Return of the jukes: Eugenic mythologies and internet evangelism

摘要

This is an article about eugenics, the field denned first in 1873,1 and widely understood early in the 20th century as the "science of good birth."2 From roughly 1900 until the end ofWorld War II, the word "eugenics" was used in the United States to signal advocacy for a policy program and a set of laws that would foster health among individual families and provide a purgative for problems faced by society. The eugenics movement also gave rise to a language that was employed to talk about heredity, responsibility, and guilt. Those who embraced the "eugenic ideal"3 commonly invoked biblical imagery in support of their conviction that physical, mental, and moral deficiencies were based in heredity and were passed down predictably within families from generation to generation, as if they were the result of some ancient curse.