racism

The now-infamous Scopes ‘Evolution’ Trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law that prohibited teaching human evolution as fact in public schools. The trial occurred in the summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.  Apart from Jesus’s trial before Pilate, the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ is probably the best-known legal confrontation in history. The law was supported by famous Christian attorney William Jennings Bryan and opposed by the famous agnostic ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow.

For good reasons it is a rare textbook today that openly teaches racism, but it was very commonly taught in the past. The first major scientist to openly teach racism was Charles Darwin. His racist worldview is even evident in the title of his most famous book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin’s 1871 book, The Descent of Man, Chapter Seven titled, “On the Races of Man” contains forty pages that covers in detail his racist conclusions about humans.

After WWII ended, a major concern was understanding what caused a war that cost the lives of an estimated 50–56 million military and civilians, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Historians have documented that towards the end of the war, when the Nazis had to make the choice between winning the war and killing Jews, destroying the Jews was their priority.