Scientific racism framed lack of Western knowledge as grounds for extermination

Evidence

This “scientific” racism and sexism would become essential in colonial governance. Well-meaning white people believed (and continue to believe) that Western science and technology were the only means of improving the condition of the destitute “savages” in the colonized territories. Other less well-meaning individuals saw the absence of “advanced” knowledge in the colonized as a good reason for their annihilation. Frederic W. Farrar (a cleric born in India who became friends with Charles Darwin) argued, for instance, that the extermination of the Tasmanian people was justified because these were people who had not “added one iota to the knowledge, the arts, the sciences, the manufactures, the morals of the world.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 265

Categorization

• CANDY: A single striking, tweetable quote: a Darwin friend justified Tasmanian genocide on ‘no contribution to knowledge’ grounds.
• XREF: connects to: Racism shaped Western science, not the reverse — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 408; Scientific racism framed genocide as a progressive evolutionary stage — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 878; Nineteenth-century scientific racism supplied latent Orientalism’s biological grounding (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Scientific racism framed genocide as a progressive evolutionary stage #corroborates (0.95) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 878
• Racism arises from Western rationality itself, not as its archaic residue #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1327
• Racism shaped Western science, not the reverse #contradicts (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 408
• Nineteenth-century scientific racism supplied latent Orientalism’s biological grounding #expands (0.78)
• Disparities created demand for scientific racist justifications #contradicts (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1080
• Racist worldviews require modern bureaucracy to implement extermination #expands (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 223