MaxShimba
JF-Expert Member
- Apr 11, 2008
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Darwinism and Racism
The complete title of Darwin's most famous work, often abbreviated to The Origin of Species, was The Origin. of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. As Koster notes about Darwin's view on race, he:
'never considered "the less civilized races" to be authentically human. For all his decent hatred of slavery, his writings reek with all kinds of contempt for "primitive" people. Racism was culturally conditioned into educated Victorians by such "scientific" parlor tricks as Morton's measuring of brainpans with BB shot to prove that Africans and Indians had small brains, and hence, had deficient minds and intellects. Meeting the simple Indians of Tierra del Fuego, Darwin wrote: "I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man; it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal . . . Viewing such a man, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world."44
Darwin's belief that some races (such as blacks) were inferior to others became so widely accepted that, as Haller concluded: 'the subject of race inferiority was beyond critical reach in the late nineteenth century.45 Although Darwin opposed all forms of slavery, he did conclude that one of the strongest evidences for evolution was the existence of living 'primitive races' which he believed were evolutionarily between the 'civilized races of man' and the gorilla:
'At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla. ... It has often been said ... that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country.' 46
The missing link wasn't missing but, many evolutionists of the time concluded, lived in Australia and other faroffplaces.47 The existence of some living races was openly viewed as irrefutable evidence of a graduation of living creatures 'linking' humans to the monkeys (or today 'to our common primate ancestor'). This 'scientific conclusion' was interpreted as compelling evidence for evolution, thus a large number of biology textbooks of the time discussed the 'hierarchy of the races' topic.
The man who some regard as the actual modern 'discoverer' of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace, also espoused essentially the same idea.48 In his words,
'the weak dying was necessary to improve the race because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off leaving the superior-that is, only the fittest would survive.'49
This was the essence of Darwinism, and race differences and fitness of these differences (racism) was at its core.
Although Darwin was far less racist than many of his disciples, especially Spencer, Haeckel, Hooton, Pearson, and Huxley, his theory provided the basis for the latters' extreme racism. As Poliakov 50 noted, Darwin's primary spokesman in Germany, Ernest Haeckel, was 'the great ancestor' of Nazi biology theoreticians. Importantly, Darwin did little to oppose this conclusion which spread like wild-fire from his works.51 Since Darwin's writings were critical in the development of evolutionary theory, his thoughts on the application of his theory of racism are crucial to understand how the racism theory spawned. Although he was known as a kind and gentle man, Darwin openly gave his support to eugenic ideas which gradually won acceptance in the scientific community, both in Europe and the United States. Darwin, evidently highly influenced by his early theological and religious training, said:
'I have always maintained that excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work.'
Later, convinced that the eugenic theory was valid,
'In The Descent of Man, Darwin canonized Galton with the words; "we now know, through the admirable labours of Mr Galton, that genius . . . tends to be inherited.' 52
By the beginning of the 19th century, every discussion of social problems was permeated with 'scientific notions of class [and] race,' and that
'nearly every one of these theories had some practical applications as its corollary: political, social or cultural; and meanwhile biological research, anthropology and the science of language had intensified, not abated, the use of "race thinking".' 53
Even Chambers in his classic Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, about which Darwin said that without this book he might never have written The Origin of Species, concluded that the Negro was 'at the foot of' the Mongol, the Yellow race between, and Caucasians at the top.54 Chambers himself taught that the 'various races of mankind, are simply . . . stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. . .' and that the Blacks were the least developed, and the Caucasians were the highest, most evolved race.55
