Is Darwin a racist for his theory's on blacks

Question

Since Darwin thinks that the fitest are to survive, and he finds that black are more fit to survive because they are more primitive than whites, does that make him a racist?

Answer 1

You speak of Darwin as though he were alive. He is dead man, so it matters not a jot what he thought.

Answer 2

It is important to remember that fitness does not mean the strongest or most intelligent. The organism that is most adaptable (the organism that passes on its DNA successfully over many generations) is the "fittest." By today's standard Darwin would definitely be considered a racist, as he seems to have believed there was a difference in intelligence between Europeans and Africans. He did however consider blacks to be people and was an abolitionist (Many intellectuals of the time claimed that Africans were not human). In the Voyage of the Beagle he speaks out against the slave trade. This was considered quite progressive at the time, which shows how much our ideas about race and intelligence have changed.