35 Comments
Crystal Delgado
10/29/2013 12:00:29 pm
Reading #5: In Passage #5, I found myself grimacing at the information stated in it. How they denied an 8 year old girl an education because "Chinese were a danger to the well being of the state." In what way is an ethnic background a danger to the state? An 8 year old girl, a 31 year old man, an 87 year old woman, none of these people should be considered a threat to the state simply becuase they are of Chinese descent. I breathed a sigh of relief when the courts ruled in favor of the family. They stated to the school board the reasons certain children should be kept out of schools and none of them had anything to do with the ancestry. They were all quite plausible, If they displayed vicious behavior or had an infectious disease. I can't believe they made an entirely seperate school for the girl and any other children of Chinese descent to attend, that's segregating them on their race, which seems to happen a lot no matter what the race.
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Brianna Barboza
10/29/2013 12:02:57 pm
Reading 5: The term "criminality" is constantly appearing in the text of reading 5 as well as the repeated mention about generations and children. From what this reading is saying to me, I'm getting that criminals who reproduce are bound to have babies that become criminals and so on and so forth. However, there was a brief mention about the 4th child having a "sexual immorality" in which means regardless, the 4th child of any parent will be a sexual deviant. A rather interesting theory might I say, but it's still strongly disagreeable.
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Cole Sargent
10/29/2013 12:11:19 pm
Reading #5: I thought it was interesting how Charles Davenport blatantly ignored the research of both Morgan and Stiles, studies and campaigns that showed that something as simple as being afflicted with hookworm could change one’s intellectual capacity, and alter one’s behavior, and that there was no simple, singular recessive gene that was responsible for alcoholism or criminality--there were many genes that worked together to increase one’s risk of developing such a condition. This showed that he was not open-minded, and certainly not capable of sound, scientific research, and because of this, I think his ideas should be taken with a grain of salt.
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Carly
10/29/2013 12:28:06 pm
Reading #5: Something I find very, very interesting about Davenport is how stubbornly he clings to his ideas when so many others are proving him wrong. Reginald Punnet, William Bateson, and Thomas Hunt Morgan proved that it is much more common for genes to act together to produce a specific physical traits. Yet Davenport insisted that they worked alone. It even said that he was aware of the other men's findings. Another thing I was a bit confused about was the fact that he sent people to orphanages to create family trees to map traits. How was this supposed to help if the children at these orphanages were orphans, and therefore had no family ties? In my mind, it makes no sense, but maybe I'm missing something.
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Sophia C.
10/29/2013 12:34:16 pm
Reading Five: This reading was about how ethnicity and race is a social construct and some African Americans passed as whites so they could be accepted by society. I mainly agree that they are social constructs, but then again, it is also your ancestry, where you come from. Although I am completely against the idea of judging someone harshly, or really at all, because of their heritage or appearance, I do think that your race is an important part of who you are. At least, for me it is, I love the fact that we're all from so many different places. As for people hiding where they are from so they "fit in" I find the idea that this needs to be done depressing as it shows that these people feel uncomfortable in their own, or rather, how other people view them in that skin. I know this isn't right now, although people may still be doing this, but the fact that they ever had to is repulsive to me.
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Sabrina
10/29/2013 12:47:55 pm
Reading 5:
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Rilind
10/29/2013 12:56:00 pm
reading 5: The thing that stuck out to me the most was all the crimes that were happening. It was absolutely crazy, i cannot believe it. Even children were committing ridiculous crimes, over and over at this time. There were also so many ethnicity based requirements to do certain things, and a lot of racism was also going around. I think it was just absolute chaos.
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Lance Shuler
10/29/2013 01:21:56 pm
Reading 5: Though I find it strange for people to be observing poor and criminal aged class I feel that it is wrong the way they judge it. It's not fair to blame it on a "gene" for their behaviors. As Social Darwism states that everyone is in charge of there life, and the most fitted survive. Though there discoveries for genes are nice and do still prevail today, I don't think it's fair to judge someones actions for their genes. But what I do believe is changing someones lives for the better. Changing a poor man to a rich and powerful man will change his or her life and the offspring of him or her.
