On September 18, President Donald Trump held a rally in Bemidji, Minnesota during which he voiced support for eugenics, saying: “You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.” 

The quote is awkward and worrying on its own, but even if we take away inferences made from it, Trump’s belief in the Racehorse Theory cannot be denied or ignored. The Racehorse Theory, put simply, is a belief and practice that has been held by eugenicists for centuries that states that the key to a superior population is to restrict who is allowed to reproduce to those with desirable traits.. Worry over the statement has been brought up as a topic by numerous people already, many of them making comparisons to Hitler’s desire for a “master race”, but while history is important, we must remember that eugenics is not new to America. It is a current issue that was not brought here from other parts of the world. Rather, eugenics is an American problem, popularized in the United States before the world even had a chance to come up with a term for it, and spread elsewhere. 

If history isn’t in your background, you might be confused and shocked right now. America’s eugenic history is not new, nor is it a secret, but it is a dark topic that even curriculums focused on oppression tend to shy away from or gloss over. But the truth is, the idea behind eugenics has been thriving in America before it even had a name, and the Disability community has a particularly long history in the subject. 

But the truth is, the idea behind eugenics has been thriving in America before it even had a name, and the Disability community has a particularly long history in the subject.

As terrible as it is, we must admit that eugenics did not appear overnight, but were an accumulation of different steps and beliefs taken on and normalized throughout our society. The idea of a desirable population first skyrocketed in the United States in the Industrial Revolution, when families and employers began to glorify productivity and profit, seeking only the most fit workers. This fetishization would later lead to the idea that anyone who was unable to “earn” their own living by means of physical work was a burden on society and should be shunned. 

The premise of these ideas lead to what is commonly referred to as Ugly Laws. The laws were posed as a way to stop beggars and were enacted on a municipal basis throughout the United States and varied in severity. However they were much darker than what they may have seemed on the surface. All of them effectively banned people with physical disabilities from showing themselves in public unless they were to be shown as an example of the divide between the able-bodied and the Disabled. As a result, Disabled people were often locked up, forgotten, and left to die because even if they were technically able to work, they were not allowed to be seen. Exceptions to the Ugly Laws were few, most just pertaining to those who had a small work accident given the high percentages of work injuries during the time period. These laws were in effect from 1867 to 1974.

As ableist sentiments rose, Disabled Americans were segregated into colonies, the idea behind them being that if they were left to themselves, they wouldn’t reproduce or have any influence on mainstream society. Because of the popularized idea that people were only as valuable as the work they could provide, many of these colonies focused on agricultural labor, and it was in the Virginia Colony for Epileptics that forced sterilization would find its federal legalization.

Dr. Albert Priddy, an avid eugenicist, worked for years to obtain the full legal right to sterilize his patients. Many states prior to Virginia had already passed laws allowing the practice, but even Virginia alone wasn’t enough for him. Priddy made sure to take his case all the way up to the supreme court. With Carrie Buck as his example, he did just that. Carrie was a young woman placed in the Colony and formally diagnosed as a moron. She had a family history of being “feebleminded”, and had already had a child out of wedlock, making her the perfect example for Priddy to back up his case. After a long battle through the courts, he finally got the Supreme Court to rule in favor of a state’s right to forcibly sterilize institutionalized people when they saw fit, declaring: “three generations of imbeciles is enough”. 

The decision is highly regarded as one of the worst ever made in American history. The courts apologized to Carrie Buck and her family in 1974, dropping the label of imbeciles against them, but they have never overturned the ruling. In fact they have left sterilization fully legal on the federal level despite refusals to allow eugenic laws on a state-by-state basis such as Skinner v. Oklahoma.

This history is one that the Disability community has been fighting against practically since its beginnings, and as we’ve moved on in our history, these laws have targeted more than the disabled. From the impoverished classes of America’s rural towns to the recent uproar of sterilization of women at the border, this history affects all of us, and bringing down this law would benefit everyone. 

The existence of eugenics in the United States is not a fault of Donald Trump, but given his comments and his handling of recent events, he clearly supports their popularization and has no issue putting them into practice. Eugenics has not gone away, it has only evolved. When politicians like Dan Patrick are blatantly saying that at risk people should be willing to die for the economy, those statements are rooted in ableism and reinforce eugenic theories that certain groups of people are inherently less valuable than others. The eugenic theory that backed Carrie Buck’s sterilization is the same ideology that allows a nation to mark at risk lives disposable in the face of a global pandemic.

While you can’t be blamed for being led to believe that eugenics was a token of Nazism alone, it’s time to stop making comparisons and start holding our own nation accountable for its history and actions. Eugenics thrives in the United States because this country was built on it. Moreover, it’s time to stop separating disability rights issues from the rest of your activism. It’s time to start listening to Disabled voices about our problems before they become able-bodied problems. Eugenics is not something that is going to go away whether we elect one president or the other. It is an ideology that needs to be fought against from every angle regardless of who its supporters are, from our elected officials to everyday citizens. It is time to start holding our nation accountable for its past.

For more reading on the history of American Eugenics, see:

• • Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen
  • The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public by Susan Schweik
  • War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black