British Eugenics and 'Race Crossing': A Study of an Interwar Investigation

Extract

---

British Eugenics and 'Race Crossing': A Study of an Interwar Investigation

In 1937 a polemic entitled Half-Caste was published, heralding 'the richness of hybrid potentiality'. Written by a self-defined Eurasian called Cedric Dover1 its opening pages indicated the extent of prejudice facing those of mixed race:

The 'half-caste' appears in a prodigal literature. It presents him ... mostly as an undersized, scheming and entirely degenerate bastard. His father is a blackguard, his mother a whore ... But more than all this, he is a potential menace to Western Civilisation, to everything that is White and Sacred ...2

This 'prodigal literature' included novels and 'a vast mass of pseudo-science' developed by 'eugenists, anthropologists, sociologists and politicians'.3 In the book's Preface, written by British scientist Lancelot Hogben, it was eugenics that was singled out for condemnation: 'An influential current of superstition (called National Socialism in Hitler's Germany and Eugenics in England) claims the authority of science for sentiments which are the negation of civilised society'.4 Yet despite the negative tone of the Preface, and the reference to 'pseudo-science', Dover was clearly not uninfluenced by eugenics. He cited a number of British eugenists in his 'Acknowledgements',5 and he dedicated his book to Ursula Lubbock (Mrs Grant Duff) an active member of Britain's Eugenics Society. He also admitted: ? subscribe without qualification to the prevention of undeniably dysgenic matings... but not to the conceit that colour and economic success are indices of desirability'.'1 His invocation of a different index of'desirability' other than economic success was reminiscent of other socialists who espoused eugenics on their own terms. Eugenics was sufficiently protean to be harnessed to different ideological beliefs, ranging from the ultra conservative to the social-reformist and socialist.7 What was new and unique about Dover's particular take on eugenics was the centrality of t...

See the full content of this document

---