Mason Doug
Enc1102
Professor Raphael
02/13/2012

The rise of modern evolutionary theory took place mostly in Europe, especially in England and Germany. Europeans, along with their American cousins, were then leading the world in industrial and military expansion, and were, therefore, inclined to think of themselves as somehow superior to the other nations of the world. This opinion was tremendously encouraged by the concurrent rise of Darwinian evolutionism and its simplistic approach to the idea of struggle between natural races, with the strongest surviving and thus contributing to the advance of evolution.

As the 19th century scientists were converted to evolution, they were thus also convinced of racism. They were certain that the white race was superior to other races, and the reason for this superiority was to be found in Darwinian theory. The white race had advanced farther up the evolutionary ladder and, therefore, was destined either to eliminate the other races in the struggle for existence or else to have to assume the "white man's burden" and to care for those inferior races that were incompetent to survive otherwise.

Charles Darwin himself, though strongly opposed to slavery on moral grounds, was convinced of white racial superiority. He wrote on one occasion as follows:

"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit.... The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."
The man more responsible than any other for the widespread acceptance of evolution in the 19th century was Thomas Huxley. Soon after the American Civil War, in which the negro slaves were freed, he wrote as follows:

"No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites."3
Racist sentiments such as these were held by all the 19th century evolutionists. A recent book4 has documented this fact beyond any question. In a review of this book, a recent writer says:

"Ab initio, Afro-Americans were viewed by these intellectuals as being in certain ways unredeemably, unchangeably, irrevocably inferior."5
A reviewer in another scientific journal says:

"After 1859, the evolutionary schema raised additional questions, particularly whether or not Afro-Americans could survive competition with their white near-relations. The momentous answer was a resounding no.... The African was inferior—he represented the missing link between ape and Teuton."6

The greatest influence in the sudden development of racism in the 19th century Europe was the replacement of the Christian belief that "God created all people equal" by "Darwinism". By suggesting that man had evolved from more primitive creatures, and that some races had evolved further than others, it provided racism with a scientific mask.

In short, Darwin is the father of racism. His theory was taken up and commented on by such 'official' founders of racism as Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the racist ideology which emerged was then put into practice by the Nazis and other fascists. James Joll, who spent long years as a professor of history at universities such as Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, explained the relationship between Darwinism and racism in his book Europe Since 1870, which is still taught as a textbook in universities:

“And experts say racism has evolved from the days of Jim Crow to the point that people may not even recognize it in themselves…University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize. ‘We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize,’ Dovidio said. He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past. ‘Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways,’ he said.”

Racism has taken a new face in the 21st Century, one that is just as ugly and grotesque as before; a face that has changed as our times have. One that has morphed and conformed to our communities so that we don’t even know it’s there.