Trump on Squawk Box Makes it Clear Eugenics is In Again

The President of the United States claimed immigrants do farm work naturally.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Trump, on CNBC’s Squawk Box, made it abundantly clear that eugenics, not only is back, but it never left. Eugenics, according to Wikipedia, “is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fertility of those considered inferior, or promoting that of those considered superior.” This is often based on race, like the United States’ history of sterilization of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant women and men. Also, when white nationalists promote the Great Replacement Theory, and scream that white people need to have more babies, this is eugenicist thinking. Because these people believe they belong to the “master race,” other races outnumbering them is seen as a transgression.

Eugenics and scientific racism are intertwined, though they are not the same. Scientific racism is “the theory (now largely discredited) that different racial and ethnic groups have innately differing levels of physical, intellectual, and moral development that distinguish them as superior or inferior.”