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Herbert Spencer
Spencer and his followers argued that individuals and groups who undertake "in a wholesale way to foster good-for-nothings" commit an "unquestionable injury" by stopping "that natural process of elimination by which society continually purifies itself."1
Darwin's Theory of Evolution
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. In this groundbreaking book on his theory of evolution, Darwin concluded that all living things struggle to obtain food, water, and a safe habitat. An organism that is well suited to its environment has the best chance of living long enough to mate and produce offspring. Gradually, as some organisms thrive and others die out, new traits, species, and forms of life develop or evolve. Darwin called this process "natural selection."
Social Darwinism
Many readers immediately saw connections between Darwin’s theory of evolution and their own society. A number of them were influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, a British thinker. Referring to Darwin’s work but using his own phrases such as "the struggle for existence" and "the survival of the fittest," Spencer helped popularize a doctrine known as "social Darwinism."
In every country, people interpreted social Darwinism a little differently. In Germany, biologist Ernst Haeckel combined the doctrine with romantic ideas about the German people. In a book called The Riddle of the Universe, he divided humankind into races and ranked each. "Aryans" were at the top and Jews and Africans at the bottom. In the United States and England, social Darwinists stressed the idea that competition rewards "the strong." As a result, many of them opposed aid to the poor, laws that would limit cut-throat competition, and efforts to regulate working conditions. They wanted government to let nature take its course.
Spencer and his followers argued that individuals and groups who undertake "in a wholesale way to foster good-for-nothings" commit an "unquestionable injury" by stopping "that natural process of elimination by which society continually purifies itself."2
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Plessy v. Ferguson
Not surprisingly, social Darwinism had special appeal for the rich and powerful. To them, it seemed to explain inequalities among not only individuals but also social classes and races. Some social Darwinists combined Samuel Morton's racial hierarchy with the theory of natural selection to create a new "more scientific" way of justifying prejudice and discrimination, especially against African Americans. These theories appealed to many white Americans. The landmark 1896 Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, would turn these theories into practice.
Homer Plessy, an African American, challenged a Louisiana law that kept blacks separated from whites on public transportation. He argued that John Ferguson, the Louisiana judge who convicted him, had violated his rights as stated in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That amendment guarantees every citizen equal protection under the law. Eight of the nine justices sided with Ferguson, who argued that as long as the railroad offered "separate but equal" seating for whites and blacks, Plessy's rights were protected. In expressing the majority opinion, Associate Justice Henry B. Brown asserted, "If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane."
The decision permitted the growth of a system of state and local legislation known as "Jim Crow" laws. They established racial barriers in almost every aspect of American life. In many places, black and white Americans could not publicly sit, drink, or eat side by side. Churches, theaters, parks, even cemeteries were segregated. By the early 1900s, writes historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., "America was two nations—one white, one black, separate and unequal." He likens segregation to "a wall, a system, a way of separating people from people." That wall, which did not go up in a single day, was built "brick by brick, bill by bill, fear by fear."3
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Facing History Resources
• Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., Brookline, Massachusetts) 2002, Chapter 3, "Evolution, 'Progress,' and Eugenics."
• Facing History lesson, Race in Popular Culture: The St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. This lesson is found in the Facing History Campus (username and password required) at www.facinghistorycampus.org. (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., Brookline, Massachusetts) 2002.
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Print and Video Resources
• From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 by Lee Baker (University of California Press, Berkeley) 1998.
• The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism by Allan Chase (Alfred A. Knopf, New York) 1976.
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Web Resources
• PBS' Evolution (www.pbs.org/evolution)
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1 Quoted in In Search of Human Nature by Carl Degler (Oxford University Press) 1991, p. 11.
2 Ibid.
3 Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America by Lerone Bennett, Jr. (Penguin Books) 1984, p. 256.
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