Evolution has no answers to our racial divides. In fact, evolution was the major scientific justification for many of the causes of the racial divides that continue to plague us. Evolution is a white man’s idea, from a white culture, used for much of its history to justify white supremacy. 

The Bible has been a thorn in the side of racists and white supremacists in the West for centuries (Adam’s Brothers? Race, Science, and Genesis Before Darwin). Indeed, Darwin’s main propagandist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, lambasted the Bible for teaching unity of races instead of his preferred white supremacism.

This has not been without its setbacks and compromises, of course. Many in the church embraced slavery and racism, justified by twisting the Scriptures to say the opposite of what it actually says. Both sides of the picture, and the right framework for dealing with racism, are found in One Human Family.

But there was one idea that gave racism an air of credibility like no other ever had: evolution. How to explain the technological and cultural supremacy of ‘white’ Europeans? Was it God’s undeserved grace and the particulars of history and culture? (Of course it was.) Or was it innate? Maybe it had a biological basis? Ideas about the biological superiority of whites floated around for a long time. But Darwin’s theory of evolution was the first idea to give a plausible sounding story that seemed to explain the ‘data’. Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002), a leading evolutionist who was staunchly antiracist, admitted that evolutionary racists appealed to science at the expense of Scripture:

Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. The litany is familiar: cold, dispassionate, objective, modern science shows us that races can be ranked on a scale of superiority. If this offends Christian morality or a sentimental belief in human unity, so be it; science must be free to proclaim unpleasant truths.¹

And what was the result? Abuses to ‘inferior’ races that became much more explicitly racially motivated than ever before. The Nama and Herero genocides? Racism. Trading the body parts of Australian Aborigines as supposed missing links? Racism. Caging Ota Benga and Abraham Ulrikab in zoos? Racism. The Holocaust? Racism. All fueled by Darwin’s idea (Darwinism and racism—are they linked?), such as this quote from The Descent of Man:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian [i.e. Aboriginal] and the gorilla” [emphases added].²

Later on in America, the 1914 textbook A Civic Biology by George Hunter became the focus of the infamous Scopes Trial (1925). This blatantly taught white supremacy:

The Races of Man.—At the present time there exists upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Scientific American Vilifies Creationists

So, it might be surprising to hear that “Denial of evolution is a form of white supremacy”.³ This is a joke, right? I mean, denying evolution, the one idea that has done more to uphold the intellectual legitimacy of white supremacy throughout history, is a form of white supremacy? I mean, it was even put forward by a white guy in a white culture, and avidly promoted by other white guys in other white cultures! Sadly, this is no joke. This op-ed from Scientific American tries to flip the script completely and argue that evolution is ‘anti-racist’ and evolution denial is a form of ‘white supremacy’:

I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies.

Scientific American was actually founded by the creationist Rufus Porter (1792–1884). But it has lurched 180° since then to become a bigoted anti-creationist rag. 20 years ago, we had to refute one of their articles in 15 ways to refute materialistic bigotry: A point by point response to Scientific American. It must have stung them, because they tried to bully us into removing the article.

But now they have gone even further from science and towards attacking Christianity in this latest piece. The author, one Allison Hopper, has no qualifications listed in either science or history, and it shows! Rather, her qualifications are in educational design. But evidently for the SciAm board, incompetence and lack of qualifications are no bar as long as she is saying something they want to hear. And while they did put a disclaimer on the end of the article saying “This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American”, the history of their dealings with creationists shows clearly their support for such baseless and vitriolic anti-creationist rhetoric.

Sanctifying the Racism of Human Evolution

But before Hopper ‘unmasks the lie’, she first sets up the ‘good guy’: evolution. Key to her inversion of reality is her re-telling of the human evolutionary narrative in a way that praises black Africans for being the original humans:

The global scientific community overwhelmingly accepts that all living humans are of African descent. Most scientific articles about our African origins focus on genetics. The part of the story that is not widely shared is about the creation of human culture. We are all descended genetically, and also culturally, from dark-skinned ancestors. Early humans from the African continent are the ones who first invented tools; the use of fire; language; and religion. These dark-skinned early people laid down the foundation for human culture. Considering the short life span of our early ancestors, these original innovators were probably also very young. No one who follows artistic trends will be surprised to learn that, from the beginning, human culture was essentially invented by teenagers. And by culture I don’t just mean the arts, I mean the whole shebang.

Isn’t this grand! But Hopper is leaving out something important: the evolutionists who first came up with this story used it to say that black Africans are primitive compared to the superior whites. That whites are ‘more evolved’. After all, they reasoned, didn’t whites dominate everyone else? Indeed, that was a dominant theme of human evolution from Darwin until well after WWII! We’ve had some success in fighting it since only because of things like the revelation of the horrors of the Holocaust, the tireless work of Civil Rights campaigners (much of which was driven by black churches), and biology finally catching up to the Bible in affirming our unity as a species. And many of the anti-slavery abolitionists such as Wilberforce would be called Bible-thumping fundamentalists if they were alive today (and were even in their own day!).

Evolution Denial and the KKK

But there’s a potential confusion in Hopper’s verbiage: what does she mean by “white supremacy”? Are we talking about classical white supremacy, i.e. the belief that whites are superior to all other races? Like the philosophy of Nazis, the KKK, and the heretical Christian Identity movement? Or are we talking about the recent revisionism of that term according to ‘Critical Race Theory’ (CRT):

By ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.⁴

Surely, it’s just the latter, right? Indeed, much of the article is written from a CRT framework. But it’s not that simple.

First, Hopper sets up the standard ‘problem’ of evolution denial in US public schools:

Under the guise of ‘religious freedom,’ the legalistic wing of creationists loudly insists that their point of view deserves equal time in the classroom. Science education in the U.S. is constantly on the defensive against antievolution activists who want biblical stories to be taught as fact.

Now, CMI has often urged care in pursuing these sorts of legal moves, and we have refrained from engaging in such legal advocacy (The teaching of creation in schools). At any rate, Hopper tells us these legal moves are done “Under the guise of ‘religious freedom’”. False. It’s explicitly about “religious freedom”. We really do believe those ‘Bible stories’. That’s why people want to see them taught as fact. This is very simple to understand.

But she says this is really just a ruse masking our ‘racism’. But are we talking ‘racism’ merely of the CRT sort? That is, couched in terms of ‘implicit bias’ and things that, if they really do exist, it’s hard to control or be held morally responsible for? No. She doesn’t position evolution denial as a form of white supremacy merely in the modern CRT sense. She says that it’s also racism of the KKK sort! I’m not kidding. Her very next sentence reads:

In fact, the first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s.

What!? So, creationism per se is a form of white supremacy because the KKK supported evolution denial in the 1920s? But such an obvious guilt-by-association fallacy was fine with the SciAm editors.

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