Eugenics in America

Eugenics is the practice of deliberately selecting traits in humans to be passed onto future generations. Eugenics as we know it today began in the late 1800s, around the time Civil War Reconstruction was ending. This was also the time when Darwin's theory of evolution was becoming more widely accepted, and it was easy for people to transition from natural selection to human designed selection. However, along with the idea that some traits should be promoted among humans, there was also the belief that other traits should be deliberately weeded out. This came to be the defense of racial supremacy: there are certain races that are genetically superior, and others should be weeded out or excluded from reproducing with the superior races.

The best example of eugenics promoted by a government has to be Nazi Germany. Hitler was a huge believer in eugenics, and he made sure German citizens people of the pure "Aryan" race. However, Hitler himself commended another country on its eugenicist progress: the US.
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American eugenicist scientists claimed that people of Eastern and Southeastern European descent must be "lower" races because they had higher proportions in jails and mental institutions than other ethnicities. Although this was a classic mix-up of causation versus correlation, this was used as scientific evidence to support the Immigration Act of 1924. The Act restricted the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southeastern European countries allowed into the US. 

Even more ominous, though, were the forced sterilization programs embraced in the name of eugenics. As proud as Californians may be about our just and liberal state, "Beginning in 1909 and continuing for 70 years, California led the country in the number of sterilization procedures performed on men and women, often without their full knowledge and consent" (UCSB link). These sterilizations were done mainly on prison populations, but it was also driven by anti-Asian and anti-Mexican sentiments. In other parts of the US, race also played into coerced sterilization. Native Americans, black people, and Mexicans were disproportionately targeted by these practices. Why? Because eugenics was used as a justification for marginalizing minority populations. While groups of people may end up disproportionately represented in prisons or mental institutions due to their circumstances (like histories of discrimination), eugenicists assumed their faults were due to the inherent nature of this group of people.

But the craziest thing about the eugenics craze is the Buck v. Bell case that went to the Supreme Court in 1927. A Virginia law requiring the women be sterilized if they were diagnosed with weak mindedness was upheld in the US Supreme Court. Chief Justice Holmes' opinion summed up the nation's acceptance of eugenics nicely: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" (History.state.gov link).
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Though eugenics has largely been debunked, it just goes to show that America is not the haven of equality and acceptance of diversity that we wish it was.

https://www.britannica.com/science/eugenics-genetics 
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act 
http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015287/politics-female-biology-and-reproduction 
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/