We started having a closer look at this question after Floridian Jonatha Carr flew into a rage in an evolution class and started threatening her classmates. Over at Taki’s Mag(“Torch Mobs for Tolerance,”April 9, 2012), Jim Goad opines,
I think it’s preposterous to simultaneously claim to believe in evolution while insisting we all somehow wound up equal. As a believer that the evolutionary process is real and ongoing, I believe their [black Americans’] sub-Saharan ancestry may have lent them certain physical advantages and certain cognitive disadvantages.
Yoo hoo. If the standard account of human evolution is correct, we all have sub-Saharan ancestry. But let that pass for now. In this case, it’s the “thought‘ that counts (by the way, the whole piece is pretty offensively expressed – don’t say you weren’t warned).
In this case, the question isn’t what Darwin believed about race or what Darwinists used to believe, or whatever they believe today, but what the public understands them to believe. With the result that people who feel personally supportive believe and propagate those ideas. Jim Goad is a good example.
Incidentally, over the weekend, ID opponent John Derbyshire (he called Expelled “creationist porn”) got fired as a columnist at US conservative mag National Review because one of his posts at Taki’s was felt to cross the line in discussions about race. Some questioned the timing because Derbyshire had entertained such views for years, and he is currently fighting cancer.
We wish him well with the cancer battle. Every survivor gives dozens hope.
But, in general, the role popular Darwinism plays in popular racism must be confronted.
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