![\"\"](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-P5rHU3USoyU\/TdKS58dVsmI\/AAAAAAAABCo\/3AxEBqeqS7Y\/s400\/Eugenics%2BNegro.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This eugenicist poster presents the differences between different African faces, highlighting the features of the so-considered “criminal” and “civil insane.”\u00a0 I found it to be a good demonstration of the belief within eugenics that someone’s facial features could be used to determine their personality type.\u00a0 Eugenicists believed that one’s personality could be determined by their appearance.\u00a0 Having a “shorter, broader, higher head” for example could classify one as a criminal according to this poster.\u00a0 Biology and anthropology were used as both logical proof and a moral conscience for these claims.\u00a0 It was thought processes like this that allowed for racism to flourish from eugenics in interwar Europe.<\/p>\n
Another interesting aspect of this poster is the fact that it comes from Britain, where eugenics were supposedly based more in social class than in race.\u00a0 It helps to prove Stone’s argument in Breeding Superman that racial eugenics were more prominent in Britain than the nation’s eugenicists preferred to lead on.\u00a0 After the atrocities committed by Germany that used eugenics as their logic were exposed, Britain claimed that their eugenics programs were based around preserving the traditional class system that had been becoming obsolete.\u00a0 However, as an empire that spanned almost all the continents of the world, as well as the peoples of different races that resided on them, Britain felt it necessary to assert its dominance over the natives of their colonies.\u00a0 Therefore, eugenics was used to “prove” white supremacy.\u00a0 This poster shows how the British did this by using the reasoning that Africans were naturally savages who would disrupt the social order with their “natural” tendencies toward violence.\u00a0 Documents such as this could have easily manipulated the mindsets of the middle class through its fear tactics.<\/p>\n
After having become aware of how British eugenics were based around similar ideals as those in the more extreme Nazi Germany, it fascinates me how one country used these ideas to justify a mass genocide, while the other fought against these actions.\u00a0 Could Britain have eventually reached a tipping point that would have caused the nation to undertake similar actions as Germany?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This eugenicist poster presents the differences between different African faces, highlighting the features of the so-considered “criminal” and “civil insane.”\u00a0 I found it to be a good demonstration of the belief within eugenics that someone’s facial features could be used … Continue reading