Racism and it’s various manifestations such as eugenics is a Janus Faced monster of human society. One side speaks to people’s fear and hate, and is social and political. It speaks a sermon to the angry and downtrodden who love to hear that their “race” is superior, or to the social managers and engineers who benefit from a handy excuse to explain the results of repression and economic inequality as the natural outcome of history and circumstance beyond our control and thus not the fault of those self same social managers and engineers.
The other face is the biological one, the scientific description of “race” itself, and the scientific explanation for racial differences.
Each of these aspects of modern racism can act independently and to some extent have different histories, but by and large they are two parts of the same trend. Prior to Eugenics, the biological side of this monster was not scientific, and was in fact typically religious. When European Christians needed to explain the people of the New World (how the heck did they get there, and who were they, really?) or the “savages” of Africa, they turned to the bible … and there found the basis for “lost tribes” and “mud people” (the latter really more like mud-subhumans). The discussion in the late 17th century through the 18th century was about which group of people had souls, and what kinds of conversions could be done, and if conversions could or could not be done, what should be done with these people who are otherwise more or less in the way. Slavery was a very convenient option, sanctioned in the bible. To exterminate or rout out the humans or near-humans standing in the way of occupation of the land was a clear option also outlined in the bible. Taking the land, the goods, and the women (cattle if at all possible!) from the non-believers was not only sanctioned but instructed by by god himself. A sort of twist of the old expression: From god’s mouth to your ears, Conquistador!
Just as the religious view of nature (a la Natural History) was supplanted during the last part of the 19th century through the early 20th century with a scientific/naturalistic view, so was the biblical naturalism of racism replaced to varying degrees with scientific racism, most commonly known (but not limited to) eugenics. Eugenics made sense to a lot of people. Then-modern biological theories could explain racial differences and offer cures to many social problems.
But it is simply not the case that all biologists converted to eugenics at the time. Many people rallied and wrote against it. A huge debate lasting decades ensued and by the end of World War II (actually much sooner in many quarters) the “scientific basis” of eugenics was largely destroyed within science, yet it lingered among the social engineers and politicians, as it does today.
One could think of biological racism and eugenics as bad ideas for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with science. But these arguments aside, the fact is that these concepts are simply scientifically unfounded and unsupportable. The process of scientific inquiry, debate, research, and analysis has resulted in this simple set of conclusions: The “races” themselves are illusory, the genetic determinism of behavior and ability is without foundation, and the ethnic or identity based linkage to correlated genes is nonsense. Yet, the concept of race remains just as strong today as it ever was, outside of the biological sciences.
The point I want to make here is this: The thing we call Biology (the Science of Biology), with Charles Darwin as a very significant contributor, is one place where the race argument … an argument that had already been formed and was already one of the most powerful social forces in “Western Society” since the Renaissance … was taken up, run through the mill, and eventually discarded as bankrupt. This is not so true among political science. In modern political science, the race concept is alive and well. This is not so true among the religious. In religious quarters we see the race concept often used and often promoted. The race concept is alive and well but not in the biological sciences.
I would argue that the biological sciences constitute the only sizable modern entity (body of thought, point of view, etc) from which the race concept has been removed with only minor, and very annoying but largely circumscribed and within the field of biology ignored, vestiges. The churches, their messages and their works are often steeped in racism. The conservative politicians have taken racist doctrine on as a way of obtaining votes and as a tool in implementing policy.
The linkage we see now and then from creationists, between Darwin and Eugenics, is a pitiful attempt at smokescreen, a kind of vaporous wedge strategy, that makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
A recent example: Melissa McNamara at Blogophile (CBS) discusses the Blogosphere’s involvement in Mardi Gras, as well as Darwin Day, and in so doing quite innocently points us to the Anti-Celebration of Darwin Day on at least one weblog site (Open Book). The Open Book is a Catholic web site that quotes extensively from (and in so doing makes a very funny error … look out for snipping, you can change history!) David Klinghoffer, writing in in the Daily Standard, who discusses the beginnings of the Eugenics movement early in the 20th century, making explicit the link to then still emerging Darwinian Theory. To be fair, he also states that
Darwin himself opposed discriminating against the weak and helpless, but his disciples were less principled. The major ethical impact of the Darwinian idea has been to undercut what contemporary Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer decries as the “Hebrew view” of a purposefully-designed humanity, crowned by the solemn and central theme: “And God said, Let us make man in our image.”
