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Darwin and racism: I really did need to say something

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This started in the combox on a post below, but …

xxxxxx, I do not get your point.

Eugenics was not science; it was nonsense. Nonsense firmly founded in Darwin’s own beliefs. Remember, Darwin was a guy who thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people.

Darwin has always been protected by professional Darwinists from the normal social consequences of such antisocial beliefs.

I am not letting the matter go because it cannot be let go until the belief is formally renounced.

I am not interested in what “whackjobs” or “dopes” think (who is?).  Can’t they just yell in the cell block or mental home?

The use of such terms is classically how Darwinists like yourself avoid facing up to the issue.

The reality is that Darwin’s racism is an open running sore, and will remain so until it is properly addressed by ceasing Darwin worship and saying that the Great Man was wrong on that point.

Are you prepared to do that?

Be warned: New books, documentaries are coming out about the dreadful crimes Darwinism perpetrated in this area, often in the form of eugenics.

Better just acknowledge it now, and not bother me with irrelevancies about “the ways some dopes usurp their ideas”.

If I were to propose a warning sticker for any textbook that addresses Darwinism, the sticker would be about racism, not about the general lack of important evidence for his ideas, which is the main reason so few people believe them after all the dollars spent to convince them.

That latter point is an open, running sore, but not nearly as harmful a one. I am quite sure that the intelligent African American student will thank me. So will many Caribbean origin Canadian students.

Fun for the day*:  Decades ago, one of my aunts, who had been in  the Canadian women’s auxiliary services in  World War II, somehow ended up sitting in a restaurant in Florida. Some African Americans were sitting at another booth, and some other patrons were raising heck about the fact that the African Americans were allowed there. My aunt got up and told the heck raisers: You do not have the right to tell those people they cannot sit there. The heck raisers immediately shut up, which was a really good idea, in my view. They should have shut up decades earlier.

But doesn’t Darwin’s view of human nature require us to assume that the African Americans are moving away from the heck raisers in some way?

* This happened long before the American civil rights movement got started. It was just a northern prairie farm girl’s reaction to something that felt wrong.

Comments
O'Leary, you would make a great Yankee liberal! For decades, leftist academics and professional agitators in the US have argued that Thomas Jefferson was a racist. Indeed, that's all they care about. It doesn't matter that TJ was instrumental in bringing into existence the greatest republic ever conceived. I'm not saying that Darwin came up with the equivalent in the sciences. To the contrary, I am convinced that his concepts lack the necessary scientific foundation. But I didn't come to this realization by considering whether or not Darwin thought that his race was better than others. (A belief, by the way, which is universal in the human race. It always has been and it always will be.) You sound like the typical professor of US history or African-American studies when you say: "If I were to propose a warning sticker for any textbook that addresses Darwinism, the sticker would be about racism..." Substitute for "Darwinism" the name of any of the founders or the concept of the US itself, and you will find a statement like that over and over in books, articles, and in countless speeches, sit-ins and rallies. These denounce the very idea of the republic for its racist beginnings, veering past any dispassionate engagement with the ideas which the founders penned: the very essence of the ad hominem argument. So, O'Leary, what's your point?riddick
August 5, 2010
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The reality is that Darwin’s racism is an open running sore, and will remain so until it is properly addressed by ceasing Darwin worship and saying that the Great Man was wrong on that point.
In what sense is it an open sore? Darwin and his contemporaries held a number of incorrect views regarding human evolution. Those views are not a part of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. The foundation of neo-Darwinian theory is population genetics, a field which itself soundly refutes eugenics. There is no need for a warning sticker on a textbook, as no textbook teaches such material. A racism warning sticker would be no less warranted on literature by American authors on account of that their nation's previous connection to slavery. Darwin's views on race, as described in this post (from one sentence in one book), are relegated to history along with his views of heredity in Origin. I know of no one whose views could be constituted as worship of Darwin, nor anyone who would argue that Darwin was wholly correct about any scientific matter.paulmc
August 5, 2010
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I just got my Grand National back on the road- I am definitely a racist! Yeah baby fully restored by 2012...Joseph
August 5, 2010
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Remember, Darwin was a guy who thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people.
As a hypothesis or as an observation?Mung
August 5, 2010
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Critter, It doesn't. How does (insert ID proponent here)'s faith effect whether design is real?Upright BiPed
August 5, 2010
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How does Darwin's perceived racism affect whether or not evolution is real?critter
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