#Evolution and racism

[suryp]

Date: unknown

Year: inconsequential

Region: central Tartyryn straight

The snow crunches beneath our feet, the wind howls like the devil, and while we all show fear, I've reason to think my brothers know not that we walk over a frozen sea, more than 30 metres deep with fish heavier than our entire platoon. I doubt my commander knows, either, but that suits our real mission just fine.

The mission. Ha. Everyone knows the only safe spots for a town are off shore, we've already done the math, there's nothing out here worth finding.

Good thing Commander Reijean is such a greedy fuck, then.

"HALT!"

Thats him right there. Most would say he just wants to prove himself, but I know better. All humans hide their worst traits, tone 'em down for the public. We're all worse than we seem on the outside.

"..."

"whats out their c-"

"shut your trap private, I won't have my skill split be-"

*Crack*

"Mission complete, I suppose"

In an instant, Clark pulled out the rifle on his back. it was cheap shit, like all the gear for this trip was, but He's among the best "weapons guys" I've ever met.

Fortunately, the gun jams, and he vanishes into the blizzard.

"Clark? Buddy? Clark? Clark!"

"Circular formation, weapons up, we are-"

"...Commander?"

Just a few more to go. Our platoon used to be larger, but wandering for days on end through an empty void of ice and snow will take its toll. Just a few weeks ago, we might've won this fight.

Good thing banshees are smart, then.

"SpLit up!"

"Commander?"

"Split Up!"

"h- He's right. we're no more than a larger target like this."

"Just gotta find the right time for it."

Sabotage wasn't the plan, and it leaves a bad taste, but there's nothing for it.

"Now."

"..."

"..."

*Cr'Ack*

"..."

*Crunch*

"..."

And finally, a blood curdling scream cut short, by a few extra holes in the lungs.

I stand up, spread my arms wide, and make myself the most clear and easy target I can."

-...-

Two hours later

The blizzard dies, I see my siblings dead in the snow. Three have a mulch of bone and Metal shards, alongside frozen blood, in place of their heads. Commander has a crushed neck. Charlie's kevlar is punched through, frozen blood all along his chest.

There's a sixth carcass, some ornitherian, I think, though it's hard to tell considering how much was eaten. The ribs are gone, and only Two and a half legs remain.

I begin to walk off. A meal, even the frozen remains of a hippogriff corpse, is the last thing I d-

*crunch*

"..."

"you not fight me. why?"

"..."

"all humans try to kill us. take sea from us. take tyk'yk from us."

"...take egg from us."

"..."

"you not fight. why?"

-

alright thats a wrap! The official intro to Fisher and the Flame and the world of... well, I suppose she doesn't have a real name yet but hey, we can make this work.

for a bit of context regarding appearances, if you need that, "Ornithere" and "Hippogriff" refer to pterosaurian animals, most similar to (and heavily based on) Trollman's "Cuvier's Isle" a small spec one-shot. It does not refer to the serinean animals of the same name.

Banshee are a bit easier to describe, being a rough combination of Utahraptor osstramaysi and a Leopard Seal, very similar to @tales-of-kaimere's *Updated* xuul design, along with the Adzakoordu and the White Cockatrice, as well as the Tamakai.

The narrator, Jake Fisher, is getting a drawing, by someone who appreciates men far more than I.

now go read about kaimere on Keenan Taylors twitter, bluesky, deviantart, and youtube channel, along with trollman's various sickass works on the same websites.

-

edits: minor word changes, removal of unneeded dashes, and Commander is now cishet, because killing the first queer confirmed in story feels a bit too rude.

Reijean is still his name tho, since there has to some reason this unit was sent out.

also added a new tag. sorry y'all.

(im just gonna use the most extreme and broad tags that, since im exceedingly apathetic but do want to tag things correctly)

[timeausterrors]

i had the most infuriating interaction on twitter. so i want to have more productive and interesting conversations about homestuck now. tell me things you find unique or interesting with homestuck's writing/characters/themes etc! or tell me criticisms you have about it, its character choices or writing choices, etc! (pls dont come in to just say act 6 is bad or vriska did nothing wrong etc ! you can have those opinions but i want to spark conversations and debates around new and interesting topics or topics that don't get brought up as much!!) ALSO PLS NO HS2 i just want to talk about Homestuck as it is because i think there's still so much to dissect and explore!

