Affirming that Denying Evolution is White Supremacy

The old saying goes, “to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Alternatively, it can be said of Critical Race Theory and the broader Woke culture it has spawned, “To a person who accepts CRT, everything looks like white supremacy.” This term, in the hands of those who coined it and who thoroughly accept it, has become a catch-all, a magic talisman, a trump card played to stop all reflection and any criticism. If something can be labeled with this racist epithet, then only the most callous among us would disagree.

The latest in the train of uses for this term is an article published in Scientific American by Allison Hooper, titled, “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy”. The article is relatively brief, but the author manages to fit in several frontal attacks on what she assumes is the “young earth” view and “literal interpretations” of the Bible. She begins with a kind of “guilt by association” play by noting that several of the anti-evolution activists 100 years ago were members of the KKK. Then, in an interpretation of Scripture I have never run across (and I have read a lot of biblical interpretation over the last 30 years), she asserts that the literal interpretation of the Bible is one long unbroken line of white people.

Throw in some copy-and-paste mockery of “young earth creationism”, and you have an article that could have been written 5 years ago with the title, “Denial of Evolution is a Form of Science-Denial”. But now that “science” is a fuzzy term, “white supremacy” is the best label we can use.

Her most significant point is that anthropology teaches us that the first humans were African. We were all black skinned once. The connection she wants her article to make is that literal Bible interpreters are denying this claim, thereby denying the value of what she calls, “black bodies”.

The problem, however, is that scientists who are Christians do not deny this anthropological and biological claim. It is treated as a simple truth, and one that helps us understand that every skin color variation has nearly the same DNA. In a manner of speaking, we are all the same under the skin.

Hooper does not offer any evidence to back up her claims, either about the science or her take on biblical interpretation. But this is common in this kind of article. If you do a little searching, you will find countless articles that create strawmen of anyone and everyone who does not tow the Darwinian line, dividing the world into smart (and now Antiracists), and knuckle-dragging deniers. Who are now all racists.

For an actual take on scientists who are Christian, and their views on this issue and so many more, I suggest two links as starting points: Evolution News, and Reasons to Believe. The first ten minutes of this video, produced by Reasons to Believe featuring biologist, Fazale Rana, is a concise treatment of the science behind the article.

Beyond the fact that the article does not make a strong case for its point, it uses this phrase, dubious in its origins and ubiquitous in its usage, “white supremacy.” If any want to make the case that there is some kind of connection between Darwinian ideology and racism, the stronger case is about those who affirm Darwinism. From the Eugenics movement in the early 20^th Century, to the whole-cloth sketches about the sizes of African skulls and European skulls, to forced sterilization programs, to the “scientific Socialism” of the Nazis and the Soviet Communists, all of them had their ideological roots planted firmly in Darwin’s view of evolution. Darwinian evolution was not just about monkeys turning into humans, but about dark-skinned sub-humans turning into white humans. If there is a case to be made for an ideology that promoted white supremacy 100 years ago, this seems like a good candidate.

One other point I think needs to be made is that this constant and overbearing use of “white supremacy” is becoming belligerent and hard to take seriously. This kind of usage is not out of line with the ideology it belongs to, however. Critical Race Theory teaches that everything is about race and power, and every interaction between people is racist, especially every interaction between whites and people of color. If this is the starting premise of your view (see Delgado and Stefanic’s college text book definition), then every alleged sighting of racism is justified.

And even more, every imagined act of racism is justified. The professor and popularizer of CRT, Robin DiAngelo, wrote that smiling is a signal of white racism. The pastor and author, Daniel Hill, wrote in his book, White Awake, that every time a white person wants to begin a friendship with a person of color, they need to begin the conversation with acknowledgement of their guilt and privilege, and ask the POC for the right to begin a relationship. If you think these things are silly or absurd, you still have some common sense. If you think they make sense, you are like the guy with the hammer – everything is racism.