Darwin's Sacred Cause

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/darwins-sacred-cause.html

Creationists still try to smear evolutionary science by claiming that it is intrinsically racist, and in particular, that Darwin was racist.

1) First of all, it must be pointed out that whether or not you like an idea has no relevance to its veracity. The thought, "I don't like this so it can't be true" has all the hallmarks of a toddler's reasoning, that most of us grow out of by about the age of three.

2) Secondly, and most importantly, evolutionary science replaced earlier notions of human origins that were inherently based on the idea of "race". Polygenism was the idea that held sway before Darwin. Each "race" arose or was created separately. Propagated by the then leading "authority", Louis Agassiz, a man, who, in contrast to Darwin, could not even bear to be in the company of Sub-Saharan Africans or their recent descendants.

Although Agassiz did not openly support slavery, his ideas were popular among the slavers of the Southern U.S., the last people to abandon the Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of its products.

3) Moving on to Hitler. Was he influenced more by Darwin, or by Agassiz? 

Let's look at Mein Kampf. From Chapter 11, Nation and Race,

"The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice."

Here, Hitler is clearly equating "races" to species. This is biologically illiterate. "Races" can interbreed, and the idea of negative consequences of miscegenation have been thoroughly debunked. Different species cannot interbreed. It's the definition of species. Duh, Adolf.

Hitler was also greatly inspired by Martin Luther. See "On the Jews and their Lies". He fits into a tradition of antisemitism going back to the Middle Ages. See Hitler’s antisemitism. Why did he hate the Jews?

4) So, moving on to Darwin,

Darwin argued that human "races" are not comparable to separate species. (Link to "Darwin's Sacred Cause" on Amazon.) Humans form one single species, according to the scientific definition of species. Nowadays, anyone with two or more brain cells to rub together accepts this. Even fundamentalists. But Darwin went much further. All life is related, and our view of life, and our view of us as being part of the wider living world is as inspiring as it is true.

See also,
Evolutionary psychology: Can race be erased?
Did Charles Darwin believe in racial inequality?
John Edmonstone: The freed slave who inspired Charles Darwin.
Stones and Bones: The lie that Charles Darwin was a racist.
Stones and Bones: Weikart, Gasman, Darwin, Hitler, and JoJo the Clown
Lying for Jesus by lying about Darwin on slavery and racism.
Locus: Darwin on race and slavery

5) But why does any of this matter?

Creationists tend to blame evolutionary science for all sorts of ills. Racism, genocide, moral decline and (ironically) degeneracy.  Ills that clearly pre-date Darwin. It is the very accusation that evolution is responsible for these ills and supposed ills that is the problem. Why? Because it diverts attention from the real causes of our problems. It exploits the victims of our natures to promote a false analysis, and thus perpetuates suffering as a result of ignorance.

More recommended reading:
The Most Dangerous Animal
Less than Human
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Charles Darwin on Racism, Slavery, and Eugenics
Was Darwin a racist, and does evolution promote racism?

The three-year olds will bleat that Darwin wrote, "“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, page 156

But at the time of writing, the "civilised" (Christian) "races" were indeed exterminating the "savage" ones. Darwin imagined that they would complete their genocide. What he meant by "civilised" and "savage" was purely cultural and not biological. He made that very clear in his writings.