Darwin was a racist

May 21, 2021 11:25 AM

So says Agustín Fuentes, American primatologist and biological anthropologist at Princeton University and formerly the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His editorial on the subject appears in today’s edition of Science. He elaborates in an interview.
posted by No Robots (42 comments total)

>Today, students are taught Darwin as the “father of evolutionary theory,” a genius scientist. They should also be taught Darwin as an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices that warped his view of data and experience

Well, that latter point is what *I* teach *my* students. The point here seems to be lack of decent humanities education available to STEM students, rather than that the idea that "Darwin is a racist" is a grand new discovery.

Sitting in the UK where history departments are being shut down and calling historical figures racist is... let's say 'problematic', I'm not sure how helpful editorials like this are, unless they're followed up by political lobbying on behalf of those already telling this story, in their lectures, seminars, books, twitter accounts...
posted by AFII at 11:33 AM on May 21, 2021 [41 favorites]

He's certainly sexist (reading his views about specific gender roles as universal across the animal kingdom) and married his cousin so it's likely that he thought his kin -- and most "proper English" -- were special. It helps not to think he's "of his time" but that we wouldn't accept these facets of Darwin today.
posted by k3ninho at 11:42 AM on May 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

AFII: "They should also be taught Darwin as an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices that warped his view of data and experience"

Also that there's been, er, evolution since then. We're still working on it, but even still...
posted by chavenet at 11:43 AM on May 21, 2021

Darwin was a racist [and a sexist]

Well, yeah, but what to do about it? *cautiously reads article* . "The scientific community can reject the legacy of bias and harm in the evolutionary sciences by recognizing, and acting on, the need for diverse voices and making inclusive practices central to evolutionary inquiry."

Seems quite reasonable.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:47 AM on May 21, 2021 [19 favorites]

Does anyone actually teach Darwin's direct words as if they were current scientific theory? I understood that he's the guy (maybe one of several) who came up with the general framework that evolution uses, not the details. Details are always being refined and changing, many of Darwin's views and conclusions were wrong. I didn't think this was news to anyone who paid attention. Was I wrong? Yes Darwin was racist and sexist, of course. Based on the article it doesn't sound like he was unusual in this (unlike Lovecraft, who was racist even in his time). Where's the controversy?
posted by PennD at 11:55 AM on May 21, 2021 [12 favorites]

Yeah. The article isn't saying "Darwin was a racist" as an accusation, disparagement, or reason for cancellation. It's saying 'his racism and sexism affected the quality of his work, and we need to recognize that and strive to avoid it in our own work.'
posted by trig at 11:56 AM on May 21, 2021 [24 favorites]

From the editorial:

His focus on cooperation, social learning, and cumulative culture remains core to human evolutionary studies. However, some of Darwin's other assertions were dismally, and dangerously, wrong. “Descent” is a text from which to learn, but not to venerate... We can acknowledge Darwin for key insights but must push against his unfounded and harmful assertions.

Sounds less like controversy or bold assertion and more like a very nice summary of the scientific method when done right.
posted by PhineasGage at 11:59 AM on May 21, 2021 [8 favorites]

in 2005, he said “Changes in the forms of genes in the brain may be correlated with changes in human cultural behaviors“
posted by Ideefixe at 12:02 PM on May 21, 2021

I don't have insight into how Darwin's book is taught but surely it's not as an authoritative bible whose every word is literally true and the product of a transcendent and infallible rationality, is it? I feel like that's what the author is implying.

Then again, given the overlap between "rationalist" man-children and the MRA/red pill/dark enlightenment/Jordan Peterson-worshipping crowd, I can see how the racist and sexist aspects of Darwins texts could be (and undoubtedly are being) weaponized.
posted by treepour at 12:08 PM on May 21, 2021 [8 favorites]

in 2005, he said “Changes in the forms of genes in the brain may be correlated with changes in human cultural behaviors“

I'm not exactly sure what your point is, but that... doesn't seem like a controversial statement to me? Aside from the fact that "genes in the brain" isn't an entirely coherent concept, that is.

We know that both the human genome and human culture have been changing over the past few millennia, so the correlations exist by definition. Causation (in either direction) is a different question, and one that might or might not be answerable in retrospect.
posted by teraflop at 12:13 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

in 2005, he said “Changes in the forms of genes in the brain may be correlated with changes in human cultural behaviors“

Is this a controversial statement in some way? It is thought by biologists that a recent ice age was causal for many changes to the evolution of the brain and may have helped stave off human extinction, for instance.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:15 PM on May 21, 2021

This is a good example of how to write this sort of piece. Short, factual, emphasizing the values of the discipline under study, recognizing of the importance and influence of the man and his works while pointing out how his flaws have caused both social harms and damaged the quality of his science. Well done.
posted by fraxil at 12:17 PM on May 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

I don't have insight into how Darwin's book is taught but surely it's not as an authoritative bible whose every word is literally true and the product of a transcendent and infallible rationality, is it? I feel like that's what the author is implying.

