Editing Master race (section)

===Eugenics===
[[Eugenics]] came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as a way to improve and maintain the [[Racial purity|purity]] of the Aryan master race. Many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s adhered to Eugenics, such as [[Margaret Sanger]],<ref>Margaret Sanger, quoted in {{cite book|last=Katz|first=Esther|author2=Engelman, Peter|title=The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Champaign|year=2002|page=319|isbn=978-0-252-02737-6|quote=Our ... campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Franks|first=Angela|title=Margaret Sanger's eugenic legacy|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, NC|year=2005|page=30|isbn=978-0-7864-2011-7|quote=...&nbsp;her commitment to eugenics was constant ... until her death}}</ref> [[Marie Stopes]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[Woodrow Wilson]], [[Theodore Roosevelt]], [[Madison Grant]],<ref>Grant, Madison. ''The Passing of the Great Race'', Scribner's Sons, 1922.</ref> [[Émile Zola]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[John Maynard Keynes]],<ref>{{cite journal|title=Opening remarks: The Galton Lecture|journal=[[The Eugenics Review]]|author=Keynes, John Maynard|volume=38|number=1|year=1946|pages=39–40}}</ref> [[John Harvey Kellogg]], [[Linus Pauling]],<ref>Everett Mendelsohn (March–April 2000).[http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/03/the-eugenic-temptation.html "Pauling's Eugenics]: The Eugenic Temptation", ''Harvard Magazine''.</ref> and [[Sidney Webb]].<ref>{{cite book
  | last =Gordon
  | first =Linda
  | author-link =Linda Gordon
  | title =The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America
  | publisher =University of Illinois Press
  | year =2002
  | page =196
  | isbn =0-252-02764-7 }}</ref>

In 1908, the Louisiana State Fair hosted the first "Better Babies" competition. Babies were judged based on livestock standards such as height, weight, unblemished skin, well-formed fingers, lack of excess fat, and cooperative behavior. The intent was to establish child-breeding health standards. Beginning in 1920, at the [[Kansas State Fair]], a "Fitter Family" contest, sponsored by the [[American Eugenics Society]]'s Committee on Popular Education, required family members to submit an "Abridged Records of Family Traits" and then undergo physical and psychological examinations to determine their "fitness", or eugenic health. Contests received letter grades, and the winners—almost always white and of Western and Northern European descent—were awarded trophies. Some years later, beginning in 1935, contestants in the Miss America contest were required to be "of the white race" and to submit a detailed account of their ancestry; those with backgrounds connected to the [[Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)|Pilgrims']] arrival on the [[Mayflower]] or the [[American Revolutionary War]] had an advantage.<ref>Speier, Susanna (June 29, 2011) [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/beauty-pageants-and-the-misunderstanding-of-evolution-meet-again/ "Beauty Pageants and the Misunderstanding of Evolution Meet....Again"] ''[[Scientific American]]''</ref>

The Nazis took this concept to an extreme by establishing a [[Lebensborn|program to systematically genetically enhance]] the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program of [[Nazi eugenics]], based on the [[Eugenics in California|eugenics laws]] of the US state of California,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php|title=Eugenics and the Nazis – the California connection|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle|date=November 9, 2003|first= Edwin|last= Black|department=Opinion-editoral}}</ref> to create a [[super race]].<ref name="hitler1925"/>