Zoogenics

Social Darwinism & Racist Science

I taught American history in a large, diverse, public high school for 13 years. Almost every year, students were shocked to hear of America’s experiments with eugenics and the widespread acceptance of scientific racism. What they previously thought were aberrations—the Nazi regime and the Holocaust—they came to realize were in fact the outworking of a widespread movement of the modern world that was considered an enlightened, progressive, and scientific position to hold. The story is complex, but it certainly intersects with the rise of Darwinism and its stepchild, social Darwinism, which was a variegated attempt by several thinkers to apply the principles of evolution beyond biology to social and cultural matters....