Racism.

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The roots of racism stem from differing religions, the mission to Christianize, and the global acceptability of owning those of a different faith. It was acceptable for Christians to have non-Christian slaves, Muslims to have non-Muslim slaves, or African peoples to own others from enemy tribes.

When did racism start in the UK?
Racism against black people grew after 1860, when race-based discrimination was fed by then-popular theories of scientific racism. Attempts to support these theories cited 'scientific evidence', such as brain size.

Racism was also used alot during the war, When Hitler was in power.

Hitler.

Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. Before and especially during World War II, the Nazi German regime perpetrated the Holocaust and other mass atrocities. In the aftermath of these crimes, calculating the number of victims became important for legal, historical, ethical, and educational reasons.

The statistics below were calculated using a number of different sources. These sources include surviving Nazi German reports and records; prewar and postwar demographic studies; records created by Jews during and after the war; documentation created by resistance groups and underground activists; as well as other available, extant archival sources.

These death statistics lay bare the enormity of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. They are a starting point for confronting the scale of human loss unleashed by Nazi Germany.

How many Jewish people died in the Holocaust?

In total, six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. This genocide is now known as the Holocaust. Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the hatred of or prejudice against Jews, was a basic tenet of Nazi ideology. This prejudice was also widespread throughout Europe.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered Jews in many places using several methods. The two main methods of murder were poison gas and mass shootings. They also murdered Jews in other acts of violence and by deliberately denying them access to adequate food, shelter, medical care, and other necessities.

They were taken to a consertration camp to be mercilessly killed by guards, One know use was the gas chamber.

Nazi beliefs and ideas about race shaped all aspects of everyday life and politics in Nazi Germany. In particular, the Nazis embraced the false idea that Jews were a separate and inferior race. This belief is known as racial antisemitism.

The combined set of Nazi beliefs and ideas about race is sometimes referred to as “Nazi racism” or “Nazi racial ideology.” Like other forms of racism, Nazi racism was based on prejudices and stereotypes.

The Nazis drew upon ideas about race that were widespread throughout much of Europe and North America. However, the specifics of Nazi racism were extreme. They were based on Adolf Hitler’s interpretation of race. In his book Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler explained his racist worldview. He idealized racial purity and racial struggle. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, these ideas drove government policy. Hitler’s ideas about race have been widely discredited as incorrect and immoral.

Nazi racism resulted in the persecution and mass murder of six million Jews and millions of other people.

Introduction to Nazi Racism.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races.

According to the Nazis, each race had its own traits. These characteristics, in the Nazi view, were passed on from one generation to the next. All members of a race supposedly shared the same inherited traits. These traits then supposedly determined the race’s appearance, intelligence, creativity, and strength.

Some races, in the Nazi view, had better traits than others. According to Nazi thinking, the races with the best traits dominated other races.

Nazi Ideas about the Aryan Race.

Hitler and the Nazis identified Germans as members of the “Aryan” race. According to the Nazis, Aryans were at the top of the racial hierarchy. This is why the Nazis referred to German Aryans as the “master race.”

The Nazis idealized Aryans as blonde, blue-eyed, athletic, and tall. Nazi propaganda posters, photographs, and films showed people who fit this ideal. However, many people whom the Nazis considered to be Aryan Germans did not look like this. For example, Adolf Hitler had brown hair and was average height. The Nazis did not persecute or murder people solely based on hair or eye-color.

The Nazis believed that they had to protect Germans from inferior races. To stay strong, they thought they had to remain racially pure. To Hitler and the Nazis, Jewish people were the biggest threat to the Aryan race.

Nazi Racial Discrimination against Jews.

The Nazis defined Jews by race, not religion. They claimed that Jews belonged to a separate race. They also claimed that Jews were inferior to all other races. The Nazi definition of Jews included people who did not practice Judaism.

Hitler and the Nazis claimed that the “Jewish race” was especially dangerous. It supposedly exploited and harmed other races. Thus, the Nazis referred to Jews as a “parasitic race.” In particular, they believed that Jews were parasites that were destroying the Aryan race. This false and prejudiced belief was why the Nazis persecuted Jewish people. They wanted to separate Jews and Aryan Germans. They tried to force Jews to leave Germany.

The Nazis’ Failed Attempts to Measure and Identify Race.

The Nazis tried to use science to prove their racial theories. They recruited doctors and other scientists to help them. These officials tried to categorize people into races. They measured and described people’s physical features, like noses, skulls, eyes, and hair.

These attempts at categorization failed to prove Nazi racial theories. In fact, their efforts revealed that human beings could not be scientifically categorized into races. Humankind is simply too naturally diverse. However, this reality did not stop the Nazis.

