What does Social Darwinism have to say about race?

Question

Just wondering cause i dont know, i dont study this, but from what ive seen its looks racists,

can anyone prove its not???

Answer 1

Social Darwinism is basically a racist philosophy. It's also called "eugenics," and it's co-opted the name "Darwinism" without having any legitimate link to evolutionary science or darwinian theory.

Answer 2

Contrary to the previous poster's claims, Darwin had diddly-squat to do with Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism is the belief that the failure of poorer CLASSES (which often but not always are race-based) to thrive benefits mankind by getting rid of the "lesser peoples."

It was originally coined to discuss attitudes towards the IRISH and ITALIANS and other poor and mostly white people in the US and Europe in the beginning of the 20th century.

Richard Hofstadter, who went to High School in a building I can see from my lab here in sunny Buffalo, NY, was in his communist phase when he wrote the book that made it most famous.

BTW, as The Origin of the Species is about pidgeons and puppy dogs, you can see the silliness of the claim it was racist.

Answer 3

It has everything to do with racism. His original book title was "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". Slavery was becoming very popular about that time and Darwin's book helped to justify it. Evolution and racism go hand in hand. So who's the 'favoured race'? Since Darwin's book, lots of countries and leaders decided they were the 'favoured race', Hitler is just one example. Wars and exterminations were a result of folks trying to speed up Darwin's idea of natural selection.