Fallout from racist, sexist blog post. Creationists blame Darwin.
Academics gang up on evolutionary psychologist Satoshi kanazawa for his racist, sexist remarks made on Psychology Today's website. And creationists say it's all Darwin's fault.
Creationist response and other fallout from racist and sexist blog post:
In Monday's column, I described a surprisingly mean-spirited, racist blog post by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. I tried put it into the context of a longer history of racism in science. If I'd had more space, I would also have discussed the sexism and general shallowness that's inherent in the question he set out to answer: Which race has the most attractive women?
Since then, 68 academics - evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, and related researchers - have publicly ganged up on Kanazawa, according to this story. And yet, Psychology Today continues to lend him credibility.
I also received this response from a creationist:
Faye: You left out of your racism contaminating science article one of the main instigators of racism, Charles Darwin. The full title of Darwin's seminal work is, "The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." Darwin believed that the Negro races were inferior to European races and some of his followers promoted the eugenics movement in England and the United States. Dr. Jerry Berman has a book, The Dark Side of Darwin, which details much of this. And of course Adolph Hitler employed evolutionist terms to promote a master Aryan (pure German) race. Since evolution attempts to explain everything in existence, it can be wielded to promote for all manner of prejudice and evil.
I plan to seek help from historians on this one, though I know from my own copy of On the Origin of Species that Darwin referred to races the way we'd discuss varieties of plants or animals. He even refers to races of cabbages.
The other point to note is that whatever the color of your skin, the fact that you're here makes you part of a favored "race" in Darwinian terms. Neanderthals, might be argued, are not a favored race, though they apparently blended some with our lineage before they disappeared.