[mithral]

Viktor being 'cured' of his disability, and spouting eugenics (not lettin yall side step that evolution shit ever.) To show that Something Is Not Right with him.

Much to think about.....

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I'm building species for my world and I want to know the difference between human races and variations vs animal breeds and variations biologically. Also, why is selective breeding humans called eugenics and gets a nasty rep, but selective breeding animals is a good thing? Is that just 'humanity' talking? Like killing animals is just nature although nasty stuff moves into cruelty, but killing humans is just straight up murder?

Wootzel: This isn’t really a worldbuilding question the way you’re asking it, it’s an ethics question. However, since it has come up a few times on this blog, we’re going to try to break it down as we’re able to and address the implications of thinking about humans using the terms in the ask. It should go without saying, if you’re thinking of a made-up species with human-level intelligence, everything said here should apply to them as well.

Discussions of eugenics, humanitarian atrocities, and racism under the cut.

People cannot be forced to reproduce or kept from reproducing by other people without ethically horrible results. Full stop. The only exceptions to this are people who do not have the cognitive ability to understand child-rearing, either because they are children themselves or because they have cognitive impairments that result in them being in another person’s custody in adulthood.

This DOES mean that people who are not fit to be parents raise children. This DOES mean that people can have children who are physically or mentally incapable of taking care of them. This DOES mean that sometimes debilitating genetic problems are passed on. There is no ideal solution to any of these problems, and there never will be.

If people can be kept from having children based on any criteria other than individual cases, there will always be opportunities for abuse, and there will always be abuse. Humanity is too complex for us to ever draw lines between those who “should” be allowed to reproduce and those who “shouldn’t,” because a line that would be beneficial in one case will be a violation in another case.

To make this clearer, I’m going to include some examples. These are not based on any individual case or person, but do reflect real-life scenarios. Reader, if you’re a member of a group that is often threatened with eugenics and might find these discussions distressing, proceed with caution or skip the next two paragraphs.

Genetic Cognitive Impairments, such as severe learning disabilities and autism, are often mentioned in conversations about eugenics. Some of these conversations can even seem well-meaning, because there are absolutely people in these diagnostic groups who would be entirely unable to parent a child. They’re still wildly unethical because these people exist on a spectrum, and there are people with every mental condition known to man who make wonderful parents. If one person’s autism diagnosis could be used as a reason that they aren’t a fit parent, then what’s to stop that precedent from threatening every other person with that diagnosis? Where does one draw the line? ADHD has some similar symptoms to autism, and in some cases it can make parenting difficult, too. So can depression or anxiety, which in most cases are not genetic. NONE of these conditions can ever be used as an indication that a person is not fit to parent. I have ADHD and know several autistic people, and most of us would not choose to trade in our weird brains for a neurotypical one, even though they can cause us difficulties. There is joy to be had in life at every difference and level of functionality, so no argument against letting children be born with these conditions holds validity, either.

There are lots of heritable conditions with primarily/only physical symptoms that might be the target of eugenics discussions as well. I don’t know enough to touch on all of these, but I can still break apart some arguments here as well. Some conditions, like Sickle Cell Disease and Cystic Fibrosis, can be debilitating and no parent could ever want their child to inherit them, but most conditions that are this severe are recessive (must be inherited from both parents) and without genetic testing (which is not even possible for all conditions due to the complexity of genetics), it’s difficult or impossible to know if a child might inherit a condition. Many other conditions, for example Diabetes and Migraines are associated with multiple genes, and most of them aren’t well-understood yet, so even the presence of a group of genes isn’t a guarantee. A possibility of passing on a genetic condition is not a good enough reason to restrict someone from having children.

End of real-world-condition examples.

The argument of “no genetic condition is bad enough to justify eugenics” is only part of the picture. Another issue is: How would this ever be enforced?

There is no form of preventing someone from reproducing that is ethical to do to a human due to our highly developed sense of self, sense of agency, and comprehension of our circumstances. 

