Paradoxical#1
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ummm, errr, buddy. If I want a book, I'll visit the library.Educate yourself.
The Dark Side of Darwinism
Posted on November 16, 2016 by Austin Anderson
Charles Darwin, nineteenth century English naturalist, is known as one of the most brilliant minds in history. He was a curious intellectual and a brave adventurer, well-liked by those who knew him personally and greatly revered in the scientific community. His 1859 and 1871 books, On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, enlightened the world with a transformative understanding of life that became the foundation of modern biological thought. But thereâs a darker side of Darwin, a side that perhaps calls into question his prized intellect and cherished legacy. Darwinâs writing was racist, and discriminatory beliefs and practices follow directly from his theories. If youâre a lover of evolution or biology major like I am, you may be tempted to reject that claim. But hear me out: Support for the idea that Darwinâs theories are racist may come from where you least expect it.
Iâd only heard of Darwinâs dark side in passing, and Iâd always assumed that Darwinâs critics were driven by ignorance or ulterior motives. But as I scrolled by debates online about Darwinâs theories, I noticed something peculiar: Darwinâs defenders most often cited his abolitionist identity, notes from his diaries, or quotes from people who knew Darwin. His accusers, on the other hand, often directly cited text from The Descent of Man. Conclusions drawn from the authorial approach to the question, in which defenders focused on proving that Darwin himself was not a racist, starkly contradicted conclusions drawn from the approach of consulting Darwinâs text itself. Iâm familiar with Darwinâs theories, but I had never actually read his books; I suspect the same is true for most of you. However, I found that to determine whether or not Darwinâs theories are racist, the text of his books is revealing and conclusive. Information outside the text of The Descent of Man can help us understand the man behind the pen, but it does nothing to soften the brutal racism and white supremacism found in the text of his theory.
Although best known for On the Origin of Species, Darwin does not address human evolution and race until his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, in which Darwin applies his theories of natural selection to humans and introduces the idea of sexual selection. Here his white supremacism is revealed. Over the course of the book, Darwin describes Australians, Mongolians, Africans, Indians, South Americans, Polynesians, and even Eskimos as âsavages:â It becomes clear that he considers every population that is not white and European to be savage. The word savage is disdainful, and Darwin constantly elevates white Europeans above the savages. Darwin explains that the âhighest races and the lowest savagesâ differ in âmoral disposition ⌠and in intellectâ (36). The idea that white people are more intelligent and moral persists throughout. At one point, Darwin says that savages have âlow morality,â âinsufficient powers of reasoning,â and âweak power of self-commandâ (97). Darwinâs specific consideration of intellectual capacities is especially alarming. He begins with animals: âNo one supposes that one of the lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes,âwhat is death or what is life, and so forthâ (62). His remarks soon expand to humans. âHow little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existenceâ (62). Darwin writes that Australians are incapable of complex thought, and insinuates that they are akin to lower animals: His perspective on non-European races is incredibly prejudiced and absurd. Modern evolutionary scholars and teachers tend to ignore or omit that component of Darwinâs theory, but it hasnât gone completely unnoticed. For example, Rutledge Dennis examined Darwinâs role in scientific racism for The Journal of Negro Education and found that in Darwinâs world view, âtalent and virtue were features to be identified solely with Europeansâ (243). White supremacy is clearly embedded in The Descent of Man, regardless of Darwinâs brilliance or the accuracy of the rest of his theory.
Darwin makes a disturbing link between his belief in white supremacy and his theory of natural selection. He justifies violent imperialism. âFrom the remotest times successful tribes have supplanted other tribes. ⌠At the present day civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nationsâ (160). Darwinâs theory applies survival of the fittest to human races, suggesting that extermination of non-white races is a natural consequence of white Europeans being a superior and more successful race. Further, Darwin justifies violently overtaking other cultures because it has happened regularly throughout natural history. The arc of Darwinâs evolutionary universe evidently does not bend toward justice: He has no problem with continuing the vicious behavior of past generations. Claims such as those made evident in the title of a 2004 book, âFrom Darwin to Hitler,â may not be as alarmist as they seem.
Not only does Darwin believe in white supremacy, he offers a biological explanation for it, namely that white people are further evolved. He writes that the âwestern nations of Europe ⌠now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the summit of civilizationâ (178). Darwin imagines that Europeans are more advanced versions of the rest of the world. As previously mentioned, this purported superiority justified to Darwin the domination of inferior races by Europeans. As white Europeans âexterminate and replaceâ the worldâs âsavage races,â and as great apes go extinct, Darwin says that the gap between civilized man and his closest evolutionary ancestor will widen. The gap will eventually be between civilized man âand some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorillaâ (201). Read that last line again if you missed it: Darwinâs theory claims that Africans and Australians are more closely related to apes than Europeans are. The spectrum of organisms is a hierarchy here, with white Europeans at the top and apes at the bottom. In Darwinâs theory, colored people fall somewhere in between. Modern human is essentially restricted only to white Europeans, with all other races viewed as somehow sub-human.