AFAIK, it isn't. There's been like, a century of improvements in the theory that make learning the original text mostly an exercise in navel gazing. College students learn from textbooks which have been written to source from many, many scientists, experiments, and publications.
posted by pwnguin at 12:19 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

An example of how no-one wins with racism. Even this great genius has their judgement distorted by it. That's a loss. What may he have achieved if he weren't hindered by prejudice? He and his class are the beneficiaries in the inequality of it all, but their works suffer for it.
posted by adept256 at 12:21 PM on May 21, 2021 [8 favorites]

Most importantly, Charles Darwin did little to refute or denounce his colleague Herbert Spencer, who applied Darwin's ideas to sociology, forming social darwinism, the phrase 'survival of the fittest'.

In tolerating Spencer's ideas, Darwin was at least an ally to scientific racism.

There's also the matter that Sir Francis Galton, the founding father of Eugenics, claimed inspiration from Darwin. But the linkage/ collaboration between Galton and Darwin is looser; Spencer and Darwin actually corresponded with each other.

So yeah, Darwin aided and abetted some of the key figures of Scientific Racism.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:33 PM on May 21, 2021 [5 favorites]

How should we address Charles Darwin's complicated legacy?
posted by asra at 12:43 PM on May 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

" Darwin was a perceptive scientist whose views on race and sex should have been more influenced by data and his own lived experience. But Darwin's racist and sexist beliefs, echoing the views of scientific colleagues and his society, were powerful mediators of his perception of reality."
posted by infini at 12:44 PM on May 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

It would be a lot more remarkable for someone of Darwin's time and culture to NOT be horribly racist and sexist.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:45 PM on May 21, 2021 [31 favorites]

Maybe we are better off pretending he wasn’t? Why not let him and others pass into legend and delete their faults. Tempting to rewrite history how we want it not how it was and change it to make them be better people
posted by interogative mood at 1:04 PM on May 21, 2021

Count me in the “for a short editorial this is simple, direct, and uncontroversial” group. If we’re forming groups.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:05 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

See? I told you evolution wasn't true.
posted by Naberius at 1:19 PM on May 21, 2021

Snarky, essentialist headline by the OP, which is kind of silencing discussion here, but none of the linked articles say "Darwin was a racist", they are well written pieces on modern systemic problems in scientific apparatuses. They are worth reading!

I also recommend Joan Roughgarden's work
posted by eustatic at 1:31 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Race science is a plague and a lot of it comes from the same people who brought us real science.

The casual racism based on physical traits is rampant in most European cultures and has been for centuries, it seems. To this day so many White people use race as a telltale sign of someone's abilities or general nature.

It's not uncommon at all for White people to go on extended digressions on how one type of Asian person is different from another, or expound on why people from this race act like this, and people from that race act like that, because of some genetic reasons.
posted by chaz at 1:48 PM on May 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

Can’t it be said that anyone’s beliefs can be a powerful mediator of their perception of reality?
posted by njohnson23 at 1:50 PM on May 21, 2021

none of the linked articles say "Darwin was a racist"

Fuentes: Die harte Wahrheit lautet: Darwin war ein Rassist.--from the interview linked in the OP.
posted by No Robots at 1:52 PM on May 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

At least the biblical fundamentalists read their text. Pretty much all the biologists you know believe in evolution but a much smaller number have read the Origin of Species, let alone the Descent of Man or the Expression of Emotions. Darwin grew up in the heartland of laissez-faire Victorian capitalism and wrote his view / interpretation of the natural world in that language. The rugged self-help individualism of Darwin's theory failed to explain altruism and co-operation in the natural world. Except in edge cases of kin-selection [where JBS Haldane volunteered to risk drowning to save 8 first cousins approaching the rapids in a lonnng canoe] or reciprocal altruism in animals deemed capable of keeping accounts. If you want to unpack or debunk evolution as an explanatory idea, that's a better scab to pick than the racism and sexism. What is remarkable about Darwin's works is how synthetic they were: successful scientists today are really specialised compared to Darwin who made original contributions in geology, embryology, biogeography, plant hormones, physiological psychology, cat and pigeon breeding, soil turnover, stratigraphy, and 20 years dissecting barnacles.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:59 PM on May 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

I share some of the awkwardness others have expressed here in that the observations made in this editorial seem correct and worth bearing in mind, but they seem to be directed towards opposing a scientific and educational mindset that... doesn't seem to actually exist? Neither in research nor in teaching is the evolutionary framework presented as a cult of personality: Darwin is (rightly) presented as the originator of the broad strokes of the theory, but any discussion that's more that a superficial one-sentence factoid quickly moves towards mechanisms credited to post-Darwin researchers, putting his pioneering role into a context and showing how his own conceptions were flawed, through limitations both of his science and his ideology.