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Chris Bargman
10/29/2013 01:29:03 pm
Reading #5: I found this reading to be incredibly interesting that despite there being evidence disproving eugenics, Davenport continued his research and even published it without so much as looking at their research. I also found it amazing that they could come up with these connections between children and the crimes that they had and were growing up and committing.
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Quentin Jackson
10/29/2013 01:31:19 pm
Reading 6: Its interesting how, even when the people did not understand the actual symptoms of hookworm, they were still able to detect a pattern and dramatically reduce the amount of victims of it. In pretty much every single way, he did not understand what was happening with hookworm, but by noticing a pattern, he was able to fix a problem. It just seems remarkable how someone can be so sure of something, and how he never once seems to doubt his theory.
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Quentin Jackson
10/29/2013 01:36:28 pm
Whoops, forgot to post for reading 6
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Katie Cooke
10/29/2013 01:38:14 pm
Chapter 5: The interesting thing about this chapter is that it shows how Davenport saw these people. He saw them as marks on a pedigree, either something wonderful or something flawed, there was no "just human" to it, no room for flaws. If there was an undesirable trait in your bloodline then you were deemed unfit to reproduce. That's what got me. The way these people were able to think of other human beings, just a spot on the chart. Then came these two men with an idea as valid as Davenports, maybe more so, they saw farther into the hereditary machine and saw the predictable and the unpredictable. And they were completely ignored and left out of his research. He spent so much time on his own theory that he could not accept another.
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Ryan M.
10/29/2013 01:41:04 pm
Reading 5: What I really got out of this section was some of the examples that he was using, like the "pyromaniac" kid. It just really struck me that he did all of these psychopathic crimes. Also as stated that his brother is full of devilish crimes. I personally don't think that this is a genetic "disorder", but rather that it has to do with how the individual was raised, and what type of environment they were born in.
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Julz Valencia
10/29/2013 01:47:24 pm
Reading 5: I thought it was interesting how Davenport simply ignored the works of others when they weren't in his favor. Davenport was very stubborn and even though he was aware of the works of Morgan and Stiles he choose not to adores the information they found in any of his works. This man really clung to his belief that all bad traits were the result of a single gene that was passed from parent to child, and that if a parent was an alcoholic or a thief or had sexual immorality that the child of that person would inherit it and there was not a chance that the kid would be without these terrible traits. I think this is absurd! there are several times when a child's parent does have some of these traits and in the current world toady there are so many success stories of how kids came from these terrible backgrounds and they decide they didn't want to grow up to be like their parents who were thieves or alcoholics so they did something about it and changed their lives for the better. This is why I disagree with Davenports ideas.
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Justin Walker
10/29/2013 01:57:21 pm
Reading 5:
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Jessica Boensch
10/29/2013 02:04:50 pm
Reading 5:
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Gage Gamboa
10/29/2013 02:08:39 pm
Part 5: I found Davenport’s stubbornness, as displayed in the reading, to be the most striking piece of information described in the passage. Here is a man who considers himself to be an “intellectual man of science”, and yet he pursues topics proven to be in vain by his peers. I think it is unfortunate that there were so many delusional and self-righteous “scientists” that plagued the scientific community during Davenport’s time period.
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Sarah Hardin
10/29/2013 02:13:45 pm
Reading #5: What stood out to me was that the text continues to refer to the "tainted" individuals that Davenport is tracking as normal. Completely and utterly normal. If these people are defined as normal, doesn't that make society as a whole tainted? I'm curious as to what exactly were the social norms of society back then vs. society today? In today's society individuality is encouraged, and people who struggle with alcoholism, crime, etc. are offered help and rehabilitation. I still can't wrap my mind around the superiority complex Davenport clearly has.
