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Was Darwin racist?
Published: 17 October 2009(GMT+10)
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Charles Darwin’s encounter with the indigenous Tierra del Fuegians of South America would influence the development of his ideas about evolution. He wrote in his diary (25th February 1834): “Viewing such men one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures … ”
Our article Darwin and the Fuegians
so riled Stewart H. (Australia) that he wrote to us:
Your article begins well enough but quickly degenerates into godbothering claptrap.
What a shame for anyone concerned with the truth! Darwin got it wrong about the
Fuegians, but he was never a racist and he would have heartily concurred with Snow’s
view that their condition was due to their circumstances. He sympathised greatly
with those harsh circumstances. You have cherry-picked your quotes because of your
typical creationist loathing of the ‘arch-enemy’, Darwin.
As to the bible as a historical record, it isn’t. It’s mythology from
start to finish. Mountains upon mountains of archaeological, empirical data have
shown the bible to be as unreliable a document as has ever been written, from a
historical perspective, but of course you are blind to all that. Go away, and lie
no more.
CMI’s Dr Carl Wieland then
responded:
Dear Stewart
Thanks for your feedback—you won’t be surprised to hear that we respectfully
disagree with you. Have you ever read The Descent of Man by Darwin? You
could hardly deny his racism, I’m afraid, if you had. That does not mean that
you are wrong concerning his general sympathy for the underdog, he was also an abolitionist.
If you get the chance to see our
Darwin documentary that has been playing
at Australian cinemas, or via the
DVD version you will see among other things interviews with leading
Darwin historians. One of them (very anticreationist) nevertheless
makes some very strong statements on the race issue — see also his
extended interview on the ‘extras’ on the DVD.
The real issue is not what sort of a person Darwin was or was not, but has to do
with the validity of, and the evidence for, the notion of microbe-to-man evolution
So, in short, we think you are poorly informed, and also that we do not see "Darwin"
as an object to be demonized.
The doco treats him with respect and fairness, as even many anticreationists
have acknowledged. Of course, the real issue is not what sort of a person Darwin
was or was not, but has to do with the validity of, and the evidence for, the notion
of microbe-to-man evolution.
Re
the Bible and archaeological data—I’m surprised that you would
think that. If you search our site, you will find
a number of articles on the subject. But then, what one wants to believe
definitely influences one’s interpretation of the data, and archeologists
are not immune to that. Particularly when it comes to assigned dates to archeological
sites. It’s interesting though that today
even such respected secular figures as the archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew are calling
for a revision downwards in the ‘standard’ Egyptian chronology.
When one allows for this (based on such things as coregencies, etc) suddenly all
the alleged ‘missing evidence’ in the appropriate time periods (e.g.
the conquest of Canaan, the fall of Jericho, civilizations to match that expected
from the accounts of David and Solomon) is there in spades.
Sincerely,
Carl W.
But our correspondent Stewart H then sent this rejoinder:
Hello Carl
I’ve read Darwin’s Origin of Species and am currently reading
his Voyage of the Beagle, hence my interest in ‘Darwin and the Fuegians’.
I was naturally shocked, but also sceptical, about the story Darwin recounted of
cannibalism in that region, and so I googled the subject and came up with the essay
on your website.
I should also say that I’ve read a smattering of Darwin’s other writing,
as well as more than one biography, as well as books on the theory of evolution
by natural selection, by the likes of Stephen J Gould and Richard Dawkins, not to
mention scores of scientific articles. I’ve listened to lectures, radio programs,
TV docos and the like, presenting the subject from any number of angles. By general
lay standards I’m reasonably well educated on Darwin and the theory that he
and Wallace developed, independently of each other but based on similar empirical
data.
I’m also familiar with the charges of racism levelled at Darwin, almost invariably
by Christian creationists. They usually quote from The Descent of Man,
and I’ve examined those passages for myself.
Unlike The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man is full of footnotes and
references to contemporary and antecedent thinkers. This places it much more firmly
in the context of its time than the earlier, more original work. Virtually every
‘racist’ observation made by Darwin in this work is a gloss on other
scientists’ ‘racist’ observations. Darwin tended to call the indigenous
inhabitants of the regions he visited ‘savages’, particularly when discussing
them in a general way. So did every other white writer of his time, no matter how
scientific. Darwin believed that black-skinned people were inferior to white-skinned
people [though probably not ‘naturally’ so]. So did 99.999% of his compatriots
at the time. This is not an exaggeration, it’s an uncontroversial fact. As
you should know, in Australia it was the mainstream view, even fifty years after
Darwin’s death, that our Aborigines were morally and intellectually inferior
to white people, and that they should be ‘encouraged’ to die out.
