Whose Lives Matter? Darwinism as Soil for Scientific Racism

On a classic but timely episode of ID the Future, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer discusses the move by National Review editor Rich Lowry in 2012 to sever ties with two regular contributors, John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg, after discovering their connections to racialist groups promoting race superiority, eugenics, and other morally repugnant ideas. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Klinghoffer explains how Darwinian evolution has informed proponents of these ideas, and how important it is to identify and root out such thinking before it has a chance to pollute respectable institutions and publications. Darwinian ideas are hardly the only possible source of racist thinking, and of course racism long predates Charles Darwin. But Darwinism has proved fertile soil for scientific racism in the modern period. That’s one more reason among many to take a hard, honest look at the growing scientific evidence against Darwinian theory.

For more on how Darwinism has contributed to the tragedy of scientific racism in America, watch the award-winning Discovery Institute documentary Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism, now with more than a million views:

Photo: A demonstration against racism, GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada / CC BY.