Preventing access to reproductive partners is way too much restriction of freedom and would probably result in social needs not being met.

There is no form of temporary birth control that’s effective and safe for everyone, and there are probably some people who can’t use any form without suffering. Many of these can easily fail or be sabotaged. Forced medication is a violation of bodily autonomy, which comes with trauma, and there’s no way to force someone to use birth control without restricting basic freedom as well.

Permanent sterilization involves surgery no matter what gonads you have, and surgery is inherently risky. Forced surgery is also a massive violation of bodily autonomy, which is deeply traumatizing, and might have long-term unintended consequences on bodily health.

Legal consequences to reproducing would not change the outcome: A child was born. They would also result in children being separated from fit parents. This would probably also result in people--children and parents alike--having a lower quality of life because of legal or social consequences of existing.

If someone has a condition they don’t want to pass on, but they could have a healthy child with the help of something like IVF, they should be free to make that choice just as much as someone without any known genetic problems.

The third side to this problem is that if there’s precedent for restricting someone’s reproductive rights against their will, people in power with shitty intentions will use it against groups they don’t like and fall back on a medical excuse, even if one doesn’t exist or is invalid. This is not a hypothetical: women of minority groups have been sterilized against their will while in surgery for a condition that didn’t require them to be sterilized to survive.

The only thing that can ethically be done to prevent the passive of heritable genetic conditions is education and access to medical care. LOTS of people with genetic conditions will go to great lengths to avoid passing them to their children, and these choices should be available to everyone.

To wrap it up: Humans have a greater capacity for understanding than other animals, and we can make our own choices. Removing those choices and removing the potential for parenthood is enormously damaging to individuals, and can even result in genocide on a larger scale. There is no way to adequately draw defensible lines around the people who “shouldn’t” be allowed to reproduce, or to prevent those lines from being crossed if there were to be drawn.

Tex: This is historically a hotly-debated topic, so I’ll be adding a lot of reference links for your perusal that I recommend reading, in order to add an appropriate level of context to my answer. Very broadly speaking, eugenics involves a group of people deciding that a selection of characteristics - usually phenotypes but now the argument has begun to include genetic code - that are allowed to reproduce. This is usually enforced by killing, sterilizing, and/or maiming anyone (via bad medical practices) that does not get approval from this group of people. Who these people are matter very little, as it changes according to era and geographical region - they share the common characteristic of violent enforcement of their ideals, which often leads into things like war and the accompanying war crimes.

Animal husbandry typically does not include humans, though only by the slightest framing of definitions - we still have plenty of similar actions taken against other humans, such as human trafficking, forced births, and arranged marriages. The domestication and rearing of animals is generally used for agricultural purposes, such as meat, dairy, and egg consumption, when it does not also include textile, leather, and sundry product production.

“Killing” animals implies that an animal died for purposes other than the above listed purposes. This would include social habits such as trophy hunting, which is frequently frowned upon as the people participating in such hunting do it for obtaining social status among their peers rather than subsistence.

Predation - which often includes but does not only include animals - is when one species preys upon another species (I use “preys upon” in the literal sense, here, not the metaphorical or euphemistic). When this happens, for various reasons such as energy conservation in the predator, impatience due to hunger, and need to prevent injuries from the prey fighting back  - the prey is usually killed rather quickly. Predation establishes trophic levels, and the differentiation of species from autotrophs to detritivores.

Humans are omnivores of varying degrees, obtaining their nutrients from a variety of food sources. I bring this up because it impacts both reproductive habits within human societies and the development of food resources by community. As the following links will inform you, there is a gradual, shifting line between the definitions of “who” and “what”.

Across many, many different cultures and across many, many different eras there has been debate upon what is human, and therefore, who is human.

Is a human merely that which is part of the community? If so, is a pet dog human? If not, why so? What lines are being drawn? A pet dog would, in some parts of the world, not be considered a source of food - some places have both considerations in hand, where the animal we know of as a dog can be both a pet residing in a household as well as a component in a dish. The same goes for cats, birds, horses, and any other animal - or non-animal - one could conceive of rearing and caring for within the boundaries of one’s home. Is a human who is not a member of your household - and thus, your community - a person? There are varying degrees in nearly every part of the world that changes whether one answers “yes” or “no”. In which case, if you define a human not part of your community as a “who” rather than a “what”, even if another community holds this same human as a “what” rather than a “who” - who is correct? Who is more correct? On what grounds can these opinions be enforced?

