Page 45 - The Disasters Darwinism Brought To Humanity

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D D A R W I N ' S R A C I S M A N D C O L O N I A L I S M 45
were definitely not treated like human beings, and were despised and
treated with contempt everywhere: furthermore this was not the attitude
of a few racist individuals but that determined by the American state by
its own laws. Immediately after the first law approving racial segregation
on railways and trams was passed in Tennessee in 1875, all the Southern
states implemented segregation on their railways. "Whites Only" and
"Blacks" signs were hung up everywhere. Actually, all of these just meant
the granting of official status to a situation which already existed. Mar-
riage between different races was forbidden. Under the law, segregation
was compulsory in hospitals, prisons, and graveyards. In practice, this
included hotels, theatres, libraries, and even lifts and churches. The field
where segregation was most sharply felt was in schools. This was the
practice which had the heaviest effects on the blacks and was the greatest
obstacle in the face of their cultural development.
The practice of racial segregation was accompanied by a wave of vio-
lence. There was a swift rise in the number of black lynchings. Between
1890 and 1901 some 1,300 blacks were lynched. As a result of these
implementations blacks rose up in several states.
Racist thought and theories accompanied this period. Shortly after,
American biological racism would express itself in the results arrived at
by R. B. Bean's method of skull measurement, and under the pretence of
protecting the people of the new continent from a wave of uncontrolled
migration, a particular kind of American racism arose. Madison Grant,
author of the book The Passing of the Great Race (1916) wrote that the mix-
ing of the two races will open the way to the emergence of a more primi-
tive race than the inferior species, and he wanted inter-racial marriages to
be banned. 31
He also wanted inter-racial marriages to be banned.
Racism existed in America before Darwin, as it did in the whole
world. But as we have seen, Darwinism gave racist views and policies
th
apparent support in the second half of the 19 century. For example, as we
have seen in this chapter, when racists put forward their views they used
the claims of Darwinism as slogans. Ideas which before Darwin had been
regarded as cruel, now began to be accepted as natural law.