Human Evolution and Racism

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/chimps-cant-tell-us-much-about-being-human

What is the first thing that comes to mind when evolution or human evolution is brought up? "Survival of the fittest" is the first thing that comes to mind but how does this describe the story behind human evolution? Going beyond the creationism of human evolution is not often done in classroom settings. Holly Dunsworth wrote an article in 2018 that talked about teaching evolution and my favorite quote from the article was, "Evolution educators—even if sticking to E.coli, fruit flies, or sticklebacks—must confront the ways that evolutionary science has implicitly undergirded and explicitly promoted, or has naively inspired so many racist, sexist, and otherwise harmful beliefs and actions." There is a lot of stigma around racism and sexism and talking about it at school which is not right because school is a place where people go to learn. Talking about racism and how evolutionary science has unknowingly promoted or inspired racist and sexist beliefs needs to be talked about and normalized. If we cannot talk about it then how can we talk and/or teach about the true story of human evolution and not just keep demonstrating that evolution is true. Dunsworth also said, "Bad evolutionary thinking and its siblings, genetic determinism and genetic essentialism, are used to justify civil rights restrictions, human rights violations, white supremacy, and the patriarchy." Because of this problem with evolutionary thinking, people will avoid talking about evolution.

Comments

  1. Marc KisselMay 31, 2020 at 9:36 PM

    One thing that i wonder/worry about is if evolution has a PR problem. If people think that evolution is racist/sexist/anti-religion/etc it is going to be so much harder to talk about why it matters. I agree that we need to not only be open about this, but actively try to make it better

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