Although current scholars, such as Patricia Hill Collins, Judith M. Scully, Angela Davis and Omi and Winant, provide distinct theories in which the purpose of sterilization in today's society can be analyzed, it is a combination of all of these theories that more appropriately discloses the full implications of CRACK. An analysis of CRACK as a racial project with a motivation to eliminate society's "burdens," the program can be questioned as a 21st century eugenic sterilization campaign aimed towards poor women of color. Similar to previous eugenics campaigns, CRACK's main objective is to weed out the "undesirables.".
The Eugenics Movement was born in the late 19th century when European scholars and scientists were developing ways to justify Caucasians as the superior race. After landmark discoveries were made on the science of heredity, Francis Galton, the founding father of human genetics and Charles Darwin's cousin, became convinced that certain people possessed superior genes and others defective genes. Galton later coined the term "eugenics" and its definition emerged as "the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally" (Reilly 3; 4). It was under these notions of racial degeneration that were later developed by proceeding eugenicists, that eugenic sterilization was aimed at men in prisons and asylums. At this time women criminals (mostly prostitutes) were not seen as a threat of producing defective offspring because it was believed that they were already likely to become infertile through chronic venereal infections (Reilly 34). Moreover, esteemed doctors strongly believed that "sterilization, in both the male and female, [had] a wide range of application in the prevention of social disease" (Reilly 37). Overall, the eugenics movement was fueled by a fear that the inferiors would breed excessively and soon outnumber the superior white race.