Don’t get me wrong, (I’m not trying to mine quotes here) Klinghoffer is clear that he feels that Darwinism, of the early 20th century as well as today, is immoral and dangerous.
Mr. Klinghoffer (as well as “Open Book”) have thus spent some energy linking (incorrectly) the Eugenics movement with Darwin. How much energy have they spent recently on fighting (or at least discussing) racism itself? Do they even care, or do they simply want to cast any available stone at biological science, regardless of such fine ideals as truthfulness?
10 Responses to “Racism, Creationism, Darwinism”
- 1 Pingback on Mar 20th, 2007 at 8:02 am
- 2 Pingback on Mar 20th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I have often thought that the Bible is the first major written record of racism, and racial basis for genocide, and any other thing the human chimp puts its holy mind to. Am I wrong to say that the Bible–more properly, the Torah, is the first racial epistle–a kind of protocols of the how and when of “applied racism” — Is there another, older?
cmf: There are many other, older, texts. I wouldn’t want to say. That’s a pretty tricky question.
yeah..the forbidden question I think….I think I was meaning more the Talmud, and law, rather than mere ethnography and tribal customs, i.e. the Torah…but it is the earliest that one I know of that gives one “race”(that ambiguous term of political feasance)of people rights separate and different from others ( transcending castes and class boundaries), based on genetics and dsicriminatory lineage, the notion of across the boars ‘racial purity’, etc….I am not trying to be tricky, just feeding into some of your topics: fundies, Biblical ethnography , Darwins bad rap, misuse of science ,religion, etc….I like your ideas( re: other posts) about the Bible as ethnography, and I just thought that maybe the Bible as a tool preceded science as a tool to discriminate, or as a specifically racial categorizer….the ‘unclean gentiles’ , handmaidens and dogs and all of that old stuff from the Babylonian Talmud….”MISHNAH: GENTILES HAVE NO [COMPETENCE FOR] NAZIRITESHIP, BUT WOMEN AND SLAVES…DO…..maybe it is a question for another rabbi?
I like this phrase:”so was the biblical naturalism of racism replaced to varying degrees with scientific racism, most commonly known (but not limited to) eugenics”
I presume this means that racism is ‘natural’ in the sense as if it is an organic thing, rather than a man made construct interpreted from the bible, right? Yet all of that discussion actually eminates from Talmudic laws as well, and the other origins of ‘law’ that came before that.
In other words, this concept of race is not new to the 16th through 21st century…..it exists from the very beginning of that Bible, and is handed down, not only from generation to generation, but also from biblical/religious offshoot to its inheritor, i.e The Pharisees to the Christians to the Catholics, to the….all the way up to the current radical Islamic/Christian conflicts( and biblical tradition offshoot) that hold forth the idea of some people as “unclean’ etc….
CMF: I would not say that racisim is natural. I’m not saying it is not, either. I’m just not saying.
At the moment I’m engaged in one large and one small writing project related to racism. A few months ago I would have made a fairly simple statement about it. I have not really changed my mind, but it is sufficiently complicated to make me pause.
It is not a “man-made” construct interpreted from the bible.
It would be fun to blame racism squarely and solely on Fundies, but …
… oh, what the heck, let’s just blame it on them and move on to more interesting topics…
Yeah, the whole blame game of race…that is a difficult one indeed, so I agree w/you: “I’m just not saying”.
