Eugenicists’ study of mixed race people with Black and white ancestry did not emerge in a vacuum. Slavery not only gave rise to myths about mixed race people’s bodies that eugenicists would later study, but it also left behind an elaborate systems that eugenicists would rely on to classify mixed race people for years to come. This talk highlights slavery’s little studied role in the development of eugenicists’ opinions about the fitness of mixed race people with Black and white ancestry in the Americas.
Rana Hogarth is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.