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The major assumption here is that there is any significant evolutionary difference between the races. There isn't--insufficient time has passed for the races to have significantly diverged. Racists who try to argue from an evolutionary perspective say that other races (most notably blacks, who really can't accurately be considered as one race, which I will return to later. . .) are "less evolved", which doesn't make sense because blacks have not been in stasis since caucasians diverged, they've continued breeding under selection as well. The question then is whether the selective pressures facing the different races is different enough to have introduced any major differences. The evidence shows that this hasn't happened. Any contrary claim is so contrary to the evidence for humans and other populations of organisms as to bear the burden of proof.

There probably is some variation in type and level of intelligence among the races, but as I said before, the difference is not very great, and it is a difference in the average. Even if a race's average IQ is a few points lower than another's there are a good many people in that race with intelligence higher than a lot of members of the other race. Additionally, there isn't a lot of reason for thinking that intelligence is responsible for good morals (beyond a certain minimal level that is required for proper understanding of consequences and thus impulse control). As you mentioned, it appears that some groups of Asians test higher in average intelligence than caucasians, yet Communist China is not known for its excellent human rights track record. It often seems that being smart doesn't make a person more virtuous, just better at getting away with vice.

You mention sub-Saharan Africa and its lousy state. I agree with you that part of that is due to culture. However, a lot of it is due to environment (and indeed culture is tangled up with environment). There's an interesting book called Guns, Germs, and Steel that talks about various factors that are responsible for the rise and fall of civilizations. We probably owe our current status in the world more to the humble wheat plant, our domesticated livestock, and the availability of various metals than to our relative racial intelligence distribution. The problem in Africa would probably be better handled by fighting the endemic diseases prevalent there (especially AIDs, which is shifting the demographics dramatically towards a younger age, which isn't really good for civilized life in any population), reforming corrupt governments, and assuring ownership of private property rather than by selective breeding programs for higher intelligence.

Another oversimplification of this evolutionary approach to racism is the assumption that race is easily determined solely by skin color. In actuality skin color is a pretty lousy way of splitting people into groups with shared genetic traits. If you look at blacks in Africa, for instance, there are many groups with noticeable differences. Caucasians also can be split into multiple groups, as can Asians and any other racial group you choose to examine.

There are those who say that race is an obsolete construct. I disagree solely because races and subraces indicate the presence of different gene pools (although I'm completely in favor of them getting as mixed up as they like) with alleles of differing frequencies, and many of these alleles are significant because they may be responsible for tendencies towards certain diseases. If we are aware of this, we can take action to prevent the development of these diseases or begin early treatment. For instance, many Asian women tend to have more visceral fat than women of other races, and are at a higher risk for heart disease than women of other races with the same body mass index. Some small groups in certain races are so inbred as to warrant consideration as a separate subrace, such as the Amish, who are increasingly developing health problems rare in the larger population. Interestingly, there is a lot of evidence to show that considering all blacks a single race is a mistake since blacks have the highest allelic variation of any race. This is evidence that the out of Africa model is correct since it shows that the African population has been there breeding and accumulating new alleles for a long time while other races went through relatively recent bottlenecks, supposedly when they descended from small groups of people who left Africa. Amusingly this provides an argument that whites are inferior to blacks because whites are comparatively inbred!

I do think that Darwin had some idea of evolution as a directional process, probably residual from his earlier Christian beliefs (seeing life as a process of sanctification). Just because Darwin pioneered the theory of evolution does not mean that his philosophical assumptions and conclusions were scientifically grounded! Indeed, science is a bad beginning for philosophy as a general rule. . .