Talk:Family studies in eugenics

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[edit] Photos

I'm going to try and go to the library this week and get a copy of these books, see if there are any pictures worth scanning (which are, I'm sure, in the public domain by now). Some of the Goddard ones are pretty interest, esp. in light of Gould's accusations. --Fastfission 00:03, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Max Keyser

"Max Keyser"=family founder -—Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.241.245.23 (talk • contribs)

[edit] This article...

This article is really sad and pathetic. There is an article entitled The Kallikak Family which does a much better job of telling the story of that particular group than this article does. Therefore, what little is said here about the Kallikaks is redundant. However, if that material is removed, this article, which says precious little about the Jukes will be in even worse condition. In the final analysis, though, there is no need for an article about both the Jukes and Kallikaks, since the latter subject is dealt with much more thoroughly elsewhere. ---Charles 04:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

This article is meant as just a umbrella article for all of these "families" that were part of the "racial degeneracy" literature. Perhaps it needs a different name. --Fastfission 14:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

But, given the fact that there is another article on Eugenics, which deals with some of the same subjects, mightn't we be better served by improving that article, and getting rid of this one? I think this is important material, I am just trying to figure out the best way to deal with it in the context of Wikipedia. ---Charles 17:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

What I'm saying is, perhaps what we should do is rename the article to something a little more descriptive (nothing comes to mind at the moment, though—Eugenic family studies?) which would indicate that this is more about this entire genre of families (the Jukes, Kallikaks, Nams, Zeros, etc.) and we could then expand a bit about the nature of these sorts of studies (at least two books have been written about these types of works—Elof Carlson's The Unfit: The History of a Bad Idea and Nicole Hahn Rafter's White trash: the eugenic family studies, 1877-1919). I agree this is important enough to keep some sort of article about it around—some of them pre-dated the eugenics movement, and they were a particular American brand of eugenics literature in any case. --Fastfission 18:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you are on the right track, and I agree with you. I like the general idea for the title. I'm not familiar with Carlson's book, but Rafter's study is very good---I read that for an anthropology class many years ago. If we work together, I believe we can make some great improvements here. Thanks for your response. ---Charles 04:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)