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Sheffield University: Darwin ruled “problematic” figure due to racism

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Had to happen:

A university has been slammed by academics for putting Charles Darwin on a list of ‘racist’ scientists as part of a guide to ‘decolonise’ its biology curriculum.

Sheffield University has created a handbook for students and lecturers in its science department to help ‘tackle racial injustice’ by ‘reflecting on the whiteness and Eurocentrism of our science’.

As part of the guide, the department created a list of 11 ‘problematic’ scientific figures – including Darwin – whose views ‘influenced the type of research they carried out and how they interpreted their data’.

William Cole, “Sheffield University tells staff Charles Darwin was ‘racist’ and used natural selection theory to justify white male superiority in ‘decolonising curriculum’ lecturing handbook” at Daily Mail

Author William Cole emphasizes Darwin’s opposition to slavery but one of his quoted experts puts that in perspective: “Professor James Moore, a biographer of Darwin, told The Telegraph: ‘Almost everyone in Darwin’s day was “racist” in 21st century terms, not only scientists and naturalists but even anti-slavery campaigners and abolitionists.”

Of course. There’s no reason why a racist couldn’t also be a passionate abolitionist. Whatever a person may believe about human equality, slavery is a corrupting influence on any society.

A wiser approach to fighting back would be to pry Woke administrators and faculty loose from employment, wherever possible. Choosing between them and civilization should not be difficult.

The article provides a whole list of non-woke historically significant scientists about to be subjected to whatever the Woke have in store for them, mostly post-mortem. That should be an incentive.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

Comments
Perhaps the first step to eradicating racism is to accept that it exists - at least the seeds of it - in all of us and that "canceling" historical figures for what we now regard as racist views is more like virtue-signalling. The more sinister comparison is to authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union that sought to erase ideologically "impure" figures from their history.Seversky
May 9, 2021
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