What is Social Darwinism?
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The modern world still grapples with a centuries-old problem: racism. But what's less frequently discussed is the science - or lack thereof - that has long fuelled it. To understand this, we must return to the days of Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking work on natural selection. (The basic idea is that organisms with the most favorable variations for adaptation are "fittest" and more likely to reproduce.)
Since the 1800s, this ecological principle has been applied to human societies as a way to rationalise inequalities. Known as Social Darwinism, the "theory" posits that some groups of people (those of northern European background) are "fitter" than others. With its nod to natural laws, Social Darwinism gained an aura of scholarship that provided a logical explanation for social stratification: success was due to superior genes, and poverty or crime were the result of "bad" genetics.
These biological explanations helped spawn the eugenics movement - crudely put, selective breeding and sterilisation to "improve" the human genetic stock and save society from future problems. Hitler embraced the false science to justify the Holocaust and elevate the supposed superior (but non-existent) Aryan race.
In Australia between 1920-1970, policies forcibly removed Aboriginal children (the "Stolen Generation") from their families and decimated their culture by forbidding their native language, cutting their hair, and other measures aimed at assimilating them into white society - a society that assumed their inferiority.
The atrocities also played out in Canada and the United States, where "Kill the Indian and save the man" was the rallying cry. Emerging science shows the resulting trauma stress is intergenerational and potentially passed on through genes in sperm or ova.
Eugenics and Social Darwinism have a staunch ally in dehumanisation, the portrayal of people as not fully human - a practice with a long, ugly history. Nineteenth-century "scientists" bolstered the slave trade by comparing African people to apes, a mindset that is still all too prevalent. Hitler compared the Jewish population to rats, and in Australia, European colonizers declared the land "terra nullius", implying it was not inhabited by people.
The pseudo-science of Social Darwinism has been thoroughly discredited, and the best science tells us that while physical traits are genetically determined, there is no "race gene". Rather, racial categories were created to justify oppression based on it. In short, race is a socially-constructed idea that looks to science for support, but comes up empty-handed.
Response by: Susan Santone, author of Reframing the Curriculum: Design for Social Justice and Sustainability
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