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A project of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU

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Trait Files documents

04 e  history 4 thumb
02 family of ad kings park 12 thumb
08 albinism referral 3 thumb
07 g.c 8 thumb
01 radicalism among the polish jews 5 thumb
08 percentage of foreign born maps 11 thumb
01 references 1 thumb
10 couldnt make negroes fight says bullard 6.9 thumb
01 amaurotic family idiocy 2 thumb
00 altruistic behavior thumb
10 single trait sheet 04 2 thumb
09 case of m.n 8 thumb
01 photos thumb
04 family tree folder 02 1 thumb
01 the imbecile with criminal instincts 3 thumb
01   portrait of man 1 thumb
10 family history of fb kings park 5 thumb
05 heredity for three generations 1 thumb
01 c.d 13 thumb
09 average number of children 13 thumb

The Eugenics Record Office was first and foremost a “repository and clearing house” for eugenics data. Through the “systematic” study of human heredity, the Office amassed an incredible quantity of files, forms, and assorted clipping related to a wide range of human traits. The bulk of this material comprised the “Trait Files,” a massive and rigidly organized index of human traits that sought to sort and rank human beings according to thousands of different attributes, from profession (“Teachers,” “Missionaries”) to mental ability (“Idiocy,” “Feeblemindedness”) to race (“Negro-Chinaman,” “Mulattoes”) and personality (“Sense of Humor, “Leadership”). But this data didn’t just sit around in the ERO’s archives. It was actively used to provide “scientific” justifications for a wide range of policies, from immigration restriction to sterilization and anti-miscegenation, that were shaped by leaders of the Eugenics Record Office.

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