‘eugenics’ as a science that studied the enhancement of human lineage. In practice, the ideological and political eugenics movement materialized in the first half of the 20th century, especially in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Germany. These three nations, embodying the eugenics movement mainstream, tried to carry out the desired improvement of human species by applying several homophobic and racist policies whose direct consequence was involuntary sterilization and murder of thousands of people. However, the end of the Second World War brought about a turning point for the eugenics movement. It gradually modified its racist nature in order to develop the idea of human enhancement from the point of view of “social welfare” and the improvement of citizens’ quality of life, giving rise to a racism-welfare hybridization within the eugenics ideology of the second half of the 20th century.

Keywords

• eugenesia
• racismo
• hibridación
• estado del bienestar
• homicultura
• puericultura
• movimiento eugenésico