It feels like seeing an editorial in the Lancet about how we need a more nuanced view of Galen of Pergamon. Maybe he was a shit (he probably was; I don't know much about his life), but the admiration in the medical field for him doesn't actually correspond to any embrace of his worldview.
posted by jackbishop at 2:23 PM on May 21, 2021 [7 favorites]

Yeah, doctors may adhere to the oath of do no harm to their credit, yet do so humorlessly and ignoring fuck the Spartans.
posted by adept256 at 2:44 PM on May 21, 2021

I know at least one very famous person who is a role model for young people across the globe who subscribes to a very fundamentalist reading of Darwin and is a social Darwinist. Not a biologist obviously.
I'm just thinking that perhaps Fuentes meets several people like that through his work and is actually trying to make a statement to make it clear to them once and for all that this is rubbish. I don't think it will work as intended, if that is the intention, but nice try...
posted by mumimor at 2:49 PM on May 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's not something I've looked at much, but some Marxist literature point out the irony of Darwin getting his ideas from the capitalist discourse of his economic peers at the time, Smith, Ricardo, or whoever. What interests me about this is then not even about Darwin's flaws as an individual person, but the ideological biases of a socioeconomic environment leading to biased ideas of science, and in this case what similar critique continues to apply to modern evolution or other modern theories as well.
posted by polymodus at 3:44 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

At least the biblical fundamentalists read their text.

You sweet summer child.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:26 PM on May 21, 2021 [34 favorites]

Meriwether Lewis was a junkie.

And that's just part of the story.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 4:50 PM on May 21, 2021

Metafilter: 20 years dissecting barnacles.
posted by riverlife at 6:43 PM on May 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

At least the biblical fundamentalists read their text.

You sweet summer child.


They read very select passages over and over. This atheist is way more familiar with some of the Bible than many evangelicals. And most of them know nothing about the history of the Bible, e.g., what books where written and added (or removed) at what time.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:48 PM on May 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

There's been like, a century of improvements in the theory that make learning the original text mostly an exercise in navel gazing.

Well, maybe not navel gazing, but one of the subjects of the field of study of historians of science, who do view any current understandings and interpretations of scientific data as socially constructed, which of course they are. Darwin interpreted his observations brilliantly, but through the lens of his own time. Today, we reinterpret his work through lenses of our own.
posted by Miko at 7:49 PM on May 21, 2021 [7 favorites]

what books where written and added (or removed) at what time.

Oh, that's ridiculous. If the Bible is the complete and inerrant word of God, it would be impossible to add or remove books. Also, all translations would be 100% consistent, which as we see, is totes true. {/}
posted by mrgoat at 8:01 PM on May 21, 2021

At least the biblical fundamentalists read their text. Pretty much all the biologists you know believe in evolution but a much smaller number have read the Origin of Species, let alone the Descent of Man or the Expression of Emotions

My god, why would they? They are of literary and historical interest, but you wouldn't read them to learn biology. Anyone with even a well taught high school biology class understands Darwin's theory was incomplete and parts of his work scientifically flawed and his evidence pales compared to ours, genius or no. Long before you get into the racist parts. A good modern work is infinitely better in terms of both accuracy and pedagogic value for learning biology.

My degree is in chemistry and I've never even considered reading Nature of the Chemical Bond. You don't pass on knowledge in science by reading original texts.
posted by mark k at 10:53 PM on May 21, 2021 [11 favorites]

If you want to unpack or debunk evolution as an explanatory idea, that's a better scab to pick than the racism and sexism.

what

Even if Darwin was against slavery, he still pretty much 'ranked' races in terms of civilization and development which led to a whole lot of white people using that to, well, justify horrible acts of mass enslavement, genocide, and displacement for literally centuries. His condoning of it led to one of the worst ideas ever in social Darwinism. Nowadays we know to toss copies of The Bell Curve into the nearest garbage can but in the intervening centuries it actually helped Western societies to justify some of the worst human rights atrocities in history.

Also, criticisms of racism in the history and philosophy of science isn't picking at a scab. You don't make racism worse by picking at and acknowledging that racism may have had a substantial effect on our former role models and theoretical underpinnings. Racism gets to be less of a thing if you can admit to weird, terrible, historical fuckups, understanding them in depth, and using that knowledge to develop the critical analysis you need to avoid making the same kind of mistakes that your descendants will see as just really terrible fuckups, like what were y'all thinking back when you thought it was a good idea to have a heavily armed general population and all the car driving and beef eating that's led to the mass human suffering that we now have to deal with.
posted by paimapi at 12:12 AM on May 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

Welcome to the 19th Century.
posted by y2karl at 5:01 AM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm not a scientist or a teacher, but I'd like to say I don't think pointing out that a widely-respected historical figure was racist needs to serve some additional purpose in order to be a useful, valid observation. I feel like a lot of people who are not marginalized along many/any axes of identity just don't understand that it really sucks to discuss/study people who wouldn't have seen your humanity, and then not even have that acknowledged.
posted by dusty potato at 7:50 PM on May 22, 2021 [7 favorites]

I'd have been more surprised to learn that he wasn't.
posted by hypnogogue at 3:39 PM on May 23, 2021

the biblical fundamentalists read their text.

I think you overestimate the number of fundamentalists familiar with Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Latin. Most of them have never even read an English translation of the Bible and have a tendency to think it says whatever they want it to say. They then search out random verses without any context to try to back up their bullshit when you call them out on it.
posted by interogative mood at 9:03 PM on May 23, 2021