Darwin’s ideas about race have (or had) also been twisted or
willfully misinterpreted (or only partially quoted) by the Eugenics movement,
which ultimately helped informed not only Hitler’s policy of the ‘pure Aryan
Race’ and the resultant atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the U.S.’s policy
on care and treatment of the mentally ill before and during that period.
Each side of the question of race find what each feels
supports their cause in the writings of Darwin. Some paint him as racist, while
others say he was not. It is important to note that the human ‘race’ is never
mentioned in the ‘On the Origin of
Species’ (that would come later in his ‘The
Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’) and the language that
Darwin often used to discuss race when he did discuss it, was couched in the
lingo and beliefs of his time. However, a full study of his work does not seem
to support either racism or eugenics, but, rather, the opposite.
Eugenics, a ‘fake science’ for controlling and ‘improving’
the human species through means of targeted selection (as opposed to ‘natural’),
was intended to enhance desirable human qualities (based on racist ideas and
views) by weeding out undesirable qualities and people from the gene pool. This
policy led to the attempted extermination of an entire people in Hitler’s
‘Final Solution’, and, in the U.S. the institutionalizing and sterilization of
other types of undesirables, most notably the mentally ill and physically ‘unbeautiful’
or those perceived as grotesque.
Though the beliefs and practices of racism and eugenics
would seem to overlap, each was so virulent and widespread in the U.S. that
they hardly ever seemed to have influenced each other to any significant degree.
Racism was mostly about discrimination, based in part on ideas of racial
superiority/inferiority, while eugenics focused almost exclusively on the disabled (mentally
and physically) of ALL races.
The Eugenics Movement that would have such a profound and
regretful influence on Hitler’s ideas of a ‘Master Race’ (and the policies that
followed) actually had its origins in two unlikely sources: the ideas of Sir
Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin and a noted scientist in his
own right, and widespread practice and funding in the United States. Both white
AND black intellectuals supported it at the time, each feeling that its own
group was the genetically superior one. Funding came from some of the largest
and most well known sources at the time, including the Carnegie and Rockefeller
foundations, among others.
What Darwin actually thought and said about the differences
in various human ‘races’ can best be summed up in this excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Introducing chapter
seven, ("On the Races of Man"), Darwin wrote, "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."[15] In
answering the question of whether the races should rank as varieties of the
same species or count as different species, Darwin discussed arguments, which
could support the idea that human races were distinct species.[16][17] This
included the geographical distribution of mammal groups which
was correlated with the distribution of human races,[18] and
the finding of Henry Denny that different species
of lice affected different races differently.[19] Darwin
then presented the stronger evidence that human races are all the same species,
noting that when races mixed together, they intercrossed beyond the "usual
test of specific distinctness"[20] and
that characteristics identifying races were highly variable.[21] He
put great weight on the point that races graduate into each other, writing
"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",[22] and
concluded that the stronger evidence was that they were not different species.[23]”
To get a clear view of Darwin’s beliefs call for a complete
and (completely unbiased) reading of both his seminal works, ‘On the Origin of the Species’, and ‘The Descent of Man’.