If Darwin was racist, so was the whole of western ‘civilized’ society-an
obvious fact that you people seem reluctant to point to. Darwin was a creature of
his time. Aristotle thought slaves were sub-human. Immanuel Kant thought women had
infantile, untrainable minds. Not even the greatest genius can transcend the prejudices
of his or her age.
You point out correctly that Darwin’s personal views have little to do with
the validity of the theory of natural selection-the most successful and productive
theory in the history of biology. The fact remains though that many of your fellow
Christians seem determined to personally denigrate Darwin-clearly in the hope that
this will somehow weaken his credentials as a theorist. It’s also a depressing
fact that Christian propaganda groups such as yours have manipulated your way to
the top of search lists, thus giving your extremist views a fair greater prominence
than your numbers merit. I’ll continue to try to do my bit to redress the
balance.
Stewart H.
… to which Carl further replied:
Hi Stewart
I suppose depending on where people are coming from will make a big difference to
the gloss they put on things, mostly it’s an unconscious thing. But truth
matters, at the end of the day.
Certainly society was more racist back then than it is now. But there is a strong
case for Darwin’s theory anticipating substantial biological differences between
the races, hence the
comments by Dr Peter Bowler on the Darwin film to which I earlier referred.
Here is the actual transcript, some of this was not used in the movie itself: (NB
Bowler is a leading Darwin historian and no friend of creationists):
Darwin and many of his contemporaries … [realized that the Fuegians were]
in fact equivalent to earlier stages in the ascent from the apes who have been preserved
in isolated locations, preserved with those earlier levels of mental and moral development.—Historian
Peter Bowler, featured on The Voyage that Shook the World
Peter Bowler: (09:00:36:23) … they hoped that they will
be able to educate the various races of man kind in the arts of civilisation but
there was always this nagging problem of is it going to be possible. And one thing
that’s characteristic of the general direction of European’s thought
during the 19th century is there were increasingly harder line taken
on that which we see reflected in Darwin himself.
That by the time he writes The Descent of Man in 1871 it’s pretty
clear that he by that time shares the growing suspicion or conviction of many Europeans.
The non white races simply do not have the capacity to be elevated properly into
civilised human beings that they are mentally and morally at a more limited level.
In a sense they are stuck at an early stage in the biological evolution of the human
species.
(09:01:42:06) So their way of life may offer us a fossilised relic of what our own
ancestors lived like in the distant prehistoric past. But now Darwin and many of
his contemporaries are beginning to realise that what they needed to claim that
they are biologically relics of the past. They are in fact equivalent to earlier
stages in the ascent from the apes who have been preserved in isolated locations,
preserved with those earlier levels of mental and moral development.
And as leading evolutionist the late Prof. SJ Gould of Harvard pointed out, though
scientific justifications for racism were common before Darwin, they increased by
orders of magnitude following the publication of his book in 1859. We have in the
past also cited secular sources for the fact that the treatment of Australian Aboriginals
took a nosedive following the publication of the book. (See, e.g.,
The scars of a nation and
A sorry day—with an unlikely twist.) And this makes perfect sense,
as does the link between Darwinism as strong inspiration for Hitler’s views
— confirmed in spades recently by academics such as Prof Weikart.1
Darwinism-inspired eugenics was extremely common in the US prior to WW2; see
America’s evolutionists: Hitler’s inspiration? It’s likely
that it is the world’s discovery of the horrors of
the Holocaust which caused racism to become unpopular.
If you doubt any of the above, the references are there on our website in the Q and A section. Of course, as indicated before,
if evolution were the correct explanation for all of life’s diversity and
brilliant designs (a philosophical necessity for a non-theist) then it would merely
be unfortunate that it happened to inspire racism, holocaust, etc.—the bad
fruits of a belief do not affect whether it’s true or not. But it makes it
even more tragic and unfortunate when wellmeaning but misguided churchians seek
to encourage their fellows to embrace this belief system uncritically.
Regards,
Carl.
Related articles
Related resources
References
- Wiekart, R., From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics,
Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004 (see review
by Sarfati, J.,
The Darwinian roots of the Nazi tree (Wiekart review),
Creation 27(4):39, 2005). Return to
text.
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