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Friday, June 28, 2019

Evolution and Racism


From an observer outside the States on the goings-on here, trying to make sense of them:

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Notable 2019 documentary recalls the Bronx Zoo and the American scientific establishment of the early 1900s:

Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism

"But, surely, the South is always ultimately to blame, is it not?" Well...

“...[A]nti-slavery activists eagerly embraced On the Origin of Species because they believed the book advanced the cause of abolition...  So, there’s this horrible, ironic reversal where Darwin is at first embraced by abolitionists but, within 10 years or so, has been appropriated to argue that blacks are inferior..." (Randall Fuller, The Book That Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation, 2017)


(Might a careful reading of the early Darwin make that seemingly surprising irony of history somewhat more intelligible?


"But at least Abe Lincoln had something far better in store for the African American blacks, had he not?"

Abraham Lincoln: a believer in evolution who didn't think Jesus was the son of God - The Telegraph

Abraham Lincoln wanted to ship freed black slaves away from the US to British colonies in the Caribbean even in the final months of his life - The Telegraph


Ota Benga's being exhibited in the zoo with gorillas like an animal led to unease in various circles. A number of foundations applied to the authorities to have the practice stopped, stating that Ota Benga was a human being and that his being treated in that way was a great cruelty. One of these applications appeared in the New York Globe of 12 September 1906 in this way:


Sir - I lived in the south several years, and consequently am not overfond of negro, but believe him human. I think it a shame that the authorities of this great city should allow such a sight as that witnessed at the Bronx Park - a negro boy, on exhibition in a monkey cage...

This whole pygmy business needs investigation...
A.E.R.
New York, Sept.

 . . . a peek into the future if you will, or at least another good sample of the logic and consistency of 'evolutionary ethics', from Sam Harris:

[Robert] Nozick . . . asks if it would be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of some superbeings.... [To which "New Atheist" SH somewhat chillingly, though perhaps not so surprisingly in view the lessons of the history of 'evolutionary ethics', answers:] I think the answer is clearly “yes.” There seems no reason to suppose that we must occupy the highest peak on the moral landscape.


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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

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