Social Darwinism Research Paper

The rise of usable knowledge can be accredited Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution during the mid 19th century. This theory of evolution took into consideration natural selection, where people or other beings that can better adapt and adjust to an environment tend to outlive others who can’t adapt or adjust adequately, as well as survival of the fittest, the process of natural selection. The idea of Social Darwinism, the idea that natural selection and survival of the fittest applied to different classes or races that inherently made one class or race superior compared to another. The more conservative parties of the time definitely used this form of thinking when creating and implanting policies in government. For instance, Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician who analyzed common attributes …show more content…
Race, one of the more important topics, has been used all the time to classify people and give them certain advantages. At one point, being Irish was considered a race and was widely discriminated against. After some time, the meaning of race was changed to mean more the color of one’s skin rather than one’s ethnicity. There has been some use of usable knowledge even before the appearance of Social Darwinism. The Manifest Destiny, for instance, used religion as an excuse to give preference to certain people. Many Puritans and Evangelical Christians at the time believes that it was in America’s destiny to be conquered by the white Christians at the time; they began to “expand” westward forcing the American Indians to be relocated time and time again due to their differences. Later on in history, former President Roosevelt support ideas that not every group of people was equal, certain groups (individuals, civilizations, cultures, religions, and races) were considered the better sorts and others were considered the worse