Historic Genetic persecution

[Gennaroc]

Ok, so for my final yr 12 Drama solo, I chose the 'Gattaca' stimulus. Gattaca is an awesome movie centred solely around the concept of (not to distant) future genetic perfection and the social damages it creates. Vincent Freeman, born naturally and non-perfect, or Invalid, is part of a lower class and has to commit identity fraud to live out his dream of entering the Gattaca Astronautical centre and be a part of a manned mission to Titan.

The prescribed structure asks to show vincent being found out upon his return, recreating a scene from the movie where he was nearly found out, creating a scene from his childhood- both of which I have covered. However it also demands a "parallel from history which shows that discrimination based on genetic factors can result in widespread persecution". For the life of me, outside of Hitler, I cannot think of anything that really fits.. I don't want something cliche or obvious, and racial hate crimes often blur with purely genetic issues.

So Escapist, can you help?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Forced sterilisation of the mentally handicapped? That was popular throughout the world until recently.

 

[BlindTom]

The Good Samaritan?

The Conquistadors?

The Native Americans?

Gypsies?

It looks like you have plenty of options really.

 

[Gennaroc]

Alrighty, if we go with the holocaust, any big speeches against the nazi's I could quote or weave into the script? That way I don't have to be all like "aaaaaand back in the Nazi days people were treated horrifically based around their... " etc, etc, boredom for the examiners.

 

[Phisi]

I would go with Blacks and to an extent Asians as well (at least here in Australia where many moved during the gold rush) in colonies and ex-colonies. It is very similar, because of their race or colour of their skin ,which is based on your genes, they were persecuted and discriminated against. To draw a parallel you could show that a Black man born in the US in 1940 would not be able to achieve a high position is society or become the President or General. I think that would be the easiest non-Hitler related answer. Anyway it is late and I'm going to bed now.

 

[Esotera]

I think for a time that black pilots were barred from flying in the US military, because their incidence of sickle cell anaemia is very high (which doesn't help flying). So a whole minority was blocked from a career simply because there were more individuals with sickle cells.

Asides from that and the Holocaust, I can't think of anything else.

 

[Hoplon]

So basically you need to do "A history of European imperialism" since that is where most of the west's problems stem from.

If you don't want to use European history, look up the shit Japan got up to during the second world war, or china is currently doing in Tibet.

 

[Gennaroc]

Hadn't thought of Tibet.. thats kinda cool

 

[CannibalCorpses]

If you want to go down the holocaust route then i'd suggest Joseph Mengele as your subject matter...he was the guy at Auschwitz who was trying to perfect the genetics for the Ayrian race.

Maybe chemical ali in Iraq who was trying his best to exterminate the Kurds with gas.

Could be worth looking into with a clear perspective

 

[Dags90]

A more concrete example, the discrimination against a single specific phenotype, would be the persecution of albinos in several African cultures as magical objects. There are many harmful folk beliefs about albinos.

 

[poleboy]

Well, if you are going for numbers you probably can't beat the Holocaust. The red Khmers were doing some really nasty racial cleansings too in Cambodia in the 70's (80's maybe?). China also has a long history of persecuting their Christian and Muslim minorities. More recently, I'd point out the Kurdish minority in Turkey and the conflicts between Serbia and Croatia.

 

[Merkavar]

google eugenics sweden 1976

sweden sterilised 60000 women they deemed bad genetic/socially. up until 1976. it was to remove the welfare class and weed out bad genetic traits. they even sterilised people who had depression.


is that the sort of thing your after

 

[Princess Rose]

I was going to go with the "Ethnic Cleansing" currently going on in Africa, but technically that's a cultural issue rather than a genetic issue. It often ends up being the same thing, but still....