The Impact of Darwin’s Scientific Racism on Australian Aboriginals
Jan 15, 2023, | By Christian Brown | In #THEPLACARD
I believe the Australian Public has witnessed the continuation of racial discrimination, why is it that in 2023 the federal opposition parties are rejecting an Indigenous Voice to Parliament while supporting the New South Wales Premier for dressing as a Nazi at his 21st birthday celebrations amid fierce criticism from the public and media.
Surely they are aware of the link between Nazi Germany and Australia’s embrace of Social Darwinism?
Social Darwinism asserts racial conflict is a natural means of evolutionary progress. The principles of social Darwinism would deem the loser to be subservient.
But there’s a darker side of Darwin, a side that perhaps calls into question his prized intellect and cherished legacy. Darwin’s writing was racist, and discriminatory beliefs and practices follow directly from his theories.
Darwin believed many non-white races, not just Aboriginal Australians as savages
Darwin’s theory applies survival of the fittest to human races, suggesting that extermination of non-white races is a natural consequence of white Europeans being superior and justifies violently overtaking other cultures because it has happened regularly throughout natural history.
Not only does Darwin believe in white supremacy, but he also offers a biological explanation for this, being that white people are further evolved and Europeans would supersede the inferior races (savages).
In 1884, Harvard Dean, Nathaniel Shaler believed the black race was nearing extinction, which became the catch cry to signify the blacks were the lesser race due to natural order, (Vox, L., 2017. Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era. the University of Pennsylvania Press).
Social Darwinism was a product of Herbert Spencer’s loosely based translation of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, proposing a new viewpoint “survival of the fittest.” White Anglo-Saxons claimed this theory as their own and used it to justify their being and superiority.
The most infamous instance of Social Darwinism in action is in the genocidal policies of the Nazi German Government in the 1930s and 40s which was openly embraced as promoting the notion that the strongest should naturally prevail, and was a key feature of Nazi propaganda films.
The Act 1897 – the Queensland Government passed the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act. Allowed the government to lawfully control Aboriginals by keeping them away from white society on reserves and missions, including shielding them from the drug opium. The major outcome of the Act and its amendments was it rubber-stamped into law the dispossession of Aboriginals. Taken from their land and transferred ownership to white settlers.
Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders 'under the Act' were subject to interference with every aspect of their daily lives, from whom they could marry to the right to use electrical appliances. After 1932, some 'protected' Aboriginal workers were entitled to work under award conditions, however, their wages and conditions were not reviewed by the Queensland Industrial Court.
History tells us during the years of the stolen generation white supremacy was entrenched, influencing government policy, as white supremacy became the norm. During the period 1910 – 1970 families were separated, with upwards of 50,000 Aboriginal children removed from their families.
Under the Act, Aborigines would be protected by keeping them away from white society on reserves and missions and shielded from the drug opium. The Act and its amendments were rubber-stamped into law, with the dispossession of Aboriginals. Taken from their land and transferred ownership to white settlers.
The lawmakers believed it was proper to give half-caste children with enough drops of white blood a chance to join the superior race and from 1919, the NSW Government took young Indigenous children from their families, making them wards of the state.
One of the most effective policies used to justify anti-Black racism and white supremacy has been scientific racism. Throughout the years, scientific racism has been applied to justify racial discrimination with constant persuasion of race discrimination since the 19th century.
As Psychology Today reported on a study of this phenomenon, “The threat of appearing racist leads people to overestimate how much their past non-racist actions — like making friends with somebody of another race — are indicative of their non-racist attitudes.”
there were at least 270 frontier massacres over 140 years, as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people. (Guardian)
After the referendum in 1967, giving Aboriginal people full citizenship did Australians realize there was another way to perceive Aboriginal people other than through the lens of scientific racism. Helped along by the rise in Aboriginal activism and a groundswell of sympathy, during the 1970s.
In 1991 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report. It revealed that 43 of the 99 people whose deaths were investigated had been removed from their families as children.