The Next Eugenics Movement is Here

Once again– America leads the way.

Five years ago, in Nashville, Tennessee ICE engaged in a four-hour stand off with an immigrant man and his 12 year old son. They were held up in their van in front of their home. Their neighbors, activists, and local politicians showed up to provide aid and eventually formed a human chain around the man and his son. They expanded and morphed the human chain until they could safely enter their home. A neighbor, Stacey, stated: “I could see if these people were bad criminals, but they’re not, they’re just trying to provide for their kids. The family don’t bother nobody, they work every day, they come home, the kids jump on their trampoline, it’s just a community.” I wonder how Stacey feels about her neighbors now. Would she, her neighbors, the city politicians protect them from ICE today?

Beliefs are not stable and thus, they are easy to hijack. Let’s talk about the psychology behind eugenics.

Conceptual Dehumanization

The first step towards eugenics is dehumanization. To dehumanize entire populations of people, you first must create an “us” and a “them” to promote psychological separation. This is called the Social Identity Theory. The foundations of American racial hierarchy and eugenics can be traced back to the American colonial period, where the concept of "whiteness" was deliberately and thoughtfully crafted to draw the line between us, the people from European descent with lighter skin, and them, everyone else. In the 17th century, English philosopher and statesman Nathanial Bacon unified the poor farmers against the wealthy plantation owners (by attacking Native American tribes). The poor farmers and Bacon’s army burned Jamestown to the ground. However, the fiery rebellion quickly collapsed when Bacon died from dysentery. In response to Bacon's Rebellion (1676), the colonial governor Berkeley hung many of those who had rebelled. The rebellion terrified the elite landowners. And that fear is how the racial caste system in America was born. Laws were enacted to ensure that poor white laborers were granted social privileges while Black laborers were increasingly subjected to chattel slavery. This gave the poor white laborers a facade of being an “us” with the wealthy of this country. Thus the first degree of separation cracked open a rift.

Conceptual dehumanization isn’t just a product of social attitudes—it was a deliberate, calculated effort to control non-white populations. By branding non-white people as morally and intellectually inferior, the system made violent subjugation and exclusion not just acceptable, but morally justified. Scared rich land owners who moonlit as governors and council men, turned human beings into controllable objects, stripping them of agency and worth. A specific effort to ensure that the poor, of all races, creeds, and backgrounds would not gather together as an “us.” A deliberate and constant effort to ensure that “us,” united, would not then look towards the elite and powerful, pointing our fingers with the conviction of equality for all, and define the rich, powerful, minority as the “them.”

The legal codification of race as a determinant of social status solidified whiteness as a privileged identity, serving as a foundational mechanism of control that screams across our society today. This means your racial in-group and out-group were chosen for you 349 years ago.

Moral Inferiority

The invented racial divisions were further entrenched through pseudoscientific theories of racial superiority throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Enlightenment-era thinkers like Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach categorized humans into racial groups, assigning moral and intellectual hierarchies to each. Conveniently, their assertions just happened to line up with the existing racist class system (expert scientific methodology surely). The idea of "whiteness" became synonymous with intelligence, civilization, and virtue, while Blackness was framed as everything “not-white”—Blackness became associated with primitiveness, danger, and moral inferiority. This constructed dichotomy justifies slavery, segregation, and later, eugenic policies aimed at restricting the reproduction and migration of non-white populations. As noted by Thomas Leonard, an economist who examined early forms of eugenics, this system of separation was wildly popular all around the world in the 1940s:

“Progressive Era eugenics was, in fact, the broadest of churches. It was mainstream; it was popular to the point of faddishness; it was supported by leading figures in the newly emerging science of genetics; it appealed to an extraordinary range of political ideologies, not just progressives; and it survived the Nazis.”

As science progressed in America, so did this separation, not in its mending, but in new-fangled ways to explain and further open the wound in the human psyche. How do you convince society that one race is inherently superior to another? You invent science to prove the moral inferiority of the other group. See the pivot there? From ethnicity and race to morality. This pivot is important. It is part of the justification that connects dehumanization to the need for separation, the need for violence (i.e., The illegals have to be deported to internment camps for our safety). If it were truly about inherent superiority, we would measure the biological aspects of humans, our speed, our agility, our strength.... And here you might add intelligence. Well, they tried that. The moral argument around intelligence still rings in the lecture halls and current YouTube channels of people like Jordan Peterson (former lecture halls in his case).

Intelligence testing emerged in the 1910s–1920s as a tool devised for enforcing racial and class hierarchies. In the U.S., Psychologist Henry H. Goddard introduced IQ testing at Ellis Island in 1912 to screen immigrants, and he claimed that nearly 80% of Jewish, Italian, Hungarian, and Russian immigrants were "feeble-minded." In comparison, in 2020, 2.5% of people in America were diagnosed with an intellectual developmental disability. These fabricated findings were used to fuel nativist and racist policies – for instance, eugenicists like Harry H. Laughlin advised Congress on the strict Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply cut immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe (virtually halting Italian and Jewish immigration).