By that same metric, if another community considers you a “what”, does that mean you cannot be referred to as a “who”? On what basis is this defined, and “who” gets to enforce these definitions?

If someone is a “who”, can their reproductive habits be dictated by another? If something is a “what”, can their reproductive habits be likewise dictated? Can a human be treated like an animal? Can an animal be treated like a human? To further articulate, which of these is a person? Can a person only be a human? Can an animal - or other species - be considered a person? What is the definition of personhood? What is the definition of humanity? Who gets to decide that? What gets to decide that?

Further Reading

OpenStax Introduction to Philosophy

OpenStax Introduction to Anthropology

OpenStax Introduction to Sociology

OpenStax Concepts of Biology

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection

Wikipedia Deductive reasoning

Wikipedia Abductive reasoning

Wikipedia Inductive reasoning

Wikipedia Existentialism

Wikipedia Philosophy

Wikipedia Infinite regress

Wikipedia Value theory

Wikipedia Outline of philosophy

Wikipedia Problem of universals

Wikipedia Subject and object (philosophy)

Wikipedia Selective breeding

Wikipedia Animal husbandry

Wikipedia Culling

Wikipedia Eugenics

Animal Cognition (tw: contains images of spiders on home page)

 Addy: Tex and Wootzel put in some absolutely fantastic stuff, so I'm just going to share a bit on why I think we generally differentiate between humans and animals when it comes to genetic lines… and animals as working animals (plowing, herding, meat, livestock guardians, etc) vs animals for aesthetics (pugs, Scottish fold, pets).

Golden retrievers were bred for a strong retrieving instinct and for soft mouths, that they'd cause less damage to waterfowl carcasses. Collies have generally been bred for intelligence and herding instincts, for obvious reasons. Draft horses are bred to pull loads. In a working animal, you don't get the severe health issues you get in aesthetic animals. They're bred to do a job, and if they're sick or ill, they can't do that job very well.

I think there's something about being responsible and something about being careless with genetic lineages in animals. We have a degree of control over these things (re: domesticated animals that are born for the purpose of human use), like it or not. It's what we do with it that matters.

Many animals will happily commit incest. Dogs from the same litter, for example, will happily mate with each other. Do you stop it (either by separating the animals or by neutering/spaying), or do you stand by and let it happen? Animals, just like humans, carry recessive genes that can cause health issues. Responsible breeders keep all sorts of records to keep genetic issues out of their lines. Irresponsible breeders don't care.

Think about the practice of fixing (neutering/spaying) animals in general - it's common practice to get an animal fixed once they're old enough, to keep them from reproducing. These animals don't live in a wild environment, where their populations are kept in check by other factors. We domesticated them, and they live in our spaces. If we let them breed willy-nilly, their populations will grow out of control and ruin/imbalance local ecosystems. They live in a human environment, and they're our responsibility.

On a tangent, mules used to be a whole industry

When it comes to making decisions re: the reproductive habits of other humans, the power imbalance of domestication isn't present. Other humans (and their reproductive habits) are not my responsibility. It's their business. 

You do get some laws in some places about letting first cousins marry, but – on the whole – if someone with a genetic issue thinks about having children, I am not part of that discussion. That person is allowed to make their own decisions about what to do with their genetics. Since their genetic code is theirs, having an outsider mess with that (eugenics) is seen as a human rights issue. It takes the autonomy of that choice away from them.

Also…. The other side of selective breeding isn't just culling, it's breeding. With animals, that generally isn't an issue. If it is, there are all sorts of strategies to make animals more likely to be willing to do to the do with each other. But humans? If you have a human that doesn't want to have children, who doesn't want to reproduce, eugenics would say that that doesn't matter. That you want to push forward certain genetic lineages, even if the members of the population with those desired traits don't want to comply.

