Scientific Racism: The Eugenics Of Social Darwinism

Membe's definition of sovereignty is to have control over life and death, and the right to say who deserves to die; this documentary without a doubt explains Membe's theory of necropolitics. In the short film by BBC titled " Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism" we can clearly identify how Individuals perceived power over African Americans, indigenous people and those of lower class. In the early 1900's European scientist, writers and philosophers developed explanations for why mass killing of individuals was necessary for the survival of mankind. In Britain, the white superiority believed that the Africans were lesser men and lesser brothers. One of the first encounters of sovereignty is the abomination of the Aboriginals, the Tasmanian indigenous people. In 1803 when the British began to settle in the islands of Tasmania it was easy for them to build a new capital and begin to eliminate the Aboriginals because they had no culture, no religion, and most importantly had no God. At the time they had a population of 5,000, and were seen as savages and animals. By the 1820's the population of the Aboriginals was declining in great numbers,
just twenty years after the British settlement there were only three hundred Aboriginals left. Although the British government knew, the actions they were taking were unjust and inhumane they tried to do something about it. They passed one of many laws that explains; whoever kills an Aboriginal, should have the equal punishment back and vice versa. These laws were never enforced, the killing continued until a missionary by the name of George Robinson. He decided that it was better to end the conflict and transport the few Aboriginals north of Tasmania to Flinders Island, where there they would be taught culture and religion and force them to live in a community as true "Christians." This was not 'point civilization', it soon turned into a death camp, where the rest of the Aboriginals died from illness, weakness and more importantly starvation. Both regimens of power and knowledge are shown in great detail when we began to learn how the white superiority realized that trying to teach minority was impossible. They didn’t learn as fast, there skull and brain were different from humans, realizing this they knew there was no hope and no reason to waste time in teaching a race that would never succeed in anything. When we begin to understand Eugenics, we begin to realize what terrible and inhumane thing eugenics really is. Eugenics cost millions of death around the world especially in Indian, when we look at the "El Nino" phenomenon of survival of the fittest. Millions of death happened because of starvation, children were walking skeletons and the adults were too weak to do any manual labor to earn enough for food. This caused the death of over 30 million due to starvation, when all the food that was needed was just miles away feeding the rich and the wealthy. El Nino can only be described as something unforgettable in the history of mankind. Scientific racism is identifying a scientific explanation that justifies why one race is superior to another.
Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, began to form the idea of Eugenics, which is the selective breeding of humans in order to have a race that would be prosperous in the future. He began to compare skulls of different indigenous groups and of African Americans. His goal was to bring awareness of interracial relationships, he justified that the African traits were dominate over the White traits, how Africans were different in there facial features such as high cheekbones, eyes, noses, and ears. The idea of eugenics got so far that even the heads of African Americans were sold to museums all around Europe. This condition was accepted that even post cards were depicted with the concept of skull
selling. Subhuman and civilization are two words that are very important to colonizers, it means having the authority and power over other individuals making them superior. They had the power to decided who had the right to live and who did not. Being the colonizer, you had the power over other races and knew that what you were doing to other humans is something that is justified by scientific evidence and proof.