While Darwin used the term "race" to refer to groups i.e. races of cabbage, he probably used it to apply to human ethnic groups as well.
He does use the term race for human too, but the argument is that it is 'the preservation of favoured races' that is racist, but Darwin wasn't talking about humans in The Origin of Species, so he was hardly proclaiming Anglo-Saxons as a favoured race.
We can't really deny that social Darwinism had nothing to do with evolution.
Sure there is a connection, it just isn't the evolution Darwin taught, nor was he responsible for the attitudes of social Darwinism, which is simply the greed of Victorian laissez faire capitalism.
Literature.org - The Online Literature Library
``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.
``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''
``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''
``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.
``Both very busy, sir.''
``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''
``Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, ``a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''
``Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.
``You wish to be anonymous?''
``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''
``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843,
That was 16 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species. Social Darwinists latched onto evolution, but it was simply as another rationalisation of a callous selfishness that was already there in society.
Of course, Darwin being a racist (as practically every white male in the 19th century was) doesn't disprove evolution.
I agree it wouldn't disprove evolution even if it were true, but I don't buy that it is true. It is anachronistic to measure people against the standard of a different time, can you really call people of that era who devoted their lives to the abolition of slavery, who stood against the brutal abuse of their fellow men racists? There is much we have learned since then and ignoring it now will rightly label us racist, but you can't back date what we have built on from the work of these early human rights campaigners, and then label them racists.
The question we need to ask to know if someone was racist is where they stood on with fault lines of their day. Darwin was horrified at the treatment of slaves he saw in his travels and described slavery as a terrible crime. Don't forget when he wrote about the horrors he saw, his very act of exposing it was campaigning against it. The rational of slavers at that time was that their slaves were a completely different species, to be treated like you do cattle. Darwin's book Descent of Man overturned that and showed we are all one species, all human beings, and that the differences we see are superficial and negligible.
Many terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, but that doesn't negate the existance of Jesus.
Indeed