And that, for obvious reasons, causes issues.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[queering-ecology]

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire Chapter 2 : Enemy of the Species by Ladelle McWhorter (prt 1)

McWhorter’s chapter is a critical examination on the concept of ‘diversity’, and the biological implications in the term that lead back to discourse on the idea of ‘species’.

 In recent years, “a common strategy for promoting acceptance of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in many corporate and educational institutions has been to insist that diversity in any population is superior to homogeneity”(73). homogeneity=stagnation, redundancy of ideas, reduced productivity, healthy development requires diversity. The author asks, WHY? Why does diversity as a concept have such political power?

Because, McWhorter contends, behind the sociological notion of diversity lies biological principles and notions even when not explicitly invoked; “genetic diversity is a species shield against extinction during environmental upheaval and a resource for its evolutionary advancement. If all individuals are alike genetically, everyone is vulnerable to disease or predation in exactly the same ways. A single catastrophe could wipe out the entire line” (74). This is a very common environmental concern. “Genetic diversity enables evolutionary development” and “in short, genetic variation promotes species survival through adaptation across generations” (75). When applied to public discourse, it lends value to diversity—“racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of diversity are likewise a good thing. They make society more adaptable by increasing the chances that some members of it will understand the problems we face and see solutions even if other members do not. They prevent intellectual, artistic, institutional stagnation. They serve as resources for society as it evolves” (75).

But, as Michel Foucault reminds us, “everything is dangerous” and “knowledge is not made for understanding: it is made for cutting” 1997, 154. We may inadvertently reinforce the concept of ‘species’, a discourse that has historically condemned sexual variation (including interracial heterosexuality). “Human diversity is of value genetically, after all, insofar as species preservation and adaptation are valued managerial goals. Historically, those positioned to manage human populations and human evolution were the ones to define the key terms—such as “human” and “species”’ and they were not good at it.

The scientific term species was invented in the late eighteenth century by naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (75). “But the term has never been free of controversy” (75). During the Nineteenth century, it was used in debates over “whether Negros and Indians were Homo Sapiens or not” and was again destabilized when Charles Darwin released his work, On the Origin of Species.

“Politically charged from its scientific conception, the concept of species has often brought great harm to both racial and sexual minorities over the past two hundred years” (75).

Through the twentieth century, sexologists (physicians, psychiatrists, and criminologists) studied ‘sexual deviance’ and “produced popular images of homosexual and transgendered people as menacing degenerates”, they created ‘therapies’ that destroyed many peoples health and lives, and “public-hygiene policies intended to eliminate or exploit sexual subcultures” (75)

‘Race Hygiene’ and ‘Race Betterment’ movements=species movement predicated on the idea that homo sapiens must be “purged of deviance and thus preserved and enabled to evolve. Queer people—like dark-skinned (savage) people, disabled (defective) people, chronically ill (weak, feeble) people, and so on—were degenerates who might contaminate the bodies and bloodlines of the evolutionary avant-garde and thus derail Homo sapiens’ biological advance” (76) and thus these people were “biological enemies of the human species, pollutants and pathogens whose very presence posed a physical and possibly mortal threat not only to individual but to the species as a whole” and this kind of thinking in a way continues to this very day.

Queer people and our advocates are drawn into the argument, and we defend sexual diversity as an integral aspect of the species—natural variation rather than cancer, evolutionarily beneficial rather than a sterile dead end.

We must question these assumptions.

[house-of-mirrors]

On Unconscious Bias in Evolution (Under the cut for discussion of racism)

[Disclaimer that I am white]

I know the game doesn't get into time period discrimination, but the story is called Evolution, the protagonist is a Black man, and the Great Chain already functions as a metaphor for Social Darwinism. Instead of this story challenging the Great Chain, the game presents a narrative in which the only way to escape this oppressive system of predeterminism is to go through torture and sacrifice your humanity, and for whatever reason the revolutionaries are on the side of 'fate' on this one. Ignoring everything else that I'm about to discuss, it was jarring for me because the theme of the games in recent years generally has been "Great Chain bad and you have the power to be whatever you want"

