Charles Darwin was racist. Does it matter?

It is well known that Charles Darwin was a hardened racist (I will document this with quotes below). But the common reaction today is that his racism was incidental to his scientific work; his ideas had a core of truth that doesn't rely on his racism, which was just a product of his times.

In this post I argue that not only was his racism core to his argument, in fact it was the basis of the entire argument. Remove the racism, and his entire argument falls apart.  

The evidence used by Darwin can be broken into three categories. The first category consists of showing similarities between people and animals, and between different types of animals; for example, the large number of creatures with 5 fingers/toes, or two eyes. This, of course, was not something nobody had ever noticed before, although perhaps urban Victorians might not have thought about it. But this by itself doesn't give any evidence for an "upward" evolution. It simply indicates that there are common body plans in living systems. 

The second body of evidence can be called microevolution; evidence for changes within some type of organism due to natural selection, such as change of color or beak size. Again, this doesn't particularly point to an "upward" evolution. Is a black moth a higher type than a white one?

In general, there is no obvious way to rank the living things in the natural world. Is a monkey "higher" than a cow? Is a mammal "higher" than a flower?  This brings us to the third body of evidence Darwin used. To argue for "upward" evolution, he primarily used the evidence widely accepted in his day of the upward evolution of humans, namely a "scale" of humanity with various degrees, with "savages" at the bottom, and European men at the top.

This idea of a "scale" of humanity is ubiquitous throughout European writing at the time, and a core premise of the Enlightenment. Here are some quotes of Darwin from his The Descent of Man, published in 1871:

• "Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who does not use any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations." 
• "No doubt the difference in this respect is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, with that of the most highly organised ape."
• "On the other hand; as Büchner has remarked, how 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 existence.
• "Judging from the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic faculty was not so highly developed as in certain animals, for instance, in birds. Obviously no animal would be capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high tastes, depending as they do on culture and complex associations, are not enjoyed by barbarians or by uneducated persons."
• "Some small and broken tribes, remnants of former races, still survive in isolated and generally mountainous districts. In Europe the ancient races were all, according to Schaaffhausen, 'lower in the scale than the rudest living savages.'"
• "It is, however, very difficult to form any judgment why one particular tribe and not another has been successful and has risen in the scale of civilisation. Many savages are in the same condition as when first discovered several centuries ago. As Mr. Bagehot has remarked, we are apt to look at progress as the normal rule in human society; but history refutes this."
• "The evidence that all civilised nations are the descendants of barbarians, consists, on the one side, of clear traces of their former low condition in still-existing customs, beliefs, language, etc.; and on the other side, of proofs that savages are independently able to raise themselves a few steps in the scale of civilisation, and have actually thus risen.
• "The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator of the universe does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture…. man has risen, though by slow and interrupted steps, from a lowly condition to the highest standard as yet attained by him in knowledge, morals, and religion."
• "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 most appropriate."

As an example of how this type of thinking was ubiquitous at that time, consider these quotes from the Southern Presbyterian church "letter to all the churches of the world" in 1861, ten years before the publication of The Descent of Man:

• "Human rights are not a fixed, but a fluctuating quantity... As you go up, the number of rights increases, but the number who possess them diminishes. As you go down the line, the rights are diminished, but the individuals are multiplied....Before slavery can be charged with doing him injustice, it must be shown that the minimum which falls to his lot at the bottom of the line is out of proportion to his capacity and culture."
• "We cannot forbear to say, however, that the general operation of the system is kindly and benevolent; it is a real and effective discipline, and without it, we are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, co-exists side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition."

Note the use of the specific term "scale" in both cases. This was an unquestioned premise of Enlightenment Europeans, that humanity had reached a new plateau, emerging from the "Dark Ages". It also meshed entirely with the class system of Europe, which had a series of degrees not just for non-Europeans, but for every person's rank within European society, of "superiors" and "inferiors".  For Darwin and his contemporaries, this ranking extended not only to lower classes and lower races, but also the ranking of the sexes; women were clearly less evolved upward than men. The following are also quotes from The Descent of Man:

• "The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands....We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman."
• "Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman. It is, indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowment to woman, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen."
• In order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during many generations the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women.
• "Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection."
• The greater intellectual vigour and power of invention in man is probably due to natural selection combined with the inherited effects of habit, for the most able men will have succeeded best in defending and providing for themselves, their wives and offspring.

As I have argued in a previous post, this type of thinking came from the Enlightenment, and one could add, even earlier from feudal society with its ranks, which in turn had its roots in northern European paganism. Christianity in the 1800s diametrically opposed this, and was the driving force for the abolition of slavery. Consider, for example, the words of William Wilberforce:

•  “It is however, most of all astonishing, that our opponents attempt to vindicate the slave trade on grounds of religion also. The only argument which they urge with the slightest color of reason is that slavery was allowed under the Jewish dispensation.... But they who thus urge on us the Divine toleration of slavery under the Jewish theocracy should remember that the Jews themselves were expressly commanded not to retain any of their own nation, any of their brethren in slavery, except as a punishment, or by their own consent; and even these were to be set free on the return of the sabbatical, or the seventh year. Inasmuch therefore, as we are repeatedly and expressly told that Christ has done away all distinctions of nations, and made all mankind one great family, all our fellow creatures are now our brethren; and therefore the very principles and spirit of the Jewish law itself would forbid our keeping the Africans, any more than our own fellow subjects, in a state of slavery." 

