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,
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