Evolution and Racism

Ideas about evolution are elemental to the fabric of modern thought. As previously noted, evolution has provided an authoritative framework for the Ideology of Progress. In fact, notions of evolution are not particular to the field of biology: they have structured analysis in a variety of other disciplines, from linguistics to psychology. Models and discourses are most powerful when they can be applied to a number of distinct domains, as it allows the ideas to circulate more widely and quickly, and enables them to appear more obvious and "natural." For example, the "tree of life" model has been effective in mapping family ancestry, biological evolution, and the relations of human languages, among other things. Consequently, it constitutes an important component of the framework within which we understand relationships, history, and time.

But let's be clear about what the Ideology of Progress, and by extension, evolution, entails. I argued in my post about "normality" and health that in order to naturalize Progress (that is, for the idea to be taken for granted rather than questioned) it is necessary to create a visual artifact of Progress in some way. This has been done through the development of concepts of the "modern" and the "primitive," and the concomitant mapping of these concepts onto the existent human population. This is the way that inequalities become naturalized via the Ideology of Progress. Inequalities appear to be the natural result of different rates or stages of development.

It is no coincidence, then, that women, blacks, other people of color, lower classes, and gay men have all been characterized as "emotional" in contrast to the rationality of white, straight, upper and middle class men. It is these men who bear the mantel of Progress and modernity.

And once again, inequalities serve the economic functions of maintaining the social division of labor and the accumulation of wealth via exploitation. Thus, the Ideology of Progress and all that it entails ultimately serves to uphold the political economic order.

As the concept of evolution is inseparable from the Ideology of Progress, theories of evolution have played a very significant role in the naturalization of inequalities of all kind, most particularly those pertaining to race. For more detailed information on the history of evolution and scientific racism, please consult the following works (just a few of many):

-The Emperor's New Clothes:  Biological Theories of Race at the New Millennium by Joseph Graves
-Outcasts from Evolution:  Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority by John Haller, Jr.
-Sex, Race & Science:  Eugenics in the Deep South by Edward Larson
-From Savage to Negro:  Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 by Lee Savage
-Nature's Body:  Gender in the Making of Modern Science by Londa Schiebinger

It should suffice for my purposes here to simply say that evolution allowed for the social construction of race. (According to anthropologists, there is no biological basis for race; it is a social construction.) Evolution fueled the project of eugenics, both in Europe and the United States. The eugenics movement in Europe was founded by some of Darwin's compadres, and that is also no coincidence. Evolution bears some responsibility for the Holocaust. Evolution continues to incite the infringement upon the reproductive rights of women of color throughout the world.

Like any product of science, evolution is not a neutral concept.