Mixed Race Studies

Selling eugenics: the case of Sweden

Notes & Records of the Royal Society
Volume 64, Number 4
pages 379-400
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2010.0009

Maria Björkman
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

Sven Widmalm
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute’s first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

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African Ancestry of the White American Population

The Ohio Journal of Science
Volume 58, Number 3 (May 1958)
pages 155-160

Robert P. Stuckert
Departments of Sociology and Anthropology
Ohio State University, Columbus

Defining a racial group generally poses a problem to social scientists. A definition of a race has yet to be proposed that is satisfactory for all purposes. This is particularly true when the racial group has minority group status as does the Negro group in the United States. To many persons, however, the matter of race definition is no problem. They view humanity as being divided into completely separate racial compartments. A Negro is commonly defined as a person having any known trace of Negro ancestry or “blood” regardless of how far back one must go to find it. A concomitant belief is that all whites are free of the presumed taint of Negro ancestry or “blood.”

The purpose of this research was to determine the validity of this belief in the non-Negro ancestry of persons classified as white. Current definitions of Negro may have serious limitations when used as bases for classifying persons according to ancestry (Berry, 1951). The terms African and non-African will be used rather than Negro and white when discussing the ancestry of an individual. Each of the former pair of terms has a more specific referent which is the geographic point of origin of an individual. At the same time, the two pairs of terms are closely related. Hence, this paper is the report of an attempt to estimate the percentage of persons classified as white that have African ancestry or genes received from an African ancestor.

This raises a question concerning the relationship between having an African ancestor and receiving one or more genes from this ancestor. Since one-half of an individual’s genetic inheritance is received from each parent, the probability of a person with one African ancestor within the previous eight generations receivingany single gene from this ancestor is equal to or greater than (0.5)⁸ or 3.9063 x 10³. It has been estimated that there are approximately 48,000 gene loci on 24 chromosome pairs (Stern, 1950). The probability that an individual with one African ancestor has one or more genes derived from this ancestor is equal to 1-(1-3.9063 x10^-3)^24,000 or greater than 0.9998. Having more than one African ancestor increases this probability. One final remark needs to be made. Some degree of African ancestry is not necessarily related to the physical appearance of the individual. Many of the genes possessed by virtue of descent from an African do not distinguish the bearer from persons of non-African ancestry. They are the genes or potentials for traits which characterize the human race. Nevertheless, these genes represent an element in the biological constitution of the individual inherited from an African…

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