Artists are some of the first people to tell us when something is wrong - wrong with our lives, wrong with the world. This music, written by Stravinsky in the second decade of the 20th century, is clashing, jarring; telling us something is wrong; seeking not to please and sedate us, but to disturb and awaken us. Yet it was written at a time when industrial and technological progress were on a steep upward curve. Why is he raining on our parade?

Some of the progress was truly helpful: think of medical research. But within medicine there was a desire not only to treat disease, but to improve normality. Eugenics viewed many biological and social problems as being genetic, and sought to improve the human race by selective breeding. And, in its worst moments, by eliminating the people that were ruining the gene pool.

This chapter recounts some research that took eugenics to a new low, proposing that the entire black race had sub-optimal genes and needed improvement. This proposal deserves clashing and jarring music.

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