Does Evolution promote racism?

Yes. This is historical fact.

A few examples---

"Primitive" black people from African tribes were put in zoos in the US.

Hitler used evolution to promote racism.

Darwin called black people "primitive" and said that they would "soon be exterminated."

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*reads other answers*

LOL!

Apparently certain people here are unaware that Darwin called black people "primitive." Evolution was racist from the very beginning. Darwin said that blacks were barely evolved beyond apes. He said that whites were currently the most evolved humans but that soon a more advanced human would appear.

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RE @Doug Darwin didn't even coin the term 'evolution,' if you're going to quote mine get it right.

Notice the lack of quotation marks around the statement. That means it's not a quote. It is an accurate summary of what he said. He said that black people were the most primitive humans (not far beyond apes) and that they would soon be exterminated.

The traditional justification for racism (in the west) was the Curse of Ham (Genesis 9:20). But obviously when racists decided that they could base their racism on Darwin, they tried that too.

This is why the deeply evangelical southern states fought a war to promote slavery, while the much more atheist north fought to eradicate it. (Neither Lincoln nor Darwin were Christian in any normal sense of the word, but both were keen abolitionists).

It is also why the Ku Klux Klan was a church-based movement (mainly Baptist and Pentecostal).

Scientific racism doesn't work, which is why these days almost all racist arguments have gone back to being scriptural (check out when Mormons allowed African Americans into their priesthood).

But you can't blame racists for trying every dirty trick in the Book. They are dirty people.

No, anyone that claims that clearly doesn't understand evolution.

Racism is a social classification anyway, not a biological one.

Doug: The people behind doing those horrible acts might of been motivated by evolution but clearly from misconceptions of what it - now- actually teaches us. In the times of Darwin we knew very little about the theory and at that same time it remained as a hypothesis it was open to all interpretations, racist agendas included. Now that we know race has no bearing on biology, we can either look back on that as misunderstood ideas or quote mine to justify ignorance. Choose wisely.

Cantankerou: It's called eugenics, and there're still advocates for it.

When properly understood, evolution refutes racism. Before Darwin, people used typological thinking for living things, considering different plants and animals to be their distinct "kinds." This gave rise to a misleading conception of human races, in which different races are thought of as separate and distinct. Darwinism helps eliminate typological thinking and with it the basis for racism.

Genetic studies show that humans are remarkably homogeneous genetically, so all humans are only one biological race. Evolution does not teach racism; it teaches the very opposite.

Racism is thousands of years older than the theory of evolution, and its prevalence has probably decreased since Darwin's day; certainly slavery is much less now. That is the opposite of what we would expect if evolution promotes racism.

How can evolution possibly promote racism?

Not a single group in the human race are more/less evolved than the others.

It does the opposite... at least for those who actually understand the theory.

There is more variation within any given race than there is between races.

Furthermore, scientific theories don't "promote" anything... even if acceptors of evolution were more likely to be racist, it would have no bearing on theory's truth.

Not exactly. There was a movement though to preserve the "better" genes in society. I haven't studied it that much but it was rather messed up. I don't know what triggered it either.

The misunderstanding/misrepresentation of evolution can be used to promote racism, but evolution itself does not.

@Doug Darwin didn't even coin the term 'evolution,' if you're going to quote mine get it right.

Oftentimes - yes. Taken in its "purest" form no, but if you really think about the connotaitions of believing in Evolution, then some of us must be better than others.

simple people hate others because of racism

has little to do with intelligence

evolution for those who believe in it, can be a reason

there's no good reason for it though