BUT…in other better days, when I presumed people in the debate had minds, and liked to use them, I would use the example of “discrimination”. Remember the days of the slogan where there was a circle, and inside the circle the word discrimination, and then, across that word was drawn a line, as if it was poison–you know the skull and crosbones effect–well it is only a word, a word, which , in raw form, signifies a necessary component of human survival–we discriminate when we eat the sweet red berry versus the poison, but prettier red one; we discriminate when we perceive the pigmentation of anothers skin much in the same way we do the berries, and, depending on ones socio-cultural adaptations, we either eat it or no–one beasts poison is just another beasts desert, much like gorillas can eat raw green fruit, and other apes would get sick, etc…but the logic was lost on the idiot parade with its chants and slogans, zero tolerance for discussion, etc….in other words, I found that non racists were more often than not the ones who liked to discuss the ideas, rather than argue about them. Or, in better words, the non racists have more discriminating tastes for their intellectual pallette;-)
So one mans “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice” holds true,(or once you know white you are on the right, etc….) but another mans caveat was always judgemental or subtly hierarchical as in “only if it ain’t caffeinated,” etc, etc, etc, until finally you are either labeled racist or form an agreement of sorts…
The folks who employed the bible racially, and those that will again, kind of skipped over those Talmudic agreements and disagreements, and just started label pasting….and rather than employing discussion, used argument….
Yeah, ok….new topic….how about that idiot Poppe??
Maybe you could place these quotes into context for me, since to myself they merely sound like the words of a despicable racist:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
(Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man)
It’s hard to argue that Darwin thought Africans were not really humans:
“In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point when the term “man” ought to be used. But this is a matter of very little importance. So again, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated, or are ranked as species or sub-species; but the latter term appears the more appropriate.”
(Descent, Chapter Seven: On the Races of Man: Sub-species)
You said: “The linkage we see now and then from creationists, between Darwin and Eugenics, is a pitiful attempt at smokescreen, a kind of vaporous wedge strategy, that makes me laugh and cry at the same time.”
How about this link, between Darwin’s cousin and eugenics:
Francis Galton
“average negroes possess too little intellect, self-reliance and self-control to make it possible for them to sustain the burden of any respectable form of civilisation without a large measure of external guidance and support. The Chinaman is a being of another kind, who is endowed with a remarkable aptitude for a high material civilisation. He is seen to the least advantage in his own country, where a temporary dark age still prevails, which has not sapped the genius of the race, though it has stunted the development of each member of it, by the rigid enforcement of an effete system of classical education, which treats originality as a social crime’ The natural capacity of the Chinaman shows itself by the success with which, notwithstanding his timidity, he competes with strangers, wherever he may reside. The Chinese emigrants possess an extraordinary instinct for political and social organisation; they contrive to establish for themselves a police and internal government, and they give no trouble to their rulers so long as they are left to manage these matters for themselves.”
“The history of the world tells a tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby. We ourselves are no descendants of the aborigines of Britain, and our colonists were invaders of the regions they now occupy as their lawful home. But the countries into which the Anglo-Saxon race can be transfused are restricted to those where the climate is temperate. The tropics are not for us to inhabit permanently; the greater part of Africa is the heritage of a people differently constituted to ourselves. On that continent, as elsewhere, one population continually drives out another. We note how Arab, Tuarick, Fellatab, Negroes of uncounted varieties, Caffre and Hottentot surge and reel to and fro in the struggle for existence. It is into this free fight among all present that I wish to see a new competitor introduced-namely the Chinaman. The gain would be immense to the whole civilised world if he were to outbreed and finally displace the negro, as completely as the latter has displaced the aborigines of the West Indies. The magnitude of the gain may be partly estimated by making the converse supposition-namely the loss that would ensue if China were somehow to be depopulated and restocked by negroes.”
http://galton.org/cgi-bin/sear.....2_0048.htm
Peace and Love to all on the planet - cos we don’t rate hate.
Billy Riley
Ach! Billy, I just wrote the first 5/7ths of a long reply to your comments. But, alas, as I am doing some updating on my Linux computer, I’m using a nearby Windows computer, so of course, the work was lost. Now I have to move on.
I will come back to this issue shortly. In fact, I should write a longer post about it, because you raise important and interesting questions.