How did social darwinism cause racist ideas?

Question

How did social darwinism cause racist ideas?

Answer 1

I think this is about which is the dominant species and our competitiveness to be the dominant species. Evolutionary processes have not made us all the same and their is an assumption by some that white is better or red hair is better. This may be a value our culture attaches to a certain characteristic. Not sure?

Answer 2

At the historical moment when social darwinism comes around, there is concurrently a movement in western europe and the united states to recognize the primacy of importance and merit of science in general (even if some of the methods were rather shoddy science).

Likewise at the same time there were numerous incidents occuring in areas of the colonized world that were in some cases frightening and in other cases forced the colonizers to justify why they were doing what they were doing.

As people started to try to apply portions of darwins theory to social life in general (as social sciences tried to model the natural sciences very closely at their inception) people saw a "natural link" between the success of some groups of people and their race.

It was a case of right time right theory to develop social darwinism as a justification of racist practices and ideals, along with the heavy influence it had in the eugenics movement.

Answer 3

survival of the fittest