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Preston Royal
10/29/2013 02:15:31 pm
Reading 5: I found this chapter to be quite interesting and thought provoking. I think that Charles Davenport is rather selfish and close-minded to his fellow scientist and colleagues. I doesn't accept the truth around him and continues to believe the ideas he proposed, instead of being open to other ideas/points of view. Though he does believe he has found the way to make the perfect man, I think that he must really come to reality and realize that scientist like Thomas Hunt Morgan and Charles W. Stiles, have valid points, and are far in scientific research that could prove him wrong. "Even though Davenport was aware of the research of both Morgan and Stiles, he never addressed either man’s research in his own scholarly works, textbooks, or lectures."
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Rachel Maristela
10/29/2013 02:19:56 pm
Reading 5: What is really surprising to me in this reading is at the beginning where it explained how many actions (criminality, alcoholism, etc.) can be passed down to generations at a early age. Age 8, children are already committing crime. It makes me wonder how horrifying actions be passed down right away, if the children haven't witness them in their family. What I find really interesting in this reading is also how Charles Davenport just focused just on his ideas and his research rather than just addressing the works of other researchers like Thomas Hunt Morgan who discovered the fruit fly and Charles W. Stiles who created a campaign for hookworm disease. A true researcher right there.
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Rachel Deaton
10/29/2013 02:22:23 pm
Reading #5: I felt that Davenport wasn't open to other people's beliefs. He was a stubborn man with his views and stuck to his own beliefs. I completely disagree with Davenport's belief that bad traits were linked to a single gene passed down from the parent to the child. If the parent is an alcoholic or thief, the child can't always become like their parents. Some children do follow their parent's steps and some change themselves so they do not become like their parents. People have the choice to choose who they are going to be. Becoming a alcoholic is avoidable by choosing a different path instead of giving up.
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Anthony Williams
10/29/2013 02:25:46 pm
Reading 5: This reading really struck me because it basically tells the truth about race in society. It tells that race is, in fact, the creation of society itself, and therefore society is the one that depicts it in a certain light. This can be proven in the wild. Certain large cats do not dislike others for their different colored spots or coats of fur. Racism and race are a creation of man itself, and only man utilizes this. It also states that “Some geneticists claim that as many as 80 percent of black Americans have white bloodlines and that a surprising 95 percent of white Americans have some black ancestry.” This quote struck me because it shows how hypocritical people can be.
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John Laine
10/29/2013 02:56:01 pm
Reading 5: This reading could have been very controversial at the time because it was a fairly well know scientist when it came to the matter carrying out these studies. The studies of the predisposing of peoples lives before they were born or even before the parents decide to have kids was a very cruel study being done it seems like and the way he protrude it was very one sided it felt like. The story it told a little of the way in of the kid who stole something at the age of 3 then killed his mom by accident at the age of 4 was a very interesting point he brought out. He talked about the parents and how both of them had alcoholic fathers. These factors made this kid so bad. But it also talked about how his older brother had a past like that but is now doing better. So coming to the conclusion that this kid is a bad seed and must not reproduce is truly jumping to conclusions.
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Ysabella Dawson
10/29/2013 03:22:02 pm
Reading 5: I thought this reading was very interesting, because the scientists firmly believed and found evidence to support their theories about how criminal tendencies, alcoholism and other negative traits can be directly caused by hereditary factors. I have heard that people whose parents are alcoholics have an 100% chance of becoming alcoholics themselves, and I think that's pretty crazy to think about. It's very interesting how the things that your parents became addicted to and relied on can carry through to the next generation, even if the child of those parents doesn't want to be an alcoholic. I also found it very crazy to think about how scientists could discover things about genetics and chromosomes by studying fruit flies, even though the genes and chromosomes are on microscopic levels.
