{"id":8217,"date":"2011-10-07T02:40:51","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T02:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8217"},"modified":"2019-05-18T16:33:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-18T16:33:55","slug":"british-eugenics-and-%e2%80%98race-crossing%e2%80%99-a-study-of-an-interwar-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8217","title":{"rendered":"British Eugenics and \u2018Race Crossing\u2019: a Study of an Interwar Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

British Eugenics and \u2018Race Crossing\u2019: a Study of an Interwar Investigation<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

New Formations<\/a>
\nNumber 60 (2007)
\npages 66-78<\/p>\n

Lucy Bland<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Social and Cultural History
\nAnglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1937 a polemic entitled Half-Caste<\/em> was published, heralding \u2018the richness of hybrid potentiality\u2019. Written by a self-defined Eurasian called Cedric Dover its opening pages indicated the extent of prejudice facing those of mixed race:<\/p>\n

The \u2018half-caste<\/a>\u2019 appears in a prodigal literature. It presents him \u2026 mostly as an undersized, scheming and entirely degenerate bastard. His father is a blackguard<\/a>, his mother a whore \u2026 But more than all this, he is a potential menace to Western Civilisation, to everything that is White and Sacred…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This \u2018prodigal literature\u2019 included novels and \u2018a vast mass of pseudo-science\u2019 developed by \u2018eugenists<\/a>, anthropologists, sociologists and politicians\u2019.\u00a0 In the book\u2019s Preface, written by British scientist Lancelot Hogben<\/a>, it was eugenics that was singled out for condemnation: \u2018An influential current of superstition (called National Socialism<\/a> in Hitler\u2019s Germany and Eugenics in England) claims the authority of science for sentiments which are the negation of civilised society\u2019. Yet despite the negative tone of the Preface, and the reference to \u2018pseudo-science\u2019, Dover was clearly not uninfluenced by eugenics.\u00a0 He cited a number of British eugenists in his \u2018Acknowledgements\u2019, and he dedicated his book to Ursula Lubbock (Mrs Grant Duff) an active member of Britain\u2019s Eugenics Society. He also admitted: \u2018I subscribe without qualification to the prevention of undeniably dysgenic<\/a> matings \u2026 but not to the conceit that colour and economic success are indices of desirability\u2019. His invocation of a different index of \u2018desirability\u2019 other than economic success was reminiscent of other socialists who espoused eugenics on their own terms.\u00a0 Eugenics was sufficiently protean to be harnessed to different ideological beliefs, ranging from the ultra conservative to the social-reformist and socialist. What was new and unique about Dover\u2019s particular take on eugenics was the centrality of the \u2018half-caste\u2019, who \u2018must be regarded \u2026 as a portent of a new humanity\u2014a portent to be encouraged by the stimulation of eugenical mixture \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

In contrast to his own positive eugenical reading, Dover recognised that most other exponents of eugenics in interwar Britain took a very different view of the \u2018half-caste\u2019, namely, as \u2018potential menace to Western Civilisation\u2019. Why did these eugenists (and indeed many of the British establishment) hold such a view? What did they think were the implications of the presence of the \u2018half-caste\u2019? What or who was unsettled by the presence of mixed race people? One way of exploring these concerns is through an analysis of a project set up by the British Eugenics Society to investigate what they called \u2018race crossing\u2019. An examination of this project not only throws light on the prevailing discourses on race differences and their measurement, whiteness, and Englishness, but it also enables us to test historian Barbara Bush\u2019s claim that eugenics was \u2018a strong element of inter-war racism\u2019,\u00a0and to get a clearer sense of the role played by British eugenics in the discussion and regulation of race…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British Eugenics and \u2018Race Crossing\u2019: a Study of an Interwar Investigation New Formations Number 60 (2007) pages 66-78 Lucy Bland, Professor of Social and Cultural History Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom In 1937 a polemic entitled Half-Caste was published, heralding \u2018the richness of hybrid potentiality\u2019. Written by a self-defined Eurasian called Cedric Dover its opening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,459,8,394,10],"tags":[4652,2065,3470,3471,4666,4665],"class_list":["post-8217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-cedric-dover","tag-eugenics","tag-lucy-bland","tag-new-formations","tag-rachel-fleming","tag-rachel-m-fleming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8217"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58093,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions\/58093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}