Yes, of course, that's how Darwinists read it. But it hardly means they are correct.
Here's a quotation from "The Descent of Man," which I'm afraid is all I have at hand at the moment.
"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 or Australian and the gorilla."
--Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 2nd edition, New York, A L. Burt Co., 1874, p. 178.
There are other quotations to illustrate his conviction that white Europeans are superior to all other peoples, and that evolution will lead to the extinction of the inferior races--African, Indian, Chinese, etc.
Yes, Darwin was a soft racist, as was nearly everyone else in England at the time. Yes, he did believe Caucasians were superior to other races to some extent, but his views were more enlightened than the average Englishman's. He opposed slavery, for example. Nor did he favor the extermination of any human races; in fact, he opposed it. The quotation from Descent of Man that you cite merely reflects what he thought was most likely to happen in the future, not what he wanted to happen (and thankfully, he was wrong, so far). Nevertheless, his racial views are irrelevent. The validity of his theory stands and falls on the merits of the theory, not the moral worth of Darwin himself.
