Return of the Jukes: Eugenic Mythologies and Internet Evangelism

In the same book where he coined the term eugenics, Francis Galton described a study of an American family that belong to a type of humanity that is exceedingly ill suited to play a respectable part in modern civilization, though it is well suited to flourish under half-savage conditions. Galton described the infamous Jukes family, a clan that had been the subject of a governmental report he reviewed in 1876. Here, Lombardo reviews its origins in a 19th-century governmental study, surveys various books that were written to explain how such families embodied the germ of social failure, and explores how sermons on "problem families" made use of the Jukes story almost a hundred years ago. He notes how the mythology of the Jukes and similar clans provided an argument that was critical to the sterilization of Carrie Buck, the first official victim of US Supreme Court-sanctioned eugenic sterilization. Finally, he shows how the eugenic mythology of hereditarily defective families is still with people and is commonly used in religious literature and teaching.