Was Charles Darwin a Racist?

[Nyarlathotep]

@Calilasseia

Was he? Don’t recall hearing this on any of my usual grapevines … ???

Right, I only heard it from a real old timer. Google the name: Ithi Junger.

[Calilasseia]

It seems one learns something new every day. Sadly, in this case.

[Calilasseia]

By the way, a point I forgot to mention in my earlier post was this.

Darwin was, no doubt, well aware of the activities of some of his fellow humans. Not least the activities of several of his fellow Britons, who at the time were pursuing colonialism and imperialism with frightening vigour. History teaches us that on numerous occasions, said pursuit of colonialism and imperialism involved lethal military force.

Even given the quaint and archaic prose he chose to deploy in his writings, it’s obvious to any honest reader of his work, that he regarded the likely elimination of indigenous peoples as a tragic, brute fact, and not, as sleazily asserted by creationists, some sort of desirable future objective. He saw the writing on the wall in an age where the first ironclad warships were still new technology, and breech loading artillery an experimental development. He was well aware that some would use these tools for conquest and resource theft, and that indigenous peoples armed with little more than bows and arrows would find themselves fighting a harrowingly unequal war.

Indeed, his view that imperialists would eventually erase indigenous peoples from the face of the Earth, has taken a new twist in recent years, with the advent of wars fought for resources by states acting on behalf of global corporations, and the use thereby of barely controlled mercenary armies.

But, in his day, his prediction was being made all the more tragically likely, by, wait for it, Christian missionaries sent out from imperial Britain to “convert” the natives. These missionaries acted with uncontrolled zeal to eliminate indigeous cultures, and replace them with a slavish devotion to a carefully cultivated religiosity, the real aim of which was to pave the way for imperial conquest. Those same missionaries were also ready to call upon military assistance to deal with any recalcitrant resistance to conversion.

One doesnt have to exert much effort, to learn how the Christian religion was weaponised in pursuit of colonial and imperial conquest, not just by the overlords of the British Empire of course. Spain had been involved in the same business since the time of Columbus, and even elementary history textbooks cover such topics as, for example, the Conquistadors, and the manner in which they effectively wiped out at least three Mesoamerican indigenous civilisations. A process conducted, of course, at least three centuries before Darwin was born.

Racism, and the verminous pressing into service thereof for reasons of conquest and political control, has been a festering sore upon human history for a very long time, and Abrahamic religions have their fair share of indulgence therein to account for. Indeed, the whole “Hamitic Races” garbage was wielded on a grand scale by the Ku Klux Klan, which was erected specifically as a Christian and creationist organisation. This particular piece of venomous nonsense is still peddled today in Ken Ham’s sleazy “creation museum”.

Finally, I’ll mention a basic fact about evolutionary biology, though doing so will be superfluous to the honest readers of my posts, namely, that what evolutionary biology teaches us, is that genetic diversity is an essential protection against extinction. Failure to maintain genetic diversity in a population weakens it, someties fatally, and the scientific data informing us of this is voluminous. Indeed, those who read Darwin’s works properly also become aware of this fact.

Variation is the fuel for evolution, and the farcical “monoculture” view of people like Hitler is so violently at variance with this fact, that only a fool or a liar could possibly claim that Hitler based his racial policies no the work of Darwin, even in the absence of the other issues I’ve presented above. The manner in which European royal families became inbred, sometimes to the point of producing heirs that were visibly riddled with deleterious mutations, teaches us this lesson even if no other source of data is examined - the Habsburgs in particular left a frankly scary legacy in this vein.

Though once again, I predict that facts of this sort will be ignored by the usual suspects.

