Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
racism as a construct developed in the West over the past three centuries from two ideas: (1)
scientific knowledge is authoritative; and (2) groups of people can be separated taxonomi-
cally on the basis of both physical and cultural characteristics (
Marks, 2008
). The history of
taxonomically separating groups of people is mired with inquiry as to what defines or sepa-
rates one group from another. Beginning with Linnaeus, groups were separated not just on
the basis of obvious physical differences (skin color, hair color, etc.) but also on character
traits (such as level of intelligence and culture) that were arbitrarily chosen to be definitive.
With scientific racism, science is used to validate these co-associations. The problem is three-
fold: (1) as will be discussed later on, there is no biological basis for separating human groups
on the basis of race; (2) character traits such as intelligence are complexly influenced by both
genetics
and
environment and are not exclusive to one group of people versus another; and
(3) given science's authority with the public, a scientific proclamation stating that physical
and character differences are related is very difficult to retract.
Social Darwinism and The Origin of Species
The most famous publication in the nineteenth century was Charles Darwin's thesis on
how species come into being (
Darwin, 1859
). While the concept of evolution was not new
and several others had tried (and failed) to explain its mechanism, Darwin's explanation
of natural selection was the first to logically elucidate a mechanism of evolution. Essentially
natural selection states that those organisms having beneficial adaptations (beneficiality
depends on the environment in which an organism lives) are more likely to survive, repro-
duce, and pass on those advantageous traits, while those organisms with nonbeneficial traits
will not survive to reproduce, or at least not in significant numbers. The result is that advan-
tageous traits will appear in organisms at a higher proportion than non-advantageous traits
for a particular environment. Natural selection, along with other evolutionary forces (see
Cabana et al. [Chapter 16], this volume) can lead to the formation of new species.
The topic was revolutionary for the field of biology for obvious reasons, but it also spurred
unforeseen effects in other fields and for society at large. While Darwin only briefly
mentioned the implication of his theory for human beings in the last chapter of that volume,
9
other scholars latched onto the idea and extrapolated natural selection to include cultural
achievement and development (
Nash, 1962; Blakey, 1999; Graves, 2001
). Each race, therefore,
was believed to have its own specific level of intellect and culture by which it could be char-
acterized (
Nash, 1962; Blakey, 1999
).
Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, was the first to coin the now-famous phrase,
“survival of the fittest” (
Stanton, 1960; Shipman, 1994; Graves, 2001
). When this phrase was
applied to human beings, an individual's “fitness” was defined as intelligence, attractive-
ness, education, wealth, and cultural accomplishments, in addition to other characteristics.
10
Survival of the fittest was used to justify and rationalize social institutions like capitalism and
9
Darwin discussed the origins of humans and the issue of race in a later publication, The Descent of Man
(1871).
10
It is important to point out that each of these categories is culturally bound, i.e., each culture has its own
definition of intelligence, wealth, of what it means to be civilized and educated, and so on. In this case, it
was the privileged sector of Western culture setting the categories and definitions.
