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The Biology of Stupidity: Genetics, Eugenics and Mental Deficiency in the Inter-War Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

David Barker
David Barker
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL.
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Extract

It may be thought that the title of this paper betrays a regrettable lack of sensitivity and good taste; it is as well, therefore, to explain its origin. Lewis Dexter was, I think, the first sociologist to apply a deviance perspective to the high-grade mentally retarded. ‘On the Politics and Sociology of Stupidity in Our Society’ argues that our discriminatory attitudes to the retarded have deep ideological roots; our social institutions tend ‘automatically’ to penalize stupidity; and repugnance often characterizes our face-to-face interactions with the stupid. The pejorative label ‘stupid’ was justified precisely because identifying the stupid is a ‘commonsense’ rather than a scientific process, although commonsense does not have long to wait before it is bolstered by science.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 347 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1989

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References

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74 Ibid. A neglected aspect of Goddard's Kallikak study is the implication that heterozygosity was quite possibly rampant among the East Coast ‘elite’ during the inter-war years. The argument proceeds as follows. We ‘know’ that the girl with whom Martin Kallikak senior had a night of passion in the 1770s was feebleminded, nn genotype (interestingly this is the one and only thing we do seem to know about her). But in that case Martin senior must have been a heterozygote. This is because Martin K junior was F (nn genotype) and we know from Goddard that where a N × F mating produces F offspring, the N partner must be Nn. But in that case there is only a chance of one in 128 that none of Martin senior's seven legitimate children inherited his n gene; and so on to the fifth and sixth generations. And this alarming discovery takes no account of the possibility that the ‘good’ side of the family might have intermarried with yet more heterozygotes.

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77 Ibid., p. 395.

78 Fisher, , Eugenics Rev., 1924 (op. cit. 39), pp. 114–115Google Scholar. He spoke here of leaving ‘our children a substantial eugenic legacy’.

79 Ibid., pp. 115–116.

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81 See note 17 above.

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