Isn't evolution some sort of racism?

Question

When we all come from black folks in Africa and now have evolved into something further (causasian)... I wonder..

Ppl please, no hating grrrr. It's just a question w/o intentions.

Answer 1

1. When properly understood, evolution refutes racism. Before Darwin, people used typological thinking for living things, considering different plants and animals to be their distinct "kinds." This gave rise to a misleading conception of human races, in which different races are thought of as separate and distinct. Darwinism helps eliminate typological thinking and with it the basis for racism.

2. Genetic studies show that humans are remarkably homogeneous genetically, so all humans are only one biological race. Evolution does not teach racism; it teaches the very opposite.

3. Racism is thousands of years older than the theory of evolution, and its prevalence has probably decreased since Darwin's day; certainly slavery is much less now. That is the opposite of what we would expect if evolution promotes racism.

4. Darwin himself was far less racist than most of his contemporaries.

5. Although creationism is not inherently racist, it is based upon and inseparable from religious bigotry, and religious bigotry is no less hateful and harmful than racism.

6. Racism historically has been closely associated with creationism (Moore 2004), as is evident in the following examples:

* George McCready Price, who is to young-earth creationism what Darwin is to evolution, was much more racist than Darwin. He wrote,

The poor little fellow who went to the south
Got lost in the forests dank;
His skin grew black, as the fierce sun beat
And scorched his hair with its tropic heat,
And his mind became a blank.

In The Phantom of Organic Evolution, he referred to Negroes and Mongolians as degenerate humans (Numbers 1992, 85).

* During much of the long history of apartheid in South Africa, evolution was not allowed to be taught. The Christian National Education system, formalized in 1948 and accepted as national policy from 1967 to 1993, stated, among other things,

that white children should 'receive a separate education from black children to prepare them for their respective superior and inferior positions in South African social and economic life, and all education should be based on Christian National principles' (Esterhuysen and Smith 1998).

The policy excluded the concept of evolution, taught a version of history that negatively characterized non-whites, and made Bible education, including the teaching of creationism, and religious assemblies compulsory (Esterhuysen and Smith 1998).

* The Bible Belt in the southern United States fought hardest to maintain slavery.

* Henry Morris, of the Institute for Creation Research, has in the past read racism into his interpretation of the Bible:

Sometimes the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have even become actual slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane, practical matters, they have often eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites and the religious zeal of the Semites (Morris 1976, 241).

7. None of this matters to the science of evolution.

Links:
Trott, Richard and Jim Lippard, 2003. Creationism implies racism? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/racism.html
References:

1. Esterhuysen, Amanda and Jeannette Smith, 1998. Evolution: 'the forbidden word'? South African Archaeological Bulletin 53: 135-137. Quoted from Stear, J., 2004. It's official! Racism is an integral part of creationist dogma. http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/aig_and_racism_response.htm
2. Moore, R., 2004. (see below)
3. Morris, Henry M., 1976. The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings. San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers.
4. Numbers, Ronald L., 1992, The Creationists, New York: Knopf.

Further Reading:
Mayr, Ernst, 2000. Darwin's influence on modern thought. Scientific American 283(1) (Jul.): 78-83.

Moore, Randy, 2004. The dark side of creationism. The American Biology Teacher 66(2): 85-87.

Answer 2

... Before you comment you may want to actually look up what you're talking about, but no, evolution does not say this. Evolution makes no claims that anything is "further" than anything else, some organisms are better at surviving in some environments, but this does not make them farther evolved, as they would still more poorly in other environments.

Short, fat white people lived longer in Europe in prehistoric times, darker skinned Africans lived longer there in prehistoric times, it only makes a statement about climate, there is nothing inherently better in having more apparent change.

Honestly though, the Africans may have had more net genetic change from our ancestors to deal with various problems of the region (like disease) these just happen to not have changed their skin color.

Everything is changing, saying one group stayed the same because you can't SEE a change in a certain attribute (when for example the way their red blood cells form has changed) is rather silly.

Answer 3

We have no idea what skin color humans originally had. It was probably dark as protection from the hot sun, but as some humans migrated to lands where the sun was not as strong and the seasons grew cold, dark skin wasn't as necessary for survival. So, really, being white is about LOSING something, not GAINING it. As someone else said, though, evolution isn't about becoming better, it is about adapting to changing environments. Every living thing on Earth is evolving and adapting, including humans, because evolution is a continuous process of change, with evolutionary spurts being prompted by natural disasters or rapid climate changes.

Answer 4

But the people in Africa are just as highly evolved as you.

It is just that they live in a different environment than what you (and your ancestors) do.


That is the entire point of evolution, that things evolve to be better suited for their environment.

Everything on the planet is at exactly the same level of evolution, from the algae to the zebras, from the bacteria to the humans. It is just that all these creatures live in different environments. The 'living fossil' creatures live in very static environments that stay constant and unisolated - such as the deeper layers of the oceans - so there is no force to evolve into a different form.

Answer 5

The last time humanity chose to "worship" only religion and disregard logic, reason, and rationale is a period of time known as the Dark Ages.. And no, evolution does not ecourage bigotry, racism and misogyny.... Religion does.. Klu Klux Klan- Christian, Racist Catholic Church- Child Rape Terrorism- Composed entirely of Christian and Muslim Religious Fundamentalists Westboro Baptist Church-Christians who picket the funerals of dead American soldiers yelling slurs at mourners. The list goes on and on. Oh and do you know what bigotry means? It means intolerance of others' views. You yourself are acting in a bigoted way by being intolerant of people of other beliefs. Do you want to know what evolution actually encourages? It encourages the biological advancement of species and allows them to adapt to an ever changing environment.

Answer 6

No, not at all. There is no assumption in evolution that more recent life forms are better in any way. For ex., the polar bear is not superior to the other bears even though it must have evolved fairly recently. In fact, it is a good parallel, because the polar bear and the caucasian human evolved in somewhat similar ways (loss of pigmentation and other changes in response to living a relatively cold sunless environment).

Answer 7

Evolution does not mean "getting further" or "better" or "more advanced." Evolution is merely change over time, it is value neutral in conception. Many evolutionary traits can be negative, thus resulting in the extinction of the species. This is one of the many reasons that 99% of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct.

This is the same vein of question of the "if evolution is true, why can't we fly or process math like a computer?" Evolution is not about changing a species to make it super adaptive. Only the very adaptive survive, this is true, but one isn't the cause of the other. Evolutionary change within a species (i.e. relative amounts of melanin in the skin corresponding to the necessity of time exposed to direct sunlight) Are not necessarily valuable, but can be. It is, again, not about getting better or stronger, Natural Selection takes care of that. Evolution, a process apart from but coincidental to natural selection, doesn't take sides.

Answer 8

No.

Evolution does not operate with any goals except reproductive success. Nothing says that one form is better than another except whether or not it can survive to reproduce. Besides, modern black people are evolved from the same black ancestors that the rest of the world are descended from. Modern black people are as legitimately and fully human as any other people.

To suggest OTHERWISE is racist.

Answer 9

No it's not! We evolved to our enviroments. Would it be racist if evolution said that in 1,000 years, we will have evolved into a superior being with, let's say, 12 different senses? It's not. If you evolve into something better, which I'm not saying we have, what can you do about it?

Answer 10

Wrong conclusion. Caucasians are not a further evolved version of Africans. We are all of the same species, with racial adaptations to local environments. In other words, Africans have evolved to suit their climate for as long as Caucasians have adapted to theirs. And the racial differences are still trivial: since we can (and do) still interbreed, we are all the same species.