Nazi Racial Policies.

Nazi racism determined how the Nazis treated people in Germany. People whom the Nazis identified as Aryans benefited from Nazi economic and social policies. Those whom the Nazis identified as non-Aryans (including Jews) were persecuted and discriminated against. For example, the Nuremberg Race Laws stripped Jews of the rights of citizenship. The laws also banned so-called race-mixing. In addition, the Nazis carried out forced sterilizations of certain groups whom they considered inferior. These procedures prevented people with disabilities, Roma, and Black people in Germany from having children.

Nazi Racial War.

Nazi ideology, including Nazi racism, led to World War II (1939–1945).

War was part of Nazi racial theory. The Nazis believed that races were destined to wage war against each other. For them, war was a way for the Aryan race to gain land and resources. Specifically, the Nazis wanted to conquer territory in eastern Europe. They planned to remove, dominate, or murder the people who lived there. They believed that Aryan Germans should control this land because they were the supposed master race. The Nazis called this territory “living space” (Lebensraum). Hoping to achieve these goals, the Nazis invaded and occupied much of eastern Europe, beginning with Poland. In occupied eastern Europe, the Nazis behaved with extreme brutality. They oppressed and murdered civilians across the region.

The Holocaust and Nazi Racism.

Nazi racism led to the mass murder of six million Jews. The Nazis falsely claimed that Jews were an inferior race. They also falsely claimed that all Jews were an existential threat to Germany and that they had to be destroyed. Motivated by this racist thinking, the Nazis carried out a genocide of Europe’s Jews during World War II. This genocide is referred to as the Holocaust.

Key Dates.

July 1925
The first volume of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published
Adolf Hitler writes a book called Mein Kampf while in prison for attempting to overthrow the German government. The title means “my struggle.” This book is part autobiography and part political manifesto. The first volume is published in July 1925 by the Nazi Party’s publishing house. The second volume is published the following year. In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlines his racist, antisemitic worldview. These ideas form the basis of Nazi ideology. They have deadly consequences after Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany in 1933.

April 7, 1933
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
In April 1933, the Nazis enact their first national anti-Jewish law. This law is called “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” It allows the government to dismiss certain government workers, including Jews and political opponents. The Nazis claim that the law will make the government more reliable and efficient. In reality, this law is a purge. It is the Nazis’ first attempt to exclude Jews from German economic, social, and political life.

July 14, 1933
The Sterilization Law
On July 14, 1933, the Nazi German regime enacts a sterilization law. This law is called the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.” It allows the government to forcibly sterilize Germans with certain diseases. In particular, the law applies to individuals diagnosed with nine medical conditions influenced by hereditary factors, including hereditary deafness, hereditary blindness, and schizophrenia. The Nazis sterilize about 400,000 people under this law.

What are eugenics and scientific racism?

Eugenics and Scientific Racism.
Eugenics is an inaccurate theory linked to historical and present-day forms of discrimination, racism, ableism and colonialism. It has persisted in policies and beliefs around the world, including the United States.

The Big Picture:?
Eugenics is the scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.

Eugenicists believed in a prejudiced and incorrect understanding of Mendelian genetics that claimed abstract human qualities (e.g., intelligence and social behaviors) were inherited in a simple fashion. Similarly, they believed complex diseases and disorders were solely the outcome of genetic inheritance.

The implementation of eugenics practices has caused widespread harm, particularly to populations that are being marginalized.

Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s, leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.

The genomics communities continue to work to scientifically debunk eugenic myths and combat modern-day manifestations of eugenics and scientific racism, particularly as they affect people of color, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Eugenics

What are eugenics and scientific racism?

Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,” which gained popularity during the early 20th century. Eugenicists worldwide believed that they could perfect human beings and eliminate so-called social ills through genetics and heredity. They believed the use of methods such as involuntary sterilization, segregation and social exclusion would rid society of individuals deemed by them to be unfit.

Scientific racism is an ideology that appropriates the methods and legitimacy of science to argue for the superiority of white Europeans and the inferiority of non-white people whose social and economic status have been historically marginalized. Like eugenics, scientific racism grew out of:

the misappropriation of revolutionary advances in medicine, anatomy and statistics during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through the mechanism of natural selection.
Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance.
Eugenic theories and scientific racism drew support from contemporary xenophobia, antisemitism, sexism, colonialism and imperialism, as well as justifications of slavery, particularly in the United States.

How did eugenics begin?

Francis Galton, an English statistician, demographer and ethnologist (and cousin of Charles Darwin), coined the term “eugenics” in 1883.

