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Challenge thread: Charles Darwin was racist... so what?

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Astrid

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Informative article!

The discovery of fire wouldn't have brought an end to natural selection imo.
Think about the demand for women who were smart enough to be able to cook
 
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Shemjaza

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Yes and the general meaning among English speakers is not analogous to distinct ancestry like in species.

I'll give you an example: Barack Obama is an African American... but he does not have the ancestry of other African Americans.

Race, while often featuring physical markers associated with ethnicity, is in practice a primarily a social and historical construct.

I have repeatedly accepted that trends may exist in groups, but that does not justify treating the group collectively in interaction with other groups.

But perhaps I'm misunderstanding your points, can you demonstrate how you think races can be defined.
 
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Mr Laurier

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Darwin was a typical upper-middle class christian of his time.
Of course he was raised to view the Irish as less human than proper Englishmen.
So was every Englishmen. It was part of being an Englishman.
He grew up with the same racist attitudes that Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher grew up with. He was a man of his time and class.
It was his research into evolution that caused him to doubt the racist ideas he was spoon fed from birth.
 
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Mr Laurier

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Except no part of the theory of evolution has ever placed any "race" in any "evolutionary chain".
Darwin shocked and horrified his fellow Englishmen by suggesting that the so-called English race was not in fact superior to anyone.
While he could not overcome he classism, he was able to see that the racist ideas he had been fed from childhood, were at best, questionable.
His meeting with slaves in Argentina convinced him that African Negros were every bit as human as Englishmen. And every bit as capable of being educated, and of having noble character traits. A revolutionary idea at the time.
 
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Mr Laurier

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Well how about the fact that it breaks people down into races to begin with. There's no such thing as race. That's another falsehood it's based on.
Except it does nothing of the sort.
 
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AV1611VET

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Not at all.
He was quite normal. He was never involved in any plot or conspiracy. He never hid his face behind a cape. He never cackled at anybody.
That's not what I meant.
 
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DamianWarS

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Wouldn't the complexity of the brain be a physical characteristic, even if it's too small to measure?

Differences in critical thinking ability could theoretically exist, then. Give an evolution, that seems like it would be possible imo.
if it's immeasurable then it's not worth the conversation. Critical thinking thrives in pluralistic environments which is the same environment interracial marriage thrives. If such difference existed it would be bred out.
 
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DamianWarS

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AV1611VET

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Warden_of_the_Storm

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QV yourself:


Was Darwin Left-Handed?
 
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