During World War I, the U.S. Army administered IQ tests developed by eugenist leaders in the American Psychological Association (APA), to 1.7 million recruits. According to Ajitha Reddy in a DePaul University Legal Review: “These tests relied heavily upon knowledge of elite and urban pop culture, as well as test-taking proficiency. As one might expect, the results of testing reinscribed Nordic supremacy: eighty-nine percent of all African Americans and forty-seven percent of whites, mostly from southern and eastern European countries, were deemed morons-that is, mental functioning below that of normal thirteen year olds. However, just 0.2% of recruits of German origin tested below a mental age of thirteen.”

Journalist Walter Lippman saw these tests for what they were at the time and debunked IQ testing as an accurate measure of intelligence. Nonetheless, test scores were misused to justify separating people by race and ability. This same data set was also later cited to advocate for segregating or sterilizing those deemed low-intelligence. The Army, for example, placed recruits into units "segregated by race and by test scores" during WWI, meaning those with lower intelligence tests and non-dominant race were still accepted into the Army, but used as the equivalent of human cannon fodder. Likewise, early standardized tests in schools and colleges were promoted by eugenicists such as Carl Brigham (a developer of the SAT) to limit the admission of "undesirable" ethnic groups to colleges and universities.

I am a psychometrist. This means that for a living, I administer IQ tests, namely to children. Data is corroborated across many assessments delivered to the child, their parents/caregivers, their teachers, and sometimes their mental health therapists. Clinical interviews are conducted to gather qualitative data and this data is interpreted in alignment with the DSM-V-TR diagnostic criteria.

A lot of jargon to say that data from multiple sources is gathered to make any conclusion, IQ testing alone tells you very little. I like to think that my work now does good for the family I am working with. Though– the path testing took to get here is littered with abuses, that still must be diligently extracted from our current system. The interpretive nature of this work leaves it oh-so susceptible to the long history of using a fabricated benchmark (like IQ) as a concrete tool of oppression.

Institutionalized Separation & Segregation

How did eugenics backed IQ testing leap across the DSM from intellectual disabilities, to mental health diagnoses and morality? Well, the APA (in a wholly white-washed account) states: “What might be considered the first official attempt to gather information about mental health in the United States was the recording of the frequency of ‘idiocy/insanity’ in the 1840 census,” and “The APA Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics developed a variant of the ICD–6 that was published in 1952 as the first edition of DSM…The use of the term ‘reaction’ throughout DSM reflected the influence of Adolf Meyer’s psychobiological view.” Adolf Meyer was involved in the Eugenics Records Office which he viewed as a natural extension of his psychiatry work.

The term “feebleminded” became a catch-all diagnosis for people (often from disadvantaged groups) who tested low on intelligence scales or behaved outside social norms. Psychiatrists and social workers, influenced by eugenic theory, linked feeblemindedness with crime, poverty, and moral "degeneracy." For example, women deemed feebleminded were stereotyped as sexually immoral and prone to bearing illegitimate children, which eugenicists warned would "sap the strength of the state."

These biases led to large-scale confinement of people in institutions for the “feebleminded.” By the 1920s, thousands of Americans – including many poor women, immigrants, and Black individuals – were institutionalized or sterilized based on nothing more than low IQ scores or behavior considered deviant. This includes a disproportionate number of Mexican and Latin immigrants. Eugenic ideas permeate law enforcement, justifying brutality under the guise of maintaining social order.During his presidency, Convicted Felon Trump frequently referred to immigrants from Mexico as "rapists" and "criminals" (the moral inferiority argument) and labeled undocumented immigrants as "animals" (dehumanized language) during discussions on immigration enforcement. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has described immigrants arriving in the state as "drug traffickers" and part of a "criminal invasion” (an obvious use of moral inferiority and us vs them). The new Border Czar (a totally normal title for an American political position) Miller frequently portrayed immigrants as criminals and security threats (again, dehumanization, us vs them). White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s loose grasp on how law works resulted in her calling all immigrants “criminals.” Co-Dictator Elon, an immigrant himself, suggests that capable and valuable immigrants should be allowed in while criminal immigrants should not (I wonder how we are going to objectively decide which is which).

This ideology frames certain communities as inherently prone to criminality and moral decay, warranting harsher policing and state violence. This framework within the criminal legal system, often serves as a flow through to modern day separation and enslavement, for the same communities who were turned into “them” in the 1670s (or before).

The legacy of racial, intellectual, and moral inferiority constructs persists today in far-right extremist movements. The Great Replacement Theory is nothing but a dangerous reconstitution of eugenics and historical anxieties about racial purity. In the early 20th century, eugenicists warned of "race suicide," arguing that declining birth rates among white elites and increasing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe threatened the genetic integrity of the "American stock." These fears led to restrictive immigration laws, forced sterilizations, and racial segregation policies (see the one-drop rule and anti-miscegenation laws). Today, proponents of the Great Replacement Theory (Tucker Carlson, JD Vance, Matt Gaetz, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and the Convicted Felon Trump) invoke similar rhetoric, framing immigrants as existential threats to America, to Whiteness, to you. This narrative fuels nationalist policies that seek to control reproduction, restrict asylum seekers, and criminalize non-white populations. They seek to encourage not just separation, moral inferiority, and dehumanization, they are leading you to the next step: Violence.

