Darwinism prepared but did not directly cause racial nativism
Evidence
On the other hand, it is not true that Darwinian (and Spencerian) ideas led directly to an outburst of racial nativism or to an overriding hereditarian determinism. The whole scientific revolution of the nineteenth century merely prepared the way and opened the possibility for those developments. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 787
Categorization
- XREF: Cautionary for the reader’s causal study: new belief systems enable but do not drive manufactured enemy-shifts; social crisis is the driver. — connects to: Darwinism converted racial pride into defensive anxiety about survival — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 785; Eugenics supplied scientific legitimacy but no racial typology to nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 911; Darwinism was politically neutral and served both race rule and its opponents (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Eugenics supplied scientific legitimacy but no racial typology to nativism
#corroborates(0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 911 - Science followed race-thinking; it did not create it
#corroborates(0.82) - Darwinism was politically neutral and served both race rule and its opponents
#expands(0.80) - Biological race theory predates Darwin and supported colonialism
#qualifies(0.78) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 77 - Darwinism was politically neutral and initially served anti-colonial and pacifist causes
#expands(0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 473 - American nativism racialized over time rather than starting as racism
#qualifies(0.74) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2003 - Progressive environmentalism blunted the force of Anglo-Saxon racial nativism
#corroborates(0.72) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 884 - Racial naturalism redefined non-Europeans as biologically incapable of interbreeding
#contradicts(0.72) - Darwinism displaced polygenism by translating might-right into upstart class language
#contradicts(0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 472 - Racial nativism grew only when it fixed on an identifiable new immigrant type
#responds-to(0.70) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 832