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Inherit the Racism (Scopes Trial Actual Biology Text Book - Unabashed Racism)
National Review ^ | 12/3/2010 | jonah goldberg

Posted on 12/05/2010 7:57:20 AM PST by Titus-Maximus

Via NLT, here’s an excerpt from a textbook at the center of the Scopes trial.

Evolution of Man. – Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave. The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized.

The Races of Man. – At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest race type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Charles Darwin and Natural Selection. – The great Englishman Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to realize how this great force of heredity applied to the development or evolution of plants and animals. He knew that although animals and plants were like their ancestors, they also tended to vary. In nature, the variations which best fitted a plant or animal for life in its own environment were the ones which were handed down because those having variations which were not fitted for life in that particular environment would die. Thus nature seized upon favorable variations and after a time, as the descendants of each of these individuals also tended to vary, a new species of plant or animal, fitted for the place it had to live in, would be gradually evolved.

Artificial Selection. – Darwin reasoned that if nature seized upon favorable variants, then man by selecting the variants he wanted could form new varieties of plants or animals much more quickly than nature. And so to-day plant or animal breeders select the forms having the characters they wish to perpetuate and breed them together. This method used by plant and animal breeders is known as selection.

Improvement of Man. – If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment.

Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.

The Jukes. – Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The “Jukes” family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the “Kallikak” family. This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!

Parasitism and its Cost to Society. – Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

The Remedy. – If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: eugenics; evolution; jukes; kallikak; kallikaks; populationcontrol; racism; scopes
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To: Agamemnon; Alamo-Girl; Admin Moderator; Titus-Maximus; GodGunsGuts; Fichori; tpanther; ...
“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.....it is simply incredible to think that.....he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites."

Jeepers, what can we say about this dude, Thomas Huxley — except his vision/imagination/cognition/knowledge seems to be limited to the size of his own (disordered) ego???

He is the perfect laboratory specimen of a man who makes himself "the measure" of Reality. Which of course (or arguably if you prefer) includes natural and supernatural components. Huxley has elected himself as the supernatural component in this piece: He (and presumably his like-minded friends), not God, is the self-selected appraiser and judge of the "Negro" and his prospects. The very thought makes my skin crawl, sends chills down my spine....

Add to that what "powerful men" can "do about" a situation like that (as defined by them), and you get Hitler pretty quick.

And yet it is precisely the Huxleys of the world who crave power nowadays.

The Holy Scriptures well advise/warn us that man is never the measure of anything in the world that God made.

So I'd say: Do not put your faith in Huxley. JMHO FWIW

What a wonderful essay/post, Agamemnon! Thank you so very much!

61 posted on 12/11/2010 2:52:10 PM PST by betty boop (Seek truth and beauty together; you will never find them apart. — F. M. Cornford)
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To: betty boop
Oh so very true, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you so much for sharing your insights!
62 posted on 12/11/2010 7:38:30 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Agamemnon

(I’m on vacation this week, so it took a while to respond. Toured the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory today. Cool place! Touring the Googleplex tomorrow. Trying to do this quickly from a hotel business center. :-)

“RETREAD ALERT”

—I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’m not entirely sure what a “retread” is, although I’ve seen the term quite a few times.

““goodusername”: You have ~ 492 postings since you signed up as a newbie on May 15, 2009 - a mere year and a half ago.”

—How time flies!

“You also appear to be quite drawn to the threads related to atheism in the context of Crevo debates, as well.”

—I’m flattered that you find m so interesting - that’s not as common as you might think! :-) I’m not really drawn to “atheism” threads per se, but am interested in the crevo discussions obviously. There are some other topics that interest me, and that I read fairly regularly, although
admittedly I post very little if anything on the threads. Partly it’s due to limitations of time, and partly due to me not feeling that most people would be as interested in my contributions as you are.

“You have a writing style which resembles the style of an atheist academic I recall debating frequently, prior to the to the time the majority of the Darwin Central cabal were flushed out of here and banned.”

—I sound like an academic? I’m flattered again (well, maybe. Or maybe not. Whichever academic you’re thinking definitely shouldn’t be.)
I’m again a little embarrassed to admit that I’m not entirely sure what Darwin Central is, although I’ve seen it referenced quite a few times. I figured it was either a spin-off site friendly to FR or a rival site of some sort; from what you’re saying I’m now guessing the latter.
(I did visit it once briefly since it was mentioned so often, but it didn’t catch my interest.)


63 posted on 12/14/2010 11:18:35 PM PST by goodusername
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To: Agamemnon
"You can take your point up with that late Harvard professor, Stevie Gould."

--I certainly wasn't disagreeing with Gould, and IMO Gould would have agreed with what I wrote.

"The preponderance of ANTI-racist material did not increase, as you appear to imply, as a consequence of the publication of Darwin’s silly work."

--I implied that the amount of anti-racist material increased for the same reason that the amount of racist material increased - because of the rapid growth of anthropology.

"Might you site the reference where Darwin upbraids his dear protégé and fond “bulldog,” Tommy Huxley for this contemporaneous commentary?"

--I'm not sure what Darwin thought of that statement. It's very possible he agreed with it.

"Will you pretend that Darwin knew nothing of his contemporary’s philosophies and sentiments: of Gobineau, or Wallace, or Haeckel?"

--uh, why would I?
He was obviously familiar with Wallace.
(I’m not sure if you think Wallace contributed to racism too, but as Gould puts it: “Alfred Russel Wallace, codiscoverer of natural selection with Darwin, is justly hailed as an antiracist.” Mismeasure of Man, pg 70)

Darwin was also, of course, familiar with Haeckel, and he disagreed with Recapitulation and instead agreed with the embryological ideas of Haeckel’s rival von Baer.