His argument is based on the Bible itself, e.g., the apostle Paul's words in the New Testament: 

• For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. ​
• There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 
• Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is call, and in all.

Evangelical Christianity of Wilberforce's version was a radical view that opposed both feudalism and Enlightenment thinking. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, argued entirely based on what seemed obvious to people of his day, that there are "ranks" of higher and lower types of people on a continuous "scale of being" or "scale of civilization." 

This was crucial to Dawrin's argument, because, as discussed above, it is not clear in looking at the animal kingdom alone that there is a clear ranking of one type of animal above another; each is well-suited for its particular environment. But for Darwin and his contemporaries, it was obvious that humans had a scale of inferior to superior. Therefore Darwin's argument was that what we know to be true about people can be extended to the animal kingdom as well:

• "He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins."

This quote of Darwin, near the end of The Descent of Man, is a key summary of his entire argument. Why should anyone find it to be repugnant to be descended from apes, if we acknowledge that people are descended from ape-like humans such as these degraded savages? 

Does it matter? Modern evolutionary science affirms that it is nearly meaningless to try to "rank" life forms as higher and lower: even the simplest one-celled organisms are fantastically complex, stuffed full of intricate, fine-tuned machines, and each nearly optimized for its niche in the ecosystem. On the other hand, we still have with us many of the notions of the ranking of humans, with the Enlightenment notion of "progress" and progressivism, and "developing" nations trying to reach the same plane. One might call this a sort of Christian heresy. Christianity has the notion of "discipleship", that is, of increasing awareness and conformity to God's eternal virtues, but places all people equally before God in their need to come to know him and follow him. One might call this the opposite of an upward evolution; rather, a fall of humanity:

• "God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes." (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

For Charles Darwin, the implications of his philosophy were clear: genocide and eugenics, that is, killing off the weak to improve the status of humanity:

• "At the present day civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect. It is, therefore, highly probable that with mankind the intellectual faculties have been gradually perfected through natural selection; and this conclusion is sufficient for our purpose."
• "In all civilised countries man accumulates property and bequeaths it to his children. So that the children in the same country do not by any means start fair in the race for success. But this is far from an unmixed evil; for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that the civilised races have extended, and are now everywhere extending, their range, so as to take the place of the lower races."
• "When we see in many parts of the world enormous areas of the most fertile land peopled by a few wandering savages, but which are capable of supporting numerous happy homes, it might be argued that the struggle for existence had not been sufficiently severe to force man upwards to his highest standard."
• "When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race. Of the causes which lead to the victory of civilised nations, some are plain and some very obscure. We can see that the cultivation of the land will be fatal in many ways to savages, for they cannot, or will not, change their habits."
• "As it has everywhere been observed that savages are much opposed to any change of habits, by which means injurious checks could be counterbalanced, decreasing numbers will sooner or later lead to extinction; the end, in most cases, being promptly determined by the inroads of increasing and conquering tribes."
• "The grade of civilisation seems a most important element in the success of nations which come in competition....At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

For Darwin, this primarily meant justification of colonialism. Later thinkers drawing on Darwin explicitly drew the line from him to actual ethnic cleansing and genocide, as documented, e.g., in Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview, by Jerry Bergman. Darwin did explicitly argue for eugenics, however; that is, selective breeding of humans and against Christian charitable work to help the poor:

• "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.… Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."
• "We must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage." 
• "The men who are rich through primogeniture are able to select generation after generation the more beautiful and charming women; and these must generally be healthy in body and active in mind."
• "A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in the number of men of a superior class has been strongly urged by Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton, namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support themselves and their children in comfort….. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: 'The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him.'"
• "The awakening of the nations of Europe from the dark ages is a still more perplexing problem. At this early period, as Mr. Galton has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle nature, those given to meditation or culture of the mind, had no refuge except in the bosom of the Church which demanded celibacy; and this could hardly fail to have had a deteriorating influence on each successive generation." 
• "Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He is impelled by nearly the same motives as are the lower animals when left to their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues.... Yet he might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities."
• "Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. All do good service who aid towards this end." 
• "Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would soon sink into indolence, and the more highly-gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted…. There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring." 

What shall we conclude overall? First, that Darwin was of the most reprehensible type of racist, specifically and directly arguing for the death of certain types of people. Second, that he not only believed this as a product of his times, but gave it justification in the name of science. Third, that this racist argument is throughout his work, and in fact is his main argument. 

While many who consider themselves evolutionists today are certainly not racists, and count themselves as anti-racists, they must still ask themselves: 1) If we took away all the racist underpinnings of Darwinism, how good would be the case today for "upward" evolution? If we do not see clear evidence of upward evolution, why should we believe that things generally tend toward increasing "complexity" overall? 2) If we affirm that natural section is a positive force of evolution, can we escape Darwin's conclusions that killing off the weak, or otherwise preventing them from having children, is a good idea? Is Darwin actually more philosophically consistent than modern evolutionists? 
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