Transcript The Collaborationist Stance in STS

The STEM abolitionist project
Ron Eglash, RPI
What was the name of the ship
that Charles Darwin traveled on in
his voyage that revealed evolution?
What was the name of the ship
that Charles Darwin traveled on in
his voyage that revealed evolution?
The Beagle
What was the position Charles
Darwin took on the abolitionist
movement?
“The [white] slaver has debased his
Nature & violates every best
instinctive feeling by making slave
of his fellow black.”
Darwin’s mother died when he was 8; he was raised by his sisters, who were antislavery activists and members of the Unitarian fellowship. Other family connections:
Grandfather – funded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade
Uncle
-- entered parliament on abolitionist platform
Aunt
-- donated to anti-slavery societies
Darwin’s fave instructor -- John Edmonstone, a Black British
citizen at Edinburgh teaching taxidermy.
Polygenesis
The “scientific” basis for racism was polygenesis: the theory that there were separate “acts of
creation” resulting in animals with characters specific to each continent. Europe shows the
noble wolf and noble whites; Asian shows suspiciously whiskered beasts and men, etc. (from
Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind 1850).
1854: Frederick Douglass "The Claims of the Negro,
Ethnologically Considered"
"the debates in Congress on the Nebraska Bill during the past
winter, will show how slaveholders have availed themselves of this
doctrine [multiple creations] in support of slaveholding. There is no
doubt that the Messrs. Nott, Glidden [sic], Morton, Smith and
Agassiz were duly consulted by our slavery propagating
statesmen" (p. 16).
U.S. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun: annexation of Texas as
a slave state justified by Samuel George Morton’s Crania
Americana (1839)
Darwin opposed the racist view that Africans, Native
American etc. were “separate acts of creation”
The theory of evolution was a scientific basis for the
abolitionist contention that there is ONE HUMAN
SPECIES
There are dozens of high school biology
textbooks. All of them mention the
name of Darwin’s ship.
None of them mention Darwin’s
position on the abolitionist movement.
What do you call the social force
that makes the name of Darwin’s
ship more important than his
position on the abolitionist
movement?
How does alienation from evolution
affect low-income communities today?
Antiintellectualism
Disbelief
in
evolution
Opposition to
protected sex
Homophobia
Poor academic
success
Unwanted
pregnancy
HIV and other
infections