Phoenix, Arizona in the days of Eugenics


The Eugenics Movement, which means "good genes", was very popular in the 1920s. If you've never heard the term, it's not surprising, as ultimately it led to a very dark chapter in human history. If you're familiar with the greatest proponent of that idea, Adolph Hitler, you may have heard of it as creating "the Master Race."

The girls in that image there aren't from Phoenix, but the article is from a Phoenix newspaper. And the thought of a "Human Thoroughbred" really doesn't sound that bad, just kind of silly, until you see how people started putting it into practice, wanting to create the Master Race.

Of course it's all just nonsense, just like the concept of race is nonsense - there's only one race, the human race. But then, as now, people believed in things very strongly.

Time-travel with me back to the 1920s and let's see if we're "human thoroughbreds" in Phoenix. I suppose we could start the same way that they do with horses, by looking at our teeth. Mine are OK, but yours...? Speaking for myself, I know that I'd fail as I've always had terrible vision (corrected with glasses when I was a kid and lasik as an adult).

This all came sharply into focus during World War II, when the United States and its allies defeated the Axis Powers, and brought an end to the Thousand-Year Reich, and Hitler's dream of a Master Race. Whether it all started with cheerful good intentions or not I can't say, but I know how it ended.
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