I tried to think of how many other named Black men characters there are in the game. I can only think of the Bishop of St Fiacre's off the top of my head, but he isn't human, and… steals faces. How about Black women? Horatia comes to mind right away… and she's in a caretaking/housekeeper role. Hm. Oh yes and the Implacable Detective is a cop

This is a horror game, and most characters will not have a happy ending. However, I feel like the Youthful Naturalist got a much bleaker story than most of the characters in FL. Railway had multiple methods for saving Furnace at the end, but Evolution had powerlessness. The Youthful Naturalist also experiences more visceral body horror than many other characters in the game. If you get down to it, it's a story about a Black man suffering and failing to escape suffering. I might feel different if he wasn't one of the only Black characters. While typing this post, I realized becoming the boatman means being forced into servitude... Yikes™️

When I pick apart work, I try to be gracious and assume ignorance instead of jumping to maliciousness. Given that fbg is mostly white authors, it's likely no one stopped to consider how this would come across. Imagine you're sitting down to write a story, you plot it out and decide a character happens to belong to a certain minority group. Here, we have a story exploring a loose end in HD and the shapeling arts with a main character that happens to be Black. Tropes have vastly different origins and consequences for different demographics, however. A story about being forced into fate and servitude has worse implications and ties to real-world oppression for a Black character than a white character. Once I saw someone describe fbg with "clumsy attempts at diversity" and yeah!

I'm not saying you can't write minorities in horror. The horror genre belongs to all of us and the alternative is only having white dude characters forever. You just gotta be aware of pitfalls, especially when you're writing about a demographic you aren't a part of. Especially when you have hardly any other characters of that demographic.

I'd like not to believe the writers had intention to come across poorly, but that's why it's called unconscious bias. Creators need to do their due diligence with sensitivity and bias training. In 2023, there's no excuse for it in a world where you can quickly google "racist tropes in the horror genre." Stop for a second while writing and reflect on how you're portraying a character from a demographic you aren't a part of. I do it all the time in my own work. As fiction writers, we create a world where anything can happen, and it's essential to carefully consider diversity and inclusion.

[ravioliwings]

not that I'm qualified to speak on this but it's so interesting (in a bad way) how when primitive humans are being spoken of in a positive manner (beginning of humankind, discovering tools, etc) they're often light skinned, but whenever primitive humans are being compared to modern day, they are always darker skinned

[stellaluna33]

I have to tell you about this phenomenon I have a morbid fascination with. Ok, so, a hundred years ago in the 1920s there was this fad of "Beauty Contests" related to the Venus de Milo. Yes, the ancient Greek statue. THIS lady here:

See, there was a particular school of thought at the time that posited that Beauty was NOT "in the eye of the beholder," but was an objective Scientific and Mathematical Fact that could be measured and calculated. There WAS such a thing as objective, universal physical Perfection, and... for some reason... these "experts" had decided that the mathematical proportions of the Venus de Milo was the epitome of that Perfection in the female form. The Ancient Greeks had done it. They figured out Beauty! She's perfect! There she is! The right of a woman to be called truly, artistically, scientifically, and mathematically Beautiful was determined by how closely her bodily proportions conformed to those of the Venus de Milo! Do you see where I'm going with this?

So. In the 1920s there was this whole Thing where, usually at beach resort towns, they would advertise these Beauty Contests where they would invite some "Experts," artists, sculptors, or "scientists" to measure- with a measuring tape- the body proportions of real life women to see who was closest to the mathematical proportions of the Venus de Milo statue. And whoever was closest was declared by this team of "Experts"- Scientifically!!!- The Most Beautiful. Like Beauty is something that can LITERALLY be measured in numbers. And I just... Every once in a while I remember that this was a thing that happened. And I just... 😂 Just. Wow. What a time. What a world!

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

'cause everything is lit except my serotonin, yeah / everything is lit but my lightning bolt brain / everything is lit...!

[raayllum]

it really is so interesting to watch people fandom wise in terms of their stances go from “huh that’s a slightly different interpretation that’s neat” to “okay that’s kind of a weird take” to “alright bad faith mischaracterization” to “you’re criticizing this character for traits they don’t even have” to “you clearly resent and/or hate this character (even if you won’t admit that you do) for weird personal projection reasons” in real time

[realjaysumlin]

Never in my life will I ever begin to understand why people would let someone make you hate yourself. I understand the science behind this due to mental trauma and discrimination, but it's something that can easily be fixed by studying something that reverses trauma by doing research and self love.