[Calilasseia]

Oh, and as for what Darwin really thought about “races”, let s turn to pages 214-216 of The Descent of Man, viz:

@Charles Darwin

IT is not my intention here to describe the several so-called races of men; but to inquire what is the value of the differences between them under a classificatory point of view, and how they have originated. In determining whether two or more allied forms ought to be ranked as species or varieties, naturalists are practically guided by the following considerations; namely, the amount of difference between them, and whether such differences relate to few or many points of structure, and whether they are of physiological importance; but more especially whether they are constant. Constancy of character is what is chiefly valued and sought for by naturalists. Whenever it can be shewn, or rendered probable, that the forms in question have remained distinct for a long period, this becomes an argument of much weight in favour of treating them as species. Even a slight degree of sterility between any two forms when first crossed, or in their offspring, is generally considered as a decisive test of their specific distinctness; and their continued persistence without blending within the same area, is usually accepted as sufficient evidence, either of some degree of mutual sterility, or in the case of animals of some repugnance to mutual pairing.

Independently of blending from intercrossing, the complete absence, in a well-investigated region, of varieties linking together any two closely-allied forms, is probably the most important of all the criterions of their specific distinctness; and this is a somewhat different consideration from mere constancy of character, for two forms may be highly variable and yet not yield intermediate varieties. Geographical distribution is often unconsciously and sometimes consciously brought into play; so that forms living in two widely separated areas, in which most of the other inhabitants are specifically distinct, are themselves usually looked at as distinct; but in truth this affords no aid in distinguishing geographical races from so-called good or true species.

Now let us apply these generally-admitted principles to the races of man, viewing him in the same spirit as a naturalist would any other animal. In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by the long habit of observing ourselves. In India, as Elphinstone remarks,¹ although a newly-arrived European cannot at first distinguish the various native races, yet they soon appear to him extremely dissimilar; and the Hindoo cannot at first perceive any difference between the several European nations. Even the most distinct races of man, with the exception of certain negro tribes, are much more like each other in form than would at first be supposed. This is well shewn by the French photographs in the Collection Anthropologique du Muséum of the men belonging to various races, the greater number of which, as many persons to whom I have shown them have remarked, might pass for Europeans. Nevertheless, these men if seen alive would undoubtedly appear very distinct, so that we are clearly much influenced in our judgment by the mere colour of the skin and hair, by slight differences in the features, and by expression.

Note how he opened that exposition with the words “the several so-called races of men”. Already, he was starting to think in terms of differentiating between superficial and rigorous characteristics. Indeed, I’ll repeat this part of his exposition, because it provides a valuable insight:

@Charles Darwin

Whenever it can be shewn, or rendered probable, that the forms in question have remained distinct for a long period, this becomes an argument of much weight in favour of treating them as species. Even a slight degree of sterility between any two forms when first crossed, or in their offspring, is generally considered as a decisive test of their specific distinctness; and their continued persistence without blending within the same area, is usually accepted as sufficient evidence, either of some degree of mutual sterility, or in the case of animals of some repugnance to mutual pairing.

Oh look, possibly the first explicit statement in the history of science, of the biological species concept.

Now I’ll admit that I only had the “light bulb” moment with respect to this about ten minutes ago, while looking for more refutations of the “Darwin was racist” bullshit and lies, but while looking for the requisite passages, that one suddenly stood out for the reason I’ve just given.

You’ll also notice that he manifestly regards so-called “racial differences” as superficial from the standpoint of actual biology, in the last paragraph of his exposition. Unlike actual racists.

Later on, we have this, from page 226:

@Charles Darwin

But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.¹⁷ This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive character between them.

Incidentally, footnote 17 reads as follows:

[quote
See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, ‘Introduct. to Anthropology,’ Eng. translat. 1863, p. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of the above statements from H. Tuttle’s ‘Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man,’ Boston, 1866, p. 35.
[/quote]

Oh look, honest citation of prior art. Something else we never see in mythology fanboy apologetics.

Oh, and pages 227 and 228 cover some of the issues that have faced taxonomists ever since Linnaeus launched the discipline as a rigorous scientific enterprise, and which even today, sometimes results in consternation among the taxonomic fraternity until the sledgehammer of DNA analysis is brought to bear on the matter.