I'm not sure if he was familiar with Gobineau.

"There is evidence in Darwin’s writing to suggest as much."

--Such comments don't carry much weight from someone who is actually (and hilariously) ignorant enough of Darwin to say something like "There are “breeds” of animals, but where are the scientists referring to any of them as “races?”" when Darwin - literally - uses such examples on just about every other page of Origin.

"It is perhaps possible to suspect that Gobineau’s musings on Aryan racial superiority inspired Darwin’s own chosen extended title for “Origin...” which includes a direct reference to the preservation of “favored races.""

--I don't believe Gobineau ever wrote anything about preservation of favored races or natural selection, so I'm not sure how you think the anti-evolutionist could have inspired such a subtitle.

The purpose of subtitles is to give a brief summary of the book, which is precisely what the subtitle does.

Species can split into two or more separate non-interbreeding (or at least rarely interbreeding) populations (or "races" in the vernacular of the time). Each population then, as a result of having their own unique mutations and selection pressures, become separate species. And so we get the incredible diversity of life we see today.

“I repeat: Can you honestly say that Hitler and these medically inclined academics and physicians who laid philosophical, scientific, and political foundations of Naziism “were remarkably disinterested in evolution”? Hitler sure needed his Nazi doctors there didn’t he?”

--What has Hitler's comment about doctors got to do with Darwinism? I don’t think we can credit Darwin for us believing that having doctors is good for our health.

““…he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into each other, under a single species….” Darwin’s statement, after having quoted all those other stupid racists, is Darwin merely straddling all the other similarly impoverished intellects of his counterparts on the matter. That some “graduate,” also implies that others may not “graduate” and in Darwin’s way of thinking those who don’t “graduate will be in Darwin’s words “exterminated” as shown earlier (post #52). Clearly, you are as gullible and stupid as Darwin hoped you would ever be. “

--For crying out loud, take some time to actually think about what you’re reading. Yes, the naturalist takes all the forms which graduate into each and puts them into a single species. Those that do not are designated as a different species. Darwin just got done arguing that all the human races graduate into each other and thus should be considered a single species (“But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other”). In fact they graduate into each other so much that people that those that try to define races come up with laughably different results. So who’s left to be “exterminated”?
(Yes, of course, there are those don’t “graduate” – chimps, gorillas, rabbits, tuna, etc.)

“I’ll just call bull shit on that claim and raise you. When you say “popular” you imply mainstream. Polygenism was basically “popular” to Morton as an audience of one, and few others. Popular opinion in the 18th and 19th centuries was formed more by influences of Christian theologians preaching from pulpits. No one in “popular” discourse was even using the term “species” widely, so you are just making up your “facts” on the fly.
Busted.”

--Polygenism was popular enough in America that Europeans referred to polygenism as the “American school of anthropology.”

Here’s professor Michael Flannery of the Discovery Institute:
“As America headed towards Civil War, the polygenists held the upper hand. The biblical monogenism of James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) looked antiquated against the “scientific” racism of Josiah Clark Nott (1804-1873), George R. Gliddon (1809-1857), and others.”
(Should also mention Louis Agassiz, probably the leading polygenist, and arguably the leading scientist of America in the 19th century, and ardent anti-evolutionist).

"When Darwin writes like the following in Origins,… Chapter VII, what sort of an impression at that critical time do you think he was trying to leave?
“I opened fourteen nests of F. sanguinea, and found a few slaves in all. Males and fertile females of the SLAVE-SPECIES are found only in their own proper communities, and have never been observed in the nests of F. sanguinea. The slaves are BLACK and NOT ABOVE HALF THE SIZE OF THEIR RED MASTERS, so that the contrast in their appearance is very great…. “

--?? Are you serious?
I'm not sure why you seem to think the colors are somehow relevant; unless perhaps you think he's trying to give the impression that Native Americans are a master species?

We often find things in nature that appear analogous to human activities. So what? Apes have been witnessed carrying out what very much appears to be rape, stealing, murder, and even warfare. Is there a problem in pointing that out? Does it imply that such things are ok?
Nevermind that he decried slavery time and time again in the strongest language – he points out that there’s an insect that does something similar! He’s trying to tell us it’s ok!
It never ceases to astonish me the depths people go to villainize Darwin.

"For you and for Hitler, if you lose Darwin-Gobineau-Wallace-Galton, you lose your excuse for your own ill-conceived perception of racial and “intellectual” superiority." --Umm… what perception of "racial and intellectual superiority"? I've never had such a perception and don't believe there was ever a good excuse for such.
Perhaps you're confusing me with someone else.

"He [Haeckel] convinced masses of his countrymen they must accept their evolutionary destiny as a ‘master race’ and ‘outcompete’ inferior peoples, since it was right and natural that only the ‘fittest’ should survive. His version of Darwinism was incorporated in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925), which means ‘My Struggle,’ taken from Haeckel’s German translation of Darwin’s phrase, ‘the struggle for existence.’ "—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 207 [also 312-313].

--The more usual and accepted (albeit less interesting) story of the title of Hitler’s book is that he wanted to name it “Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice”, but the publisher didn’t like the title (can’t imagine why) and suggested the more catchy “My Struggle”. (The rise and fall of the Third Reich: a history of Nazi Germany By William L. Shirer, pg80”)

I'm disappointed in your post. No, not in the irrelevant tangents and inane insults - I expect them (although the accusations are new) - but.. no pictures!
64 posted on 12/14/2010 11:18:58 PM PST by goodusername
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To: Agamemnon; metmom; cpanther70

Isn’t it rather humorous that liberals continue to think they somehow don’t stick out like gigantic sore thumbs?


65 posted on 12/24/2010 8:11:36 AM PST by tpanther (Science was, is and will forever be a small subset of God's creation.)
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