Galton defined eugenics as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” Galton claimed that health and disease, as well as social and intellectual characteristics, were based upon heredity and the concept of race.

During the 1870s and 1880s, discussions of “human improvement” and the ideology of scientific racism became increasingly common. So-called experts determined individuals and groups of people to be either superior or inferior. They believed biological and behavioral characteristics were fixed and unchangeable, and placed individuals, populations and nations inside of that hierarchy.

What did eugenics look like across the globe?

By the 1920s, eugenics had become a global movement. There was popular, elite and governmental support for eugenics in Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, Canada and other countries. Statisticians, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, social reformers, geneticists, public health officials and members of the general public supported eugenics through a variety of academic and popular literature.
The most well-known application of eugenics occurred in Nazi Germany in the lead up to World War II and the Holocaust. The Nazi German racial state between 1933 and 1945 used its resources to “cleanse” the German people and the Nazi state of those they deemed “unworthy of life.” Nazis in Germany, Austria and other occupied territories euthanized at least 70,000 adults and 5,200 children. They implemented a campaign of forced sterilization that claimed at least 400,000 victims. This culminated in the near destruction of the Jewish people, as well as an effort to eliminate other marginalized ethnic minorities, such as the Sinti and Roma, individuals with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people.

What did eugenics look like in the United States?

In the United States, slavery and its legacies, fears of “miscegenation” and eugenics were deeply connected in the early 20th century. Prominent American eugenicists expounded on their concerns of “race suicide,” or the increasingly differential birthrates between immigrants and non-Nordic races compared to native-born Nordic whites. Eugenicists used these concerns to promote discriminatory policies like anti-immigration and sterilization.

American eugenicists from a variety of disciplines declared certain individuals unfit, “feebleminded” or anti-social, which resulted in the involuntary sterilization of at least 60,000 people through 30 states’ laws by the 1970s.
These eugenicists disproportionately targeted Latinxs, Native Americans, African Americans, poor whites and people with disabilities during the entirety of the 20th century. Eugenicists were also crucial to the enactment of discriminatory immigration legislation that was passed in 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act), which completely excluded immigrants from Asia.

Do eugenics and scientific racism still exist?

Yes.

While eugenics movements especially flourished during the three decades before the end of World War II, eugenics practices such as involuntary sterilization, forced institutionalization, social ostracization and stigma were common in many states until at least the 1970s and, in some instances, have continued into the present in various forms.

With the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and, more recently, advances in genomic screening technologies, there is some concern about whether generating an increasing amount of genomic information in the prenatal setting would lead to new societal pressures to terminate pregnancies where the fetus is at heightened risk for genetic disorders, such as Down Syndrome and spina bifida.

The emergence of statistical techniques, such as polygenic risk scores, that can estimate risks for more genetically complex disorders have raised concerns among ethicists that their use in the context of in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnoses. The possible genomic-based screening of embryos for behavioral, psychosocial and/or intellectual traits would be reminiscent of the history of eugenics in its attempt to eliminate certain individuals.

Some geneticists view both genomic screening and genetic counseling as an extension of eugenics.

What is NHGRI doing to address eugenics and scientific racism?

When the HGP began in 1990, there was widespread concern that genomics would lead to a new era of eugenics. Many bioethicists were aware of how past eugenic movements used genetic information to ostracize historically marginalized groups and believed that people would use the outcomes of the HGP and subsequent developments in genomics to further marginalize and stigmatize certain groups. People were also concerned that the HGP would usher in a new era of behavior genetics, where genes would be used to explain certain behaviors. Many discussions about the HGP revolved around whether employers or insurance companies could use genomic information to discriminate against specific individuals.

In response to these and other concerns, the National Center for Human Genome Research (now the National Human Genome Research Institute, or NHGRI) founded the Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications (ELSI) Research Program. For more than three decades, the NHGRI ELSI Research Program has funded research on all aspects of the social and ethical implications of genomics, including the legacies of eugenics and scientific racism in the context of new and emerging genetic and genomic technologies.

Building on a long tradition of these legacies, NHGRI is committed to taking proactive steps to provide leadership in the field of genomics in addressing structural racism and anything that would foster eugenics-based ideas. Together with efforts of the National Institute of Health, including the UNITE Initiative, NHGRI will continue to combat the legacies of eugenics and scientific racism and their present-day manifestations to develop an inclusive and welcoming genomics community.

In addition, the NHGRI History of Genomics Program is committed to interrogating the legacies of eugenics and scientific racism to further develop ethical and equitable uses of genomics.

Only by understanding and fully engaging with the history of eugenics and scientific racism will genomics serve to facilitate an inclusive and humane future.

Thx for reading!