The Framework of Prejudice

Eugenics & the Laboratory of Race

At the dawn of the twentieth century, eugenicists fused heredity with destiny. Laboratories coded hierarchy into the genome before DNA was even known. Blackness, once the sign of sin or savagery, became biological shorthand for inferiority. In these white rooms of reason, humanity was reduced to a pedigree chart — and the myth of improvement justified sterilization, segregation, and genocide.