Accepted and Encouraged Violence

One of the most insidious outcomes of the eugenics movement in the United States was the normalization of violence against fellow Americans. Eugenics did not just theorize about genetic superiority; it actively encouraged brutality against those deemed inferior. Once non-white populations were conceptually dehumanized—deemed intellectually, morally, and therefore biologically inferior—and separated from “polite society,” it became easier to justify harsh, violent, and often lethal treatment as a necessary measure to protect the so-called purity of the white race.

One of the most documented forms of eugenics-based violence was the forced sterilization of these Americans. In the Buck v Bell (1927) Supreme Court decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of those deemed "unfit.” Specifically stating that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." Carrie Buck was the first person sterilized under Virginia’s Sterilization law. By 1931, about 30 states had laws permitting involuntary sterilization of individuals in asylums and prisons. An estimated 60,000+ Americans — disproportionately poor, disabled, and people of color — were sterilized under these programs. For example, data from California showed Black people and immigrants were sterilized at roughly twice the rate of everyone else under these laws. Another 8,300 Virginians underwent involuntary sterilization until the practice (but not the law) was finally ended nationwide in the 1970s. The Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision has never been never overturned. Eugenicists justified policies like this with pseudo-scientific claims that traits like "imbecility, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness" were hereditary and a threat to society.

Contemporary immigration policies have increasingly mirrored historical eugenic practices by targeting marginalized populations for surveillance, detention, and mass deportation. Immigrants with disabilities are especially vulnerable, as they are often deemed a social and economic burden. This rationale echoes early 20th-century eugenic policies that sought to restrict immigration based on perceived genetic 'fitness.' In recent years, there has been a push for harsher immigration enforcement, including indefinite detention and expedited deportations. Long story short, America is aggressively pursuing mass deportation, regardless of residency/citizenship status and judicial mandates, resulting in “lawful” indefinite detention in horrific conditions.

In recent years, there has been a widespread and calculated effort to restrict women's access to abortion and reproductive healthcare across the United States. Laws aimed at banning or severely limiting abortion have been passed in numerous states, often justified with pseudoscientific claims that echo eugenic rationales of controlling reproduction among certain populations. That is, white women are to have more white babies.

For example, recent state-level legislation has aimed to criminalize abortion providers, penalize those seeking abortions, and even restrict access to miscarriage care under the guise of protecting fetal life. Moreover, healthcare access during pregnancy has become increasingly threatened as hospitals and clinics face pressure to align with anti-abortion policies, leading to dangerous delays or refusals of care for pregnancy complications. Two studies conducted on the abortion bans that took place in 14 states between 2020 and 2022 found: “among the 14 states with abortion bans, Black infants died at a rate 11% higher than would have been expected in the absence of bans. There were larger increases in infant mortality in Southern states—both overall and among Black infants.” Controlling who can and should have children, who is deemed ‘unfit,’ who is worth segregating, deporting, arresting, and sterilizing, is the exact definition of eugenics: “The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.”

Project 2025, the presidential playbook that is supposed to “take down the Deep State and return the government to the people,” outlines explicit plans to increase restrictions on reproductive rights. This includes directives intended to prioritize fetal personhood (for certain groups) while denying the personhood of women and, as noted above, people with disabilities and people of color.

Lead the way- Protect your neighbors

The United States is witnessing a resurgence of eugenics ideology, masked under new political and scientific rhetoric. Look to identify conceptual dehumanization, moral inferiority constructs, and institutionalized segregation. Eugenics has barely shifted from pseudoscientific racism to modern policies targeting immigrants, people with disabilities, women, and trans people. Social Identity Theory is being weaponized to dehumanize your neighbors, claim they are morally inferior Americans, justify separating them from society, and enacting violence against them. Misused intelligence testing, harsh and inhumane immigration policies (including mass incarceration), and restricted reproductive rights are all contemporary manifestations of America's enduring eugenics framework. The rise of far-right movements and Project 2025 highlight a renewed and aggressive push toward controlling who belongs, who reproduces, and who is deemed "fit" to participate in society. If we do not act now, history will repeat itself, and you will become the us who participates in the violence, or the them.

• Educate yourself and others about the historical and modern-day practices of eugenics disguised as public policy.

• Challenge dehumanizing language in media, politics, and everyday conversation. Recognize "us vs. them" narratives for what they are: tools of oppression.

• Support organizations fighting for immigrant rights, disability rights, reproductive freedom, trans kids, and racial justice.

• Hold policymakers accountable by voting, organizing, and demanding legislation that protects the bodily autonomy and human rights of all people.

• Speak up at your schools, workplaces, and communities against policies or rhetoric that seek to control, segregate, or dehumanize.

The next eugenics movement is here. It is up to us to stop it. History has shown us the consequences of silence and inaction.

Stand up. Speak out. Protect each other.