Racism

Note: I'm 90% kidding.According to evolution/natural selection or what have you, the better species survives. So would that mean that since the Europeans were better equiped to survive than the Native Americans and killed most of them, that Europeans are more "select"? If so, would that mean that they have more of a right to survive? If so, would that make them superior? But isn't that racism? Just a thought...

Madelaine writes;

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According to evolution/natural selection or what have you, the better species survives.

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Both species could survive, although the one that is more suited to the environment would be more successful.

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So would that mean that since the Europeans were better equiped to survive than the Native Americans and killed most of them, that Europeans are more "select"?

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More successful would be more accurate.

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If so, would that mean that they have more of a right to survive?

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No. Evolution makes no such value judgement.

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If so, would that make them superior?

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No. Again, evolution makes not such value judgement. A species is either better able or less able to survive and reproduce.

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But isn't that racism? Just a thought...

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It might be depending on what is ment by 'racism' here. However, evolution doesn't make such value judgements. Natural Selection makes statements of fact in that if you survive to reproduce and your counterpart doesn't then you have been selected for and he hasn't. It doesn't care why this is the case.------------------
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Science makes no appeal to 'right' and 'wrong' since the field of ethics does not belong in science since there is no way of proving empirically that anything is right or wrong. Take for example smokingIt's wrong to smoke
why?
because it damages your health
why is it 'wrong' to damage your health?
because then you will die
why is it 'wrong' to die as the result of smoking?
because we value life!
why is it 'wrong' to go against womething we value?
etc...The definition of right and wrong is left to those with power to decide i.e. majority rule.

I may be wrong, but natural selection has nothing to do with the weapons superiority of a particular tribe. Evolution and/or natural selection are based on the biology of a creature within its environment.

M - A short family story thatactually has a little relevance here:One of my great-great-grandfathers, Ebenezer Dickey Junkin, D.D., was a well-respected preacher and a college president in Virginia up to about the time of the Civil War. He wrote several books, and my mother has a copy of one of them. It's a catechism, which is a book of religion-related questions and answers that used to be one of the standard ways of teaching kids - back before Sunday School, I guess. This particular catechism was subtitled "Especially for the Instruction of Coloured Persons."
Hmmm. Do you think that might be racist? It was all strictly Bible-derived - all those verses about how slaves should be obedient and humble and stuff. Ol' Eb, and the culture he was part of, didn't much want those coloured persons rebelling or complaining about their lot, so they used the Bible to try to keep a handle on things. From today's point of view, that is just as racist and unjust as the Social Darwinists' use of the sort of arguments you brought up. But the church-going slave owners of the 1850's weren't 90% kidding.

Hi MadelaineThis question has been answered at length by the author Jared Diamond in his excellent book 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.A very short summary is that it depends on the radically uneven distribution of species suitable for domestication.For large seeded grasses suitable as staple crops, the distribution is:West Asia, Europe, North Africa.....33 species
East Asia......................................6
Sub-Saharan Africa.......................4
Americas.....................................11
Australia.......................................2For large herbivorous or omnivorous mammals it is:Eurasia......................13 domesticable species
Sub-Saharan Africa......0
Americas.....................1
Australia.....................0So Eurasians developed farming long before anyone else.They lived in *very* close proximity to their domesticated animals, causing various illnesses to jump the species barrier. Smallpox, flu and measles, among others, originated in this way. Eurasians developed partial immunity to these diseases, while others did not. The Americas were easy to conquer once most of the native population had been killed by epidemic diseases.Eurasians were also able to accumulate stores of food, allowing specialised craftsmen, administrators and warriors to live off the productive workers. So they had a huge headstart in perfecting military technology and social organisation. Colonising powers relied on these things to win easy victories.That's EvC for you - ask a question as a joke, get an essay in reply...

For all interested, I would strongly second Chavalon's endorsement of Jared Diamond's book. Although certainly not the last word on the subject, he draws together multiple disciplines - from biology to archeology, immunology, agronomy, etc - to answer precisely the question asked in the opening post: Why did one group (Indo-Europeans) come to pretty much dominate the world? Was it innate "superiority" or merely historical contingency and being in the right place at the right time? IOW, why DID the Spanish conquer the Inca, and not the other way around?I think Diamond makes a pretty convincing argument in a very readable book.

90% kidding noticed ... butIsn't 'racism' treating some group or individual differently
based solely upon race?It has nothing to do with superiority or otherwise, it's about
attitudes to those with a difference to the 'racist'.White supremicists, for example, use the argument of
superiority to justify their unequal treatment of other
races ... but the belief in superiority isn't of itself
racist if one treats everyone the same. In the above example
it's just a way for some individuals to justify the
unjustifiable.

Interesting idea, though I'd have to agree that it's not racism. However I have often wondered why people care about endagered species and races considering natural selection is so commonly accepted.Who cares let them die, it's evolution baby.I'm ahead I'm advanced I'm the first mammal to wear pants yeah!------------------
Saved by an incredible Grace.

Funk - Please, please tell me you're kidding with that post....

Murdering, or willful neglect of the natives so that they would die, would, according to Darwin in the Descent of Man, lower the Europeans on the organic scale. It would make them less superior.What this exactly means for your example I don't really know.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

You might want to know what jimmyevolution is up to... Check his posts and topics...[This message has been edited by Andya Primanda, 02-27-2003]

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You might want to know what jimmyevolution is up to... Check his posts and topics...

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Interesting, isn't it? All his sources so far are essentially related, and many can be traced back to "American Renaissance", about whose "stealth racist" attitudes I know more than I would like...

I'll tell you what Im doing, plese read post 6 here:http://EvC Forum: silenced by the thought police -->EvC Forum: silenced by the thought policeI'm not out to get anybody, I'm just a regular dummy trying to figure stuff out. Maybe I've got it all wrong but I truely am trying to get it right.Jimmy[This message has been edited by jimmyevolution, 02-27-2003]

Or Darwin's for that matter. Okay jimmy, if we're to take you at your word and accept that you have been the unfortunate victim of some very poor "popular" (using the term loosly), racist scientists, then you should be willing to look at the actual science, yes?Try this article for a start, published in a peer-reviewed journal by a specialist in genetics: An apportionment of human DNA diversity. Here's an abstract:

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It is often taken for granted that the human species is divided in rather homogeneous groups or races, among which biological differences are large. Studies of allele frequencies do not support this view, but they have not been sufficient to rule it out either. We analyzed human molecular diversity at 109 DNA markers, namely 30 microsatellite loci and 79 polymorphic restriction sites (restriction fragment length polymorphism loci) in 16 populations of the world. By partitioning genetic variances at three hierarchical levels of population subdivision, we found that differences between members of the same population account for 84.4% of the total, which is in excellent agreement with estimates based on allele frequencies of classic, protein polymorphisms. Genetic variation remains high even within small population groups. On the average, microsatellite and restriction fragment length polymorphism loci yield identical estimates. Differences among continents represent roughly 1/10 of human molecular diversity, which does not suggest that the racial subdivision of our species reflects any major discontinuity in our genome. (emphasis mine)

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This abstract (and I linked to the full article), shows that there is NO basis for making wild extrapolations about the biological basis for "race". There is NO genetic evidence that there are significant differences among human populations. Rather, that the most significant differences are found within human populations - as I noted in a previous post.How does this fit with your previous reading?