Vocabulary Showcase: Eugenics
Sometimes I think it is important to share knowledge of an upsetting word. Unfortunately, life isn’t always OK, and we need words to express those feelings. Sometimes what other people do is not OK, and we need the right words to label those actions too. That’s why we are talking about the word Eugenics, what it means, and why I think it’s important to know.
What is Eugenics?
Eugenics is a set of beliefs that we (humans) can somehow ‘improve’ the human race in some way by controlling who can have children, and in the extreme it is controlling who is allowed to live.
Famous Examples of Eugenics
White Australians kidnapping Aboriginal children (native to Australia) and placing them in white families to make them more “civilised”.
Disabled people being sterilised without their consent (agreement) so they can’t have children.
Jewish, Romani, and disabled people being killed in the Holocaust (Genocide) of the Second World War.
Genocide in Rwanda (Eliminating people based on a characteristic like race, tribe, ethnicity, religion, or language.
Why Do We Need to Know What Eugenics Is?
Most people agree that Eugenics is unscientific and ethically the worst thing human beings have ever done to each other. Unfortunately, and horrifyingly, not everyone in the world agrees with that.
The reason we need to know words like eugenics is because the most important thing you can do, as a person who believes in fairness, freedom and equality, is not to allow (let something happen) people to call eugenics something it is not. Powerful people use different words to control how other people think and feel about the actions they take. They do this with eugenics by saying things like:
“It’s Not Eugenics, It’s…”
Immigration control
justice/law and order
education/civilisation
putting our country first
natural selection/survival of the fittest
It’s my firm belief, as an educator, that the words we use hold a lot of power, and that I have a duty to give people the words they need to say what they think and feel.
Summing Up
I’m not here telling you what to think or feel. I’m here to give you the words you might need to share how you feel accurately and confidently with the English-speaking world. Whatever your views on eugenics are, they are yours, but it is important to make sure we use the correct words. If we allow people in power to change the meaning of words, we become too powerless to fight for ourselves and our communities.
