Evolution theory perpetuates racism of worst kind

How can you claim evolution is the foundation for racism?

Racism was certainly around before evolution but Charles Darwin did more than anyone to popularize biologic racism.  By the early 1900s it was accepted that Darwinism proved that white people evolved from chimpanzees, the more intelligent primate; mid-brown people like the Orientals evolved from orangutans; and black people evolved from the least intelligent, but stronger, gorillas.

This belief is not surprising considering the sub-title of Darwin’s Origin of Species is The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.  Also, Darwin said in his book, The Descent of Man, “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.”

An excellent example of the effects of Darwinism on racism is when African explorer Samuel Verner arrived at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair with seven African Pygmies.  (A Pygmy is a person belonging to any of several African tribes who is a  dwarf.)  These men (called “primitive savages”) were exhibited under the direction of W. J. McGee of the St. Louis World’s Fair Anthropology Department in an effort to “be exhaustively scientific” in demonstrating the stages of human evolution.  While on exhibit they were “treated with laughter and stares.”  After the Fair they were returned to Africa.  Eventually, one of the Pygmies, Ota Benga, returned to the United States after being bought in a slave market by Verner.  He was presented to Director Hornaday of the Bronx Zoological Gardens with the intention to display him showing the “hierarchical view of races.”  “Hornaday, a ‘believer in the Darwinian theory,’ concluded that there exists ‘a close analogy of the African savage to the apes’ (New York Times, September 11, 1906, from book, One Blood, p. 133-134).

The Times editor in this same issue added, “The Pygmies are a fairly efficient people in their native forests…but they are very low in the human scale.”  In the September 10 Times the writer states, “There was always a crowd before the cage, most of the time roaring with laughter, and from almost every corner of the garden could be heard the question, ‘Where is the Pygmy?’ and the answer was, ‘In the monkey house.’”  Benga was kept in a cage with a parrot and an orangutan for company and with a sign on the cage indicating his age, 23, height, 4 foot, 11 inches, weight 103 pounds. 

Finally, however, Ota Benga was freed as the result of protests by the African American community.  He had great difficulty adapting to life outside the zoo and eventually committed suicide in 1916.  During the protests in the September 12, 1906 New York Times an article responded criticism that the display gave credibility to Darwinism by the following statement: “One of the reverend colored brothers objects to the curious exhibition on the grounds that it is an impious effort to lend credibility to Darwin’s dreadful theories…the reverend colored brother should be told that evolution…is now taught in the textbooks of all the schools, and that it is no more debatable than the multiplication table.”

(This shows that just because something is in the textbook does not mean it is true.)

You may say, “That was 1900; this is the year 2000, those kind of things do not go on anymore.  I am convinced that this idea for justification for racism is alive and well in the subconscious of many evolutionists today.

Why is it that it is okay for television science programs to show black people in Africa without cloths?  Why is it that national science magazines regularly have nudity of those with dark skin?  Why is it that in a recent issue of a very popular science magazine four artists were given the job of drawing what they believed a “homonid” to look like and in all four drawings they contained features resembling those who have dark skin?  Could it be that with their commitment to the lie of evolution, evolutionists still believe black Africans are a good example of an inferior people?

I am sure these evolutionists do not consider themselves racist, but Verner and Hornaday did not consider what they did as wrong either.  As Christians, we should not be taken in by the evolution belief system that devalues life like it does.  We must stand against the prejudice and deception of evolution, which attacks the very foundation of our faith and at the same time, provides the foundation for such destructive beliefs as racism.

5/20/00
Page 16

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©Tom Carpenter
Originally published in the Rockdale/Newton Citizen