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Trey Lewis
10/29/2013 03:23:45 pm
Reading #5: I found this reading to be completely wrong and the exact opposite of my own opinion. As that sounded a bit to strong worded, I think of a different process in the way of eugenics and the history of them. In the reading it talked about Davenport and why he thought kids in orphanages were less of people based on the need to do crime, become alcoholism, or feel the need to become sexually immoral. This can be solved through help, not creating a new person to start with. Davenport wanted people to be perfect at birth. What dies look like? Everyone has a different idea of perfect.
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Abby Thompson
10/29/2013 03:29:59 pm
5: Something I found interesting in this reading was how they were able to learn about different traits and how to get them through experiments with fruit flies and how they found out that genes were not randomly assorted as they had originally assumed, but even though they had figured this part out, it didn't change what they thought about perfectness in humans, etc.
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Trevin Kraus
10/29/2013 04:13:09 pm
Reading 5: I found this reading very interesting. Despite some of the far fetched ideas of Eugenics it really isn't that different than some already applied Biology concepts of today. Hookworm was a perfect example of this. In today's society we undergo the same process to find a cure for a disease or ailment. I think this applies to all forms of the industrial revolution. Many people think that we have made many improvements since then, which we have. However, in a way I think we haven't changed anything at all. Instead we have just taken these crazy methods such as Eugenics and instead reshaped them into a stronger form that fits morals of society.
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Hayes Sherr
10/29/2013 04:16:50 pm
Reading 5: What Charles Davenport was saying is that people are genetically born with the same crime or sexually immorality that your mom or dad had, or even siblings that have past away. In my opinion this can not be true because everyone can change to be good or not to be a person with criminal records. Even a kid like it said in the reading can be a criminal or do something that can get you in jail and still change. This does not have to do with genetics and the way your parents or parent behaved.
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Malia M.
10/29/2013 04:55:29 pm
Reading 5: I found it sickening how flawed his scientific method was. Not only were his beliefs illogical and racist, but his science was biased and inaccurate. Interview neighbors will most usually give a negative impression on the family being studied. Also when looking at "genetic traits" such as criminality or sexual deviancy, he only gathered data from the working class. If he had bothered to check the upper classes, there would have been just as many immoral, alcoholic, slutty, or devious people.
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Lisa Valtierra
10/29/2013 05:05:45 pm
Reading 5: I thought it was unfair how the people who were for eugenicists thought that because poor people were poor they had had traits such as criminalism and such, when the reason that they were doing it was because they didn't have enough to support themselves and they had to make money or try and make something because they were literally given nothing. I also don't think that it was fair that they used a family tree and organized the past family members by category, all of those categories were by choice, it's not genetic, so that's what kind of gets me mad on the whole situation on it. I do believe that the way someone was raised is going to change the child to come because of the environment, but unlike what Charles believed, I do think that a child could break away from alcoholism or criminality. I do think that it is interesting how it talked about how they used fruit flies to try and figure out it's breed and what it would come out to be, it's what we read in the last reading, but I found it interesting because as Mrs. Clark brought up, now that we are so advanced is science is it possible that we could be headed down the path of eugenicists since we can now control certain things before a baby is born. I found it interesting that they thought that the reason that people who were poor had more diseases because they were poor, not by the fact that they probably couldn't afford medicine.
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Jessica Pollock
10/29/2013 06:07:13 pm
Reading 5:
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Parmida Zolfaghari
10/29/2013 10:13:47 pm
Reading 5:
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Halee Robinson
10/30/2013 12:48:25 am
Reading 5: Throughout this article, I found myself thinking back to a quote we discussed (I think in seminar) a few weeks back. I don't remember the quote, but it talked about race not really existing, and instead being a made up, social quality. I especially saw the connection in the paragraph talking about having "one drop" of black.
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Chris dang
10/30/2013 05:17:42 am
Chapter 5
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Karye
10/30/2013 05:25:40 am
Reading 3:
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