The text of The Descent of Man clearly contains a racist and white supremacist ideology, but not everyone who reads Darwinâs theory believes that the text tells the entire story. Adrian Desmond and James Moore argue against the idea that Darwinâs theories are racist in their 2009 book, Darwinâs Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwinâs Views on Human Evolution. As the title suggests, Desmond and Moore claim that Darwinâs intent in studying evolution was actually to bolster the abolitionist cause. âDarwinâs starting point was the abolitionist belief in blood kinship, a âcommon descentââ (xvii). In response to Darwinâs defectors, they say that âthe real problem is that no one understands Darwinâs core project. ⌠No one has appreciated the source of that moral fire that fueled his strange, out-of-character obsession with human originsâ (xix). How can Desmond and Moore claim to know Darwinâs intent? They reached their conclusions after an exhaustive search through âa wealth of unpublished family letters and a massive amount of manuscript material,â and use âDarwinâs notes, cryptic marginalia (where key clues lie) and even shipsâ logs and lists of books read by Darwin. His published notebooks and correspondence (some 15,000 letters are now known) are an invaluable sourceâ (xx). Using these sources, Desmond and Moore attempt to make a substantial case against the idea that Darwin was racist, citing evidence such as the diary that Darwin kept during his Beagle voyage. Darwin writes of slavery, âIt makes oneâs blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guiltyâ (quoted in Desmond and Moore, 183). Darwin often wrote thoughts that donât quite align with the ideas in The Descent of Man. In his theory, Darwin suggests that it is natural for more successful races to dominate over others, and speaks comfortably of white Europeans exterminating other races. However, he wrote in his diary that âthe white Man ⌠has debased his Nature & violates every best instinctive feeling by making slave of his fellow blackâ (quoted in Desmond and Moore, 115). Desmond and Moore view Darwinâs later contradictions of his racist ideas in The Descent of Man as reason to interpret the text of Darwinâs theory cautiously.
Desmond and Moore also offer details of Darwinâs life that they claim are incongruent with his purported racism. Darwin came from a family that fought to emancipate Britainâs slaves, and many of his friends and readers were abolitionists as well. As a young man, Darwin took lessons in bird-stuffing from a local African American servant. Desmond and Moore write, âEvidently the sixteen-going-on-seventeen year old saw nothing untoward in paying money to apprentice himself to a Negro, and the forty or so hour-long sessions which he had with the âblackamoorâ through that frosty winter clearly made an impactâ (18). Desmond and Moore see Darwinâs willingness to associate with African Americans as evidence that he was not prejudiced. Finally, the authors bring up a story that is actually mentioned in The Descent of Man. When Darwin writes of similarities he has noticed between savages and himself, he mentions âa full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimateâ (232). Again, Desmond and Moore see Darwinâs personal experiences with colored people as evidence that he is not biased against them; further, they believe this information should influence our interpretation of The Descent of Man.
A final argument made in favor of Darwin blames the time period in which he wrote. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education writes that âDarwin, like [Abraham] Lincoln, believed in white supremacy, but he was far more enlightened and sympathetic to blacks than most white men of his timeâ (39). In this view, The Descent of Man must be considered within the context of its conception, namely a period and location in which white supremacy was the norm.
The external information supplied by Darwinâs personal notes, experiences, context, etc. adds to our understanding of Darwin himself, but it cannot change our understanding of his theories. The question of whether Darwin was a racist man is separate from the question of whether his theory was racist, and the answer to the former question has no bearing on the latter. The text of The Descent of Man is undeniably racist, and readers only engage with the presented text: They donât know what Darwin wrote in his diary, whether his family supported abolition, or how much he interacted with African Americans, nor should a reader have to know these things in order to correctly interpret the text. The Descent of Man exists separate from its author and context. Claims that readers should not take the racism in Darwinâs theory literally in light of external information reject the nature of literature. As Roland Barthes says, âa textâs unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constitutedâ (148). Barthesâ argument is especially salient in this case because The Descent of Man was written so long ago, and Charles Darwin is long dead. Darwin and the context in which he wrote his theory have long passed, but the text lives on and will continue to exist as an independent entity that deserves to be interpreted as such.
Thus, the value of considering contextual details depends on which question we are asking. When wondering about Darwin himself, a full range of sources is applicable. However, when determining whether Darwinâs theories contain dangerous racial ideology, the alarming text of his theories cannot be at all softened or explained away with outside information. Now I understand why Iâve never been asked in a biology class to read the original text of Darwinâs theories: Our contemporary reverence for Darwinâs gentlemanliness and the pure scientific brilliance of his theories is an overly optimistic illusion that shatters upon a closer look at his publications.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. âThe Death of the Author.â In Image-Music-Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. Hill and Wang, 1978.
âBlacks Less Likely to Accept Charles Darwinâs Dethronement of Mankind.â The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, vol 21. CH II Publishers, Autumn 1998. USA.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. John Murray, 1871. Albemarle Street, London.
Dennis, Rutledge M. âSocial Darwinism, scientific racism, and the metaphysics of race.â The Journal of Negro Education, 64:3. Howard University Press, 1995. USA.
Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James. Darwinâs Sacred Cause. Penguin Group, 2009. London.
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