Indeed, as an invertebrate zoologist, I’m aware of a particualrly fascinating example of the issues involved, courtesy of a South American butterfly known as Styx infernalis. This species ended up with this taxonomic designation for a reason - namely, that an analysis of its detailed anatomy, revealed this insect to be, in effect, a “parts bin” special, containing features found in four different Lepidoptera Families. Over the past 100 years or so, this unfortunate insect has been causing taxonomists to scratch their heads with respect to its exact Family placement, hence it being handed a taxonomic name effectively translating as “the butterfly from Hell”.

Staudniger originally placed this insect in the Pieridae, whereupon a re-examination led to it being moved to the now defunct Family Erycinidae. Ehrlich classified it as part of the Lycaenidae, in a SubFamily called the Styginae, while one worker in the field proposed that it be classified in its own unique Family, the Stygidae. Other workers proposed that it reside in the Riodinidae, where it enjoyed a tenuous status until DNA analysis was brought to bear upon it, which finally cemented its place in the Riodnidae, but with a twist - instead of being in the SubFamily Euselasinae, where almost all of the other South American members of the Family are placed, it was found to be part of the SubFamily Nemeobiinae, which is of Old World origin and distribution.

Now if this sort of hoo-ha can arise from a butterfly, it should come as no surprise that a species as diverse in apperance as Homo sapiens should have caused 19th century taxonomists some headaches.

Once again, the data is informative here.

[Tin-Man]

@skriten

GW Bush good job brownies,

Uh, hey… Uh, where can I get some of those? (Asking for a friend.)

[skriten]

@Nyarlathotep

Right, I only heard it from a real old timer. Google the name: Ithi Junger.

Thanks for posting. Sorry for the inappropriate post.

[skriten]

@Tin-Man

Uh, hey… Uh, where can I get some of those? (Asking for a friend.)

Well, they are baked in Washington DC, but distributed in New Orleans…

[SodaAnt]

You forgot Hitler ice cream cones:

[Kellii]

@sprinterforchrist

Well you believe the same thing as they did which in turn would make you complicent with racism.

We’re all guilty by association claims the man who worships a god who is a genocidal, baby killing, tyrant.
None of us think Darwin is infallible and right about everything.

[Sheldon]

@sprinterforchrist

Well you believe the same thing as they did which in turn would make you complicent (sic) with racism.

A spectacularly silly claim, but it’s not all bad, you seem to have invented a new word at least.

[rat_spit]

@Tin-Man

For the record, I don’t give a drop of rat’s piss about Darwin. (@rat_spit No offense, Ratty.

None taken. As long as you don’t mention anything about “spit”

[Randomhero1982]

Let me guess, racism is awful… Darwin may have been racist, therefore the theory of evolution and darwinian natural selection are awful.

That’s right up there with Isaac Newton hated people with asthma, therefore hes a bigoted anti-weezy-ist and the laws of gravity should no longer apply.

Come on, come up with something original, this bollocks is the sort of 4th rate views one would expect from muppets like Kent Hovind.

[Sheldon]

@Randomhero1982

Come on, come up with something original, this bollocks is the sort of 4th rate views one would expect from muppets like Kent Hovind.

Exactly, it’s another of those tedious poisoning of the well fallacies creationist seem to love.

[Randomhero1982]

Very well said Sheldon.

[Calilasseia]

QUICK UPDATE:

The University of Arizona website I cited above is now defunct. However, its contents are replicated in full at this address.

Scroll down to the part covering page 279 of Die Bücherei, and read both the original German text of section 6, and the accompanying English translation, which I quoted in full above.

I suspect we won’t see any mythology fanboys exhibit this sort of diligence in the foreseeable future …

[Calilasseia]

Meanwhile, I’ve compiled another Google Docs document, dealing with the two egregious creationist lies peddled in this thread. Interested readers can find it here:

Two Particularly Egregious Creationist Lies

I’ve xepanded upon my critique in that document, and I suspect the regulars will find the expanded critique useful.