By Danielle P.
Social darwinism is the evolutionary process that everything evolved from something to fit their environment.
Imperialism in Africa was caused by Social Darwinism. A line from the poem “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling says, “Take up the white man’s burden, send forth the best ye breed, go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives needs… Take up the white man’s burden, The savage wars of peace, fill full the mouth of famine, and bid the sickness cease.” (Doc F). This stanza refers to how European countries believed they needed to go into Africa and take over because in the long run they were making it better. It’s saying that the United States should also go in and take over the philippines since they obviously need the help. Kipling was a white privilege english man that help a lot of power. His background shines a light on how he thinks and why he thinks that way. He believes that what is happening is right and for the greater good same as most white higher up people during this time.
In the medical field Blacks were basically the testing tools. They were being tested on for everything from syphilis to lead without their consent. In the 1930’s us public health services researchers decided to test to see how syphilis kills. So they recruited hundreds of african american men with syphilis to watch them die slowly and painful deaths that could have been prevented. The blacks were uneducated and the researchers offered them things the needed such as free physical exams, hot meals, rides into town for the clinic and fifty dollars for the burial fees. They choose black people to experiment on because at the time they were thought to be a notoriously syphilis race. Doctors withheld fundamental information from their patients sometimes not even given them a diagnosis saying it was best not to confuse or frighten the patient with words that they probably wouldn’t even understand like cancer. Because of the fact that black people didn’t question white people’s judgement. Most were just glad that they were getting treatment. John Hopkins researchers started a research in the late nineties on lead poison. The research was apart a study examining lead abatement methods and all the families that were involved were black. They had tested homes for high lead levels then encouraged the homeowners to rent the homes to black families with children so that they can monitor the children’s lead levels. They did investigate and found out that the consent forms “failed to provide an adequate description.” of the different level of lead in the homes.
It was believed that although all humans evolved from monkeys people of color wasn’t as evolved so they were basically monkeys. That mindset made it easier to take over africa and enslave africans. When they decided to run test that could and would harm people researchers torned to black people to experiment on. Social Darwinism made it easier to experiment on people because they already didn’t see them as fully evolved people so to them we were just another animal to experiment on for the greater good.