Charles Darwin is often thought of as a great man, a marvelous scientist. But he was also a HUGE racist by today's standards. I'll let this paragraph speak for itself.
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised 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... between man in a more civilised state... even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
Were there savages around at the time? Absolutely. Are there now? Absolutely. Are savages somehow less human? Absolutely not. Are any races/ethnicities inferior to others? Absolutely not.
Darwin said that "ancient races" (meaning nonwhites) are closer to animals than to humans:
“It is an interesting fact that ancient races, in this and several other cases, more frequently present structures which resemble those of the lower animals than do the modern. One chief cause seems to be that the ancient races stand somewhat nearer in the long line of descent to their remote animal-like progenitors."
He compared blacks to apes:
“It appears as if the posterior molar or wisdom-teeth were tending to become rudimentary in the more civilised races of man. These teeth are rather smaller than the other molars, as is likewise the case with the corresponding teeth in the chimpanzee and orang; and they have only two separate fangs. … In the Melanian races, on the other hand, the wisdom-teeth are usually furnished with three separate fangs, and are generally sound; they also differ from the other molars in size, less than in the Caucasian races."
"The belief that there exists in man some close relationship between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of skulls of savage and civilized races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. Dr. J. Barnard Davis has proved, by many careful measurements, that the mean internal capacity of the skull in Europeans is 92.3 cubic inches; in Americans 87.5; in Asians 87.1; and in Australians only 81.9 cubic inches."
The “western nations of Europe … now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the summit of civilization”.
Answering a few objections:
Just because he was a racist doesn't mean his theories were wrong.
No, it doesn't—that's another discussion. However, it does mean that if we are going to cancel literally anyone who ever made any statement, good or bad, about race, then we should definitely cancel him too. I don't think we should do anything like that, of course.
Just because he was a racist doesn't mean his theories are racist.
He considered what we would call racism the logical end of his own theory. Many scientists in history did too. Many scientists today disagree. One can be an evolutionist and not be a racist, but evolutionary theory is easy to bend to racism.
He wasn't a racist. He supported abolition.
He did. But he said that we should free the slaves because we share a common ancestor—the same reason many people support better conditions for captive apes!
Darwin was a man of his time.
I agree, but you didn't let Abraham Lincoln off the hook for that.
Your God is far worse.
First of all, that doesn't solve the problem. Darwin is still racist and sexist. Second, God is not evil. This is discussed in depth here.
And one question:
What's your point here?
Darwin was a racist. That's it. I want to point out facts many people are not aware of. I'm not trying to turn this into a theological or scientific discussion. I'm not trying to destroy the name of someone who's been dead for over a hundred years. I just want to point it out.
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