In an article about a new book, Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini, the Smithsonian magazine reviewer finds a way to efface the role of Darwinism in making racism scientifically respectable:
Scientific research has struggled with concepts of race for centuries, often proposing misleading or erroneous explanations of racial differences. Contentious debates among Europeans about the origins of modern humans began in the 19th century, and many of the continent’s leading scientists believed firmly that Europeans exemplified the most evolved and intelligent humans. Ramin Skibba, “The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism” at Smithsonian Magazine
No mention is made of the fact that the general acceptance of Darwinism, in particular, enabled science-backed racism. Darwinian evolution theory made racism seem modern and cool instead backward and stupid.
A price is paid for refusal to grapple with reality; in this case, the price is a tendency to rely on bad arguments whose badness everyone agrees to overlook. For example:
While Mankind Quarterly has managed to hang on into the 21st century, “hard-core scientific racists are mostly old white men, and they’re not being reproduced in academia,” Panofsky says. Even so, plenty of racist, young white men continue to promote concepts of scientific racism, such as the participants in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—an event that even the scientific journal Nature felt the need to condemn. Ramin Skibba, “The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism” at Smithsonian Magazine
The old white men are probably Darwinists and the Charlottesville rally, which ended in a murder, can’t have featured many scientists. So the connection between the two groups of “white men” would most likely be Darwin in the school system. But wait, Darwin in the school system is Correct, right? Just don’t think too hard and you’ll be fine.
Skibba is telling the only story he is allowed to tell and that’s too bad if we think that some honesty would help. In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.
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See also: See also: David Klinghoffer: Racism is integral to Darwinian thinking, “like an irremediable birth defect” Under the circumstances, it is a testament to human decency that more Darwinians aren’t racists.
“Race realism” (Darwinian racism) pops up again: the John Derbyshire commemorative edition. An American conservative thinkmag published geneticist Razib Khan, glorifying Darwinism, and he turned out to have apparent racist links. Then someone with even more pronounced racist links rose to defend him.
Darwinian conservative has a troubling history re racist links Every so often, for whatever reason, a US conservative thinkmag steps on Darwin’s rake.
In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.
and
Was Neanderthal man fully human? The role racism played in assessing the evidence
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