Race and Membership:
The Roots of Systemic Racism in U.S. Schools
Kevin Feinberg, Senior Program Director, New York
kevin_feinberg@facinghistory.org
www.facinghistory.org
MISSION STATEMENT
Facing History uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and students to stand up to bigotry and hate.
Our Pedagogical Triangle
We Are All Smog-Breathers
Beverly Daniel Tatum, President Emerita of Spelman College, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race (and Member of Facing History’s Board of Scholars):
Think about these [racial] stereotypes … these distortions as a kind of environment that surrounds us, like smog in the air. We don't breathe it because we like it. We don't breathe it because we think it's good for us. We breathe it because it's the only air that's available...
We're all breathing in misinformation. We're all being exposed to stereotypes, and we all have to think about how we have been impacted by that. You sometimes hear people say there is not a prejudiced bone in my body. But I think when somebody makes that statement, we might gently say to them check again. That if we have all been breathing in smog, we can't help but have our thinking shaped by it somehow. As a consequence, we all have work to do. Whether you identify as a person of color, whether you identify as a white person, it doesn't matter. We all have been exposed to misinformation that we have to think critically about.
(Interview with PBS, 2003: https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-04.htm)
Eugenics: a 20th Century “Science”
“Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve and develop the inborn qualities of a race. But what is meant by improvement? We must leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion on account of the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. The essentials of eugenics may, however, be easily defined. All would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good rather than bad specimens…”
From Nature magazine, 1904.
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/origins-eugenics
Sir Francis Galton
(1822-1911)
Eugenics: a 20th Century “Science”
Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement
https://www.facinghistory.org/topics/race-us-history/race-membership-eugenics
Eugenics: a 20th Century “Science”
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20th Century Eugenics Movement
Eugenics: a 20th Century “Science”
20th Century Eugenics Movement
QUESTIONS TO ASK OF
THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT:
Eugenics: a 20th Century “Science”
In the ferment of the early 20th century with immigration, urbanization, and the migration of African Americans from the south into the North and West driving white, middle class fears, eugenics become a popular “solution” on both the Left and the Right and drove public policies:
1905: Frenchman Alfred Binet
Stanford-Binet IQ Test
Lewis Terman “Father of the SAT”
Stanford-Binet IQ Test
Alpha Test: a series of multiple choice questions.
Beta Test: a series of images, with one item missing. There is only one right answer.
YOU WILL BE TAKING ONE PART OF THE BETA TEST.
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/revising-test
3 minutes
Write what is missing for each item
Or draw what is missing
Stanford-Binet IQ Test
In your small groups (4 minutes):
Note: Don't get caught up on the “right” answers! Discuss your insights and questions about the test…
Results gathered from US military
In 1917 1.7 million men in the US army were tested as the ranks were growing prior to US entry into the Great War (WWI)
Test takers were divided into one of three “racial groups”
and Eastern Europe - many immigrants
or sons of immigrants)
The results, presented in a bell curve,
show that, on average, the Nordic group
scored highest, and the “Negro Draft”
scored lowest
What policies do these data justify?
Lewis Terman, responding to results of the IQ tests given to California school children, wrote:
The tests have told the truth. These boys are ineducable beyond the merest rudiments of training. No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable citizens. . . . They represent the level of intelligence, which is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among Negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come…. Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient workers…
From “The Measurement of Intelligence,” 1916
Eugenics’ Influence on US Education
Thus segregation and tracking were justified through data; race based education was seen as a progressive policy to spend public funds smartly. Segregation and tracking was designed to educate students based on their innate limits and innate promise - with race as the primary factor.
HISTORY, RACE, & EDUCATIONAL INEQUITY
This illustration promotes the notion that the new Eugenics intelligence tests will be:
"The Pupil Becomes an Individual," American School Board Journal, 1921.
Legacies to Consider
Eugenics is largely discredited, but it lives on in the “smog” we breathe: