Social Darwinism: The Bias Hierarchy

The Bias Hierarchy Social Darwinism was a theory that took Charles Darwin’s idea of natural selection and subjected it on people. It proposes that for people to survive in their environment they have to evolve. Herbert Spencer was a huge believer of Social Darwinism and also believed in teleology, which ranks people from best to worst (Ormsbee). He believed in the “survival of the fittest” and inferior people (poor and dark-skinned people) should be taken out (Ormsbee). This type of thinking is what caused racial tension between white and colored people. The idea that a white man was better than a colored person was becoming more of a fact than an opinion to people. This idea caused the oppression of many colored people because people did
The Foreign Miner’s Tax of 1854 taxed Chinese immigrants for mining (Ormsbee). The California Constitution of 1879 did not allow Chinese people to own land and did not let white business owners to hire Chinese workers (Ormsbee). Chinese people were not the only ones discriminated in the workplace Japanese people were too. While Japanese people worked in Hawaii a law that only allowed American Citizens to have skilled positions and since Asian immigrants were not allowed to be citizens they were stuck doing field work without having the chance to get a better job (Takaki). These laws were racist and did not allow Asian immigrants make more money in the states. They did not have the chance to make a better living because these laws oppressed them. This shows that the United States government did not want Asian immigrants to have more power. America is known as the land of opportunities but did not give Asian immigrants any
The idea of Social Darwinism might have been an influence towards United States imperialism. Imperialism is when a government takes over another country’s government by force. The idea that God made white people better than other people made them believe that they are allowed to conquer these lesser people (Wozniak). The philosophy of telos also had influence on United States imperialism. Telos is a philosophy that states that white males progress faster than everyone else and have bring up to speed the lesser people (Wozniak). This type of thinking is where the white man’s burden comes from, that it is a white man’s burden to civilize other people (Wozniak). Places like Hawaii, Cuba and the Philippines were affected by United States imperialism. The United States was able to use racism to dehumanize the people from other countries to justify conquering them (Wozniak). Savages were easier to conquer than humans. Social Darwinism allowed the United States to justify imperialism. They are the better race so they have to conquer others because they are not as good as white people. United States imperialism shows how white people thought they were better than colored people. They want to “help” these other countries but they know that they will never be better than white people. Saying that it is a burden to conquer savages made it easier to justify imperialism. United States