Real science helps to remove the falsehood of racial enslavement against innocent people and you fight against this social construct which empowers you to overcome this nonsense. People globally are indoctrinated in lies and stereotypes that don't have anything to do with your makeup of who you are as a person.

Make those who make you feel uncomfortable about yourself and turn it back on them because they actually deserve it. If someone pushes the idea of whiteness, expose it because it's just something that is made up and we should challenge this foolishness because it harms innocent people.

[timeausterrors]

i had the most infuriating interaction on twitter. so i want to have more productive and interesting conversations about homestuck now. tell me things you find unique or interesting with homestuck's writing/characters/themes etc! or tell me criticisms you have about it, its character choices or writing choices, etc! (pls dont come in to just say act 6 is bad or vriska did nothing wrong etc ! you can have those opinions but i want to spark conversations and debates around new and interesting topics or topics that don't get brought up as much!!) ALSO PLS NO HS2 i just want to talk about Homestuck as it is because i think there's still so much to dissect and explore!

[nochd]

Not doing this as a reblog because it is a very side nitpick on a single offhand sentence in a post on a completely different and very important topic, but---

Charles Darwin did not believe in scientific racism. He challenged it.

Admittedly his challenge was pretty weaksauce compared to what we would accept as a bare minimum today. Nevertheless, within his own cultural context, it was a challenge.

Now it would be very easy to quote passages from The Descent of Man that make it look like Darwin was racist. These passages look that way for three reasons:

At the most superficial level, in the 1870s English had no words for BIPOC other than insulting terms like "negroes" and "savages", which accordingly The Descent of Man freely uses.

Darwin was an almost pathologically humble man, and his way of constructing an argument was to start by summing up his opponents' case as fairly and strongly as he could, then amass counter-evidence bit by bit. This is certainly what he was doing in the passage in the Origin of Species that creationists love to quote, about how the gradual evolution of the eye "seems absurd in the highest degree". And, having read The Descent of Man, I believe it was what he was doing in the early chapters where he sums up all the reasons white people gave for believing people of colour to be inferior. I cannot otherwise account for the fact that he goes on in the later chapters to contradict nearly every one of them.

Unfortunately, also because of being such a humble man, Darwin believed in taking his fellow researchers at their word, at least with regard to their data. In fact a vast amount of the anthropological data on BIPOC available to him in the 1870s was biased or slanted or outright fabricated. Unwilling to call the researchers liars, Darwin's challenge to their conclusions is (from a present-day perspective) disappointingly feeble.

Darwin came to his life's work from the abolitionist movement, in which both his grandfathers (Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood) were leading figures.

Prior to his time the leading theory about human "races" was that several different human species had been separately created before Noah's Flood, and that only the one that included white people was descended from Noah and hence truly human. Proponents of this theory would point to Egyptian paintings, dating (according to the then-accepted model) to only one thousand years after the Flood and clearly showing a distinction between light-skinned Egyptians and darker-skinned people from further south, and they would say: how could the descendants of Noah have diverged so much in just one thousand years and then not changed at all in the following three thousand?

Darwin's main goal in The Descent of Man is to demonstrate that, on the contrary, all humans are descended from a single common ancestor, and also we should stop referring to living things (let alone human races) as "higher" and "lower" because they're all equally well adapted to their own environments, and incidentally we should also drop the Flood model of prehistory.

Sadly, though Darwin's central thesis did come to be accepted by the scientific community in his lifetime, in the process it suffered misreadings and misinterpretations to wrangle it to fit in with the ideas it was meant to challenge, especially the idea of "higher" and "lower" life-forms.

He is said to have cordially disliked several of the people who championed altered versions of his idea. This may be confirmation bias on my part, but it seems to me that he particularly disliked people who used evolutionary ideas to justify "scientific" racism -- such as Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.

[digital-media-enthusiast]

[apostlewithapomegranate]

my spider sense is tingling.......