I recently participated in a roundtable hosted by The Activist History Review with Dr. Kathleen Brian and Ayah Nuriddin examining the role eugenics plays in Republicans’ response to COVID-19. One of the interesting questions to come out of our discussion was the extent to which the state plays some role in eugenics, an issue I want to explore here by analyzing the experiences of a white doctor responding to a different sort of disease: “madness.” Although the roles it plays might look different depending on the circumstances—enforcing anti-miscegenation laws or maintaining patterns of maldistribution—I argue that state participation is necessary Read more