Eugenics Essay

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and behaviors with the goal of enhancing future generations’ or the quality of human life. The practice of eugenics is comparable to animal husbandry. Eugenic discourse, ideology, or practice connects race, gender, country, and health. For instance, it is thought that some people are predisposed to particular diseases while others are not; for instance, white people are not thought to be predisposed to HIV/AIDS. Additionally, some races are thought to have particular characteristics; for example, some races are connected to criminality, blindness, and other negative attributes. This gave rise to the misconception that recent immigrants to the country were less physically fit than the elder population. The male gender is also considered superior as compared to the females (Stern, 2016).

Question 2

Population control is a policy of trying to reduce the growth in numbers of a population so that it becomes manageable. Additionally, it is practiced in dense parts of the world. Reproductive activists and scholars disapprove population control because of many reasons. One of the reasons for disapproving is because they believe that the best contraception is women equality and social justice. It has been observed that increased growth of population in some areas is because of poverty and restrictions that women face when they want to control their fertility. The human population is expected to increase in the next few years, and this growth will mostly occur in regions that people suffer from poverty. In regions where people are rich, the population is not expected to increase significantly. Therefore, when poverty gets reduced, the standards of living get improved, healthcare is also improved, there is access to education, and women get provided with equal rights there will be lower birth rates. The lower birth rates will be as a result of most women being empowered and non-discrimination (Luna, 2009).

Question 3

Intersectionality refers the way social identities such as related systems of oppression and discrimination intersect or overlap with some marginal classes such as race, gender, health and other characteristics. It is impossible to reduce human lives into single traits and to prioritize only one factor cannot help to understand human experiences (Hankivsky, 2012).

Health disparities are better-understood intersectionality. It has been observed that the genetic explanations given to explain why there are health disparities among races in the U.S. are not sufficient. Therefore, there is need to research on intersectional dynamics which belong to social inequality in the country. Studies in genetics have tried to explain why there is increased the occurrence of many diseases among the non-whites by only using “biomedical science.” However, intersectionality studies focus more on a lot of social and power structures which can help to provide a lead to why we see the imbalanced distribution of diseases among different races in our country today. Moreover, biomedical science is unable to confirm that genes that are specific to particular races are the leading causes of the disparities in health, thus leading to the study of social and environmental factors which seem easier to explain (Hankivsky, 2012). For instance, this helps to explain the difference in rates of breast cancer survival in both black and white women since it has been discovered that more white women survive breast cancer as compared to their black counterparts. The difference has been attributed to early detection and advances in treatments in women which makes their survival rates higher (Gómez & López, 2013).

References

Gómez, L. E., & López, N. (2013). Mapping ”race”: Critical approaches to health disparities research. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Hankivsky, O. (2012). ”Women’s health, men’s health, and gender and health: Implications of intersectionality.” Social Science & Medicine, 74(11), 1712-1720. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.11.029

Luna, Z. (2009). From rights to justice: Women of color changing the face of U.S. reproductive rights organizing. Societies without Borders, 4(3), 343-365. doi:10.1163/187188609x12492771031618

Stern, A. (2016). Eugenic nation: Faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America. Oakland, CA: University of California.