Quotes on Evolution and Racism

"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit.... The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world." – Charles Darwin1

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro [sic] or Australian and the gorilla.9

"Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory."10

"No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites."2

"Ab initio, Afro-Americans were viewed by these intellectuals as being in certain ways unredeemably, unchangeably, irrevocably inferior."3

"After 1859, the evolutionary schema raised additional questions, particularly whether or not Afro-Americans could survive competition with their white near-relations. The momentous answer was a resounding no.... The African was inferior—he represented the missing link between ape and Teuton."4

Comparison of any modern race with the Neanderthal or Heidelberg types shows that all have changed, but probably the negroid races more closely resemble the original stock than the white or yellow races.7 Every consideration should lead those who believe in the superiority of the white race to strive to preserve its purity and to establish and maintain the segregation of the races, for the longer this is maintained, the greater the preponderance of the white race will be.11

"From the ‘Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ (i.e., Darwin’s subtitle to Origin of Species) it was a short step to the preservation of favored individuals, classes or nations—and from their preservation to their glorification…. Thus it has become a portmanteau of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and dictatorship, of the cults of the hero, the superman, and the master race … recent expressions of this philosophy, such as Mein Kampf, are, unhappily, too familiar to require exposition here."5

NOTE: In Hitler's Mein Kampf, he spoke of "lower human types.” In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."

"The German Fuhrer … has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."6

Frederich von Bernhard, a German military officer, wrote a book in 1909 extolling evolution and appealing to Germany to start another war.
Heinrich von Treitsche, a Prussian militarist, loudly calledfor war by Germany in order to fulfill its "evolutionarydestiny"7
Their teachings were fully adopted by the German government, and it only waited for a pretext to start the war.8  

Explaining Darwin’s view on “Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,“ Milner writes: “Darwin then proposes a mechanism for the way it [evolution] works. Natural selection is a two-step process:
(1) overproduction and variation within a species, and
(2) greater survival and reproduction of those individuals with any slight advantage over their fellows; ‘fitter’ traits are preserved and accumulated in successive generations. Multiply, vary, let the strongest live [and reproduce] and the weakest die [leaving few progeny].”

This racism idea tends to fall into two categories:
(1) Those who believe their race is superior, and they need to keep down or conquer other races.
(2) Those who believe that some races are little better than animals and deserve to be enslaved or killed off.


References:
1. Charles Darwin: Life and Letters, I, letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, p. 316; cited in Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (London, Chatto and Windus, 1959), p. 343.
2. Thomas Huxley: Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York, Appleton, 1871), p. 20.
3. 5. Sidney W. Mintz: American Scientist, Vol. 60, May - June 1972, p. 387.
4. John C. Burnham, Science, Vol. 175, February 4, 1972, p. 506.
5. Gertrude Himmelfarb, op cit, pp. 343 - 344.
6. Arthur Keith: Evolution and Ethics (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949), p. 230.
7. Heinrich G. von Treitsche, Politics, Vol. 1, pp.66-67).
8. R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p. 59.
9. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 241-242.
10. Stephen Jay Gould - Harvard University