[lbo-talk] The Rise of the Evolutionary Psychology Douchebag

[Wojtek S]

Robert: Most classical social darwinist thought has a strong Lamarkian
influence on
it.  Richard Hofstadter's book Social Darwinism in American Thought does a
good job of covering, although Hofstadter tends to minimize the amount of
racism in American thought at that time. :

[WS;]  yeah.  Graeber (Debt) argues that slavery had initially little
support in Europe for historical reasons, and if it was justified at all,
this was by reference to Roman legal concepts - i.e. since it was "legal"
to have humans as property in Africa, it was "legal" to sell and buy that
property.  Social Darwinism emerged after the legal notion of slavery was
eliminated, and the inferior status of people of color or non-Western
ethnicity more generally,
had to be justified on different grounds.

I would be careful in making racism accusations, though.  Once this
reasoning became established in popular culture - no doubt by effort of
racist promoters - it became a cultural trope, "stock knowledge" , a canned
narrative that "made sense" of what people saw.  People do accept such
narratives all the time without harboring any ill intentions.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."