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Science as a think this was due to the unlawful seizure of land,
which undermined their lives, culture and means of
justification for survival, while spreading disease and death. This
genocide was “justifi ed” by the laws of nature, i.e.
racism: survival of the fi ttest. European and European Ameri-
can colonization of native land throughout the world
in this period created the very real consequence of
uring the 19th century, Darwin published On extermination. This provided motivation for allegedly
the Origin of the Species (1859), his book “scientifi c research”, which in turn provided exter-
Ddocumenting the process of evolution. Darwin minators with an alibi by declaring the extermination
believed in a natural order to the development of spe- naturally inevitable. 5
cies; the weak die off and the strong survive. Although
evolutionary theory is not racist, philosophers and
social scientists, used Darwin’s theory in pseudo- Pseudo-Scientific
scientifi c ways to justify genocide and racism. This
thinking was later called “Social Darwinism” and had Attempts to
brutal implications.
categorize the
In 1838 JC Prichard, a famous anthropologist,
lectured on the “Extinction of Human Races” He said races:
it was obvious that “the savage races” could not be
saved. It was the law of nature. 3
hroughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries,
In 1864, W. Winwood Reade, an esteemed mem- people used different terms to explain racial
ber of both London’s geographical and anthropologi- Tdifferences. The classifi cation shown below
cal societies published his book called Savage Africa. was used for well over a hundred years. The classifi ca-
He ended the book with a prediction on the future of tion lacks any obvious logic and defi es scientifi c pre-
the black race. cepts. Two of the words - Mongoloid and Caucazoid
have linguistic bases that refer to geographic areas.
But the last word- Negroid - refers to color. “These
“England and France will rule Africa. were not based on genetic differences, but rather on
Africans will dig the ditches and water the European and European American stereotypes of cul-
deserts. It will be hard work and the Africans tural differences and (mis)measures of physiological
will probably become extinct. “We must learn characteristics.” 6
to look at the result with composure. It il-
lustrates the benefi cent law of nature, that the In 1866, Frederick Farrar lectured on the “Apti-
weak must be devoured by the strong.” 4
tude of Races” which he divided into 3 groups. 7
• Savage (All Africans, indigenous people, people
It should be noted that there were many examples of color with the exception of the Chinese)
of this type of thinking. Prichard and Reade were all
highly regarded thinkers. Around the world, native • Semi-Civilized (e.g. Chinese – who were once
peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas were dying civilized but now their society was in arrested
and disappearing. The predominant scholars didn’t
development)
• Civilized (European, Aryan and Semitic peoples)
4 The Construction of Race & Racism The Construction of Race & Racism 5
