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How Depictions of Human Evolution Continue to Perpetuate Racist and Sexist Bias
Scientific narratives of human evolution reinforce white supremacy.
The theory of human evolution as we understand it today has been through many waves of change. With time, scientists and anthropologists have had to sanitize their understanding of evolution to be more politically correct and palatable to modern sensibilities.
But this consideration and sensitivity was not always there. And in fact, in many ways, it is still lacking today. Depictions of human evolution continue to carry the racist and sexist undertones that they were always rooted in to this day. Be it in a museum exhibit, a tv show, mainstream education or art…we cannot escape the deeply troubling legacy of evolution theory, a legacy of misuse and distortion.
As Europeans set out on voyages around the world and encountered people who looked nothing like them, they became obsessed with the question: why are they different? A simplistic understanding of the origin of humanity- that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve was the only available explanation.
Carrying forward the only explanation they knew, polygenists argued that these differences can only be explained by